Jack Smith tells lawmakers his team developed 'proof beyond a reasonable
doubt' against Trump
[December 18, 2025]
By ERIC TUCKER and LISA MASCARO
WASHINGTON (AP) — Former Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith
told lawmakers in a closed-door interview Wednesday that his team of
investigators “developed proof beyond a reasonable doubt” that President
Donald Trumphad criminally conspired to overturn the results of the 2020
election, according to portions of his opening statement obtained by The
Associated Press.
Smith also said investigators had accrued “powerful evidence” Trump
broke the law by hoarding classified documents from his first term as
president at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, and by
obstructing government efforts to recover the records.
“I made my decisions in the investigation without regard to President
Trump’s political association, activities, beliefs, or candidacy in the
2024 presidential election,” Smith said. “We took actions based on what
the facts and the law required — the very lesson I learned early in my
career as a prosecutor.”
He said that if asked whether he would “prosecute a former president
based on the same facts today, I would do so regardless of whether the
president was a Republican or Democrat.”
The day-long deposition before the House Judiciary Committee gave
lawmakers of both parties their first chance, albeit in private, to
question Smith for hours about investigations into Trump that resulted
in criminal cases between the Republican president’s first and second
terms. Smith was subpoenaed by the Republican-led committee for
testimony and documents as part of a GOP investigation into the Trump
inquiries during the administration of Democratic President Joe Biden.
The former special counsel cooperated with the congressional demand,
though his lawyers noted that he had volunteered more than a month
before the subpoena was issued to answer questions publicly before the
committee — an overture they said was rebuffed by Republicans. Trump had
told reporters that he supported the idea of an open hearing.
“Testifying before this committee, Jack is showing tremendous courage in
light of the remarkable and unprecedented retribution campaign against
him by this administration and this White House,” Smith lawyer Lanny
Breuer told reporters. “Let’s be clear: Jack Smith, a career prosecutor,
conducted this investigation based on the facts and based on the law and
nothing more.”
Smith was appointed in 2022 to oversee Justice Department investigations
into Trump’s efforts to reverse his 2020 loss to Biden and Trump's
hoarding of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago. Smith’s team filed
charges in both investigations but abandoned the cases after Trump was
elected to the White House last year, citing Justice Department legal
opinions that say a sitting president cannot be indicted.
Multiple prior Justice Department special counsels, including Robert
Mueller, have testified publicly but Smith was summoned for just a
private interview. Several Democrats who emerged from Smith's interview
said they could understand why Republicans did not want an open hearing
based on the damaging testimony about Trump they said Smith offered.
The committee's top Democrat, Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, said the
Republican majority “made an excellent decision" in not allowing Smith
to testify publicly “because had he done so, it would have been
absolutely devastating to the president and all the president’s men
involved in the insurrectionary activities” of the Capitol riot on Jan.
6, 2021.
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Former Department of Justice Special Counsel Jack Smith enters a
room in the Rayburn House Office Building to give his deposition
before the House Judiciary Committee, part of its oversight into DOJ
investigations into President Donald Trump, on Capitol Hill in
Washington, Wednesday, Dec. 17, 2025. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
“Jack Smith has just spent several hours schooling the Judiciary
Committee on the professional responsibilities of a prosecutor and
the ethical duties of a prosecutor," Raskin said.
Democrats are demanding that Smith’s testimony be made public, along
with his full report on the investigation. A volume on the
classified documents investigation has yet to be released.
“The American people should hear for themselves,” said Rep. Dan
Goldman, D-N.Y.
The committee chairman, Republican Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, told
reporters, “I think we’ve learned some interesting things." He
declined to discuss what was said in the room, but reiterated his
position about the investigations.
“It’s political,” he said.
Smith's interview unfolded against the backdrop of a broader
retribution campaign by the Trump administration against former
officials involved in investigating Trump and his allies. The Office
of Special Counsel, an independent political watchdog, said in
August that it was investigating Smith, and the White House issued a
presidential memorandum this year aimed at suspending security
clearances of lawyers at the law firm that provided legal services
to Smith.
The deposition also comes as Republicans in Congress, aided by
current FBI leadership, look to discredit the investigations into
Trump through the release of emails and other documents that
sometimes lack complete context.
In recent weeks, they have seized on revelations that Smith's team,
as part of its investigation, had analyzed the phone records of
select GOP lawmakers from a several-day period around the Capitol
insurrection, when pro-Trump rioters stormed the building to try to
halt the certification of Trump’s election loss to Biden.
The phone records reviewed by prosecutors included information about
the incoming and outgoing phone numbers and the length of the call
but not the contents of the conversations. Smith told lawmakers
Wednesday that the records were properly subpoenaed, “were relevant
to complete a comprehensive investigation” and were related to calls
Trump made urging lawmakers to delay certification of the election.
On Tuesday, Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, chairman of the
Senate Judiciary Committee, released a batch of internal FBI emails
leading up to the August 2022 search of Mar-a-Lago. In one message,
written weeks before the search, an agent wrote that the FBI's
Washington field office did not believe probable cause existed to
search the property for classified records.
But Republicans who trumpeted the emails as proof that the Biden
Justice Department was out to get Trump omitted the fact that agents
who later searched the property reported finding boxes of
classified, even top-secret, documents. In addition, the then-head
of the Washington field office has testified to lawmakers that by
the time of the search, the FBI believed probable cause existed to
do it.
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