{"id":865021,"date":"2026-09-29T18:56:15","date_gmt":"2026-09-29T18:56:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/865021\/"},"modified":"2026-09-29T18:56:15","modified_gmt":"2026-09-29T18:56:15","slug":"jack-smith-defends-trump-probes-in-senate-hearing-filled-with-gop-insults","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/865021\/","title":{"rendered":"Jack Smith defends Trump probes in Senate hearing filled with GOP insults"},"content":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON \u2014 Former special counsel Jack Smith told senators Tuesday that he would not be silenced \u201cby continued threats of prosecution\u201d over his handling of the investigation into President Donald Trump.<\/a><\/p>\n

Smith appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee amid the Justice Department\u2019s push to target law enforcement officials involved<\/a> with his investigation into Trump\u2019s efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss<\/a> in the lead-up to the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol<\/a>, as well as the probe into his handling of classified documents after he left office in January 2021.<\/p>\n

Smith, who brought two since-dismissed federal criminal cases<\/a> against Trump, said in his opening statement that he stood by his decision to bring charges against Trump, which was the result of a deep investigation that uncovered substantive evidence.<\/p>\n

\"\"\/<\/p>\n

\u201cThe status, power, prominence, or political affiliation of the subject of an investigation must play no role in the decision to investigate, prosecute, or decline to prosecute,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

\u201cOur investigation developed proof beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump engaged in serious crimes against our nation,\u201d he said. Trump has said he did nothing wrong. <\/p>\n

The hearing quickly devolved into a battleground of insults. <\/p>\n

Louisiana Republican John Kennedy began his questioning by asking Smith: \u201cWhat does the word arrogant mean?\u201d And he ended his time by telling Smith: \u201cYou make me want to throw up in my mouth.\u201d <\/p>\n

\"\"\/<\/p>\n

Later, Missouri Republican Eric Schmitt called Smith a \u201cdirtbag.\u201d <\/p>\n

The epithet came after Schmitt tried to imply that the former special counsel had been in communication with Fani Willis, the district attorney of Fulton County who was at the time working on a state case against Trump. Schmitt tried to place Smith in Atlanta at a Hawks game. When Smith denied it, Schmitt suggested he\u2019d committed perjury. <\/p>\n

But Schmitt appeared to have confused his basketball teams: Smith had actually been in attendance at an Iowa Hawkeyes game, which was Caitlin Clark\u2019s team at the time. <\/p>\n

Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., said Schmitt owed Smith an apology. He didn\u2019t give it. <\/p>\n

Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, has repeatedly criticized Smith. Grassley asserted that Smith misused his investigative powers and politically targeted Republicans. Smith, who as a career prosecutor went after Republicans and Democrats, has denied such allegations. <\/p>\n

Grassley said that Smith must answer for what the senator portrays as \u201crampant abuse of authority and political targeting\u201d funded by American taxpayers. He said his goal is to expose the \u201cweaponization\u201d of the Justice Department for actions taken during the Biden administration.<\/p>\n

\u201cJack Smith\u2019s corrupt operation undermined the rule of law and threatened our very political institutions,\u201d he said Tuesday. <\/p>\n

Smith has said he believes a jury would have convicted Trump in the 2020 election-related case had it gone to trial and that the notion that his decisions were \u201cinfluenced or directed by the Biden administration or other political actors is, in a word, laughable<\/a>.\u201d Smith\u2019s final report in the election interference case stated that Trump \u201cinspired his supporters to commit acts of physical violence<\/a>\u201d at the Capitol on Jan. 6. <\/p>\n

Trump pleaded not guilty in Smith\u2019s Jan. 6 case and denied after the attack that he incited his supporters, calling his remarks at a rally that day \u201ctotally appropriate.\u201d Trump later described Jan. 6 defendants as \u201chostages\u201d<\/a> and gave them mass clemency upon his return to office.<\/p>\n

The Trump administration last year launched a so-called grand conspiracy investigation looking at actions taken by federal law enforcement officials dating back to 2016, which would fall outside the typical five-year statute of limitations for most federal crimes<\/a>. <\/p>\n

\"\"\/<\/p>\n

The Trump administration also has purged FBI and Justice Department officials involved in past Trump investigations. Defense attorneys for current and former officials informed a court last week that DOJ officials appear interested in probing the circumstances of an August 2022 FBI search of Trump\u2019s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, during which agents found classified documents that were at the heart of one of the since-dismissed Trump cases. <\/p>\n

Joe diGenova, who was a federal prosecutor during Ronald Reagan\u2019s presidency, headed up the \u201cgrand conspiracy\u201d investigation until he left the Justice Department this month.<\/a> He told NBC News that \u201clanes got crossed<\/a>\u201d in his final days.<\/p>\n

Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., said the law enforcement who worked diligently on the cases were fired for doing their jobs, then vilified and harassed by Trump and his allies who are still \u201cpushing false narratives that somehow Donald Trump is the victim.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cThis is an eight-year attempt to lie to the American people, and this is their closing argument, everybody, right before an election, this is what they want to spend their time on: perpetrating a lie,\u201d Booker said. <\/p>\n

In his first public testimony before Congress earlier this year, Smith told the House Judiciary Committee that he would not be intimidated <\/a>and predicted that the Trump administration would attempt to launch a criminal case against him. Months later, one of Trump\u2019s allies on Capitol Hill, Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, asked the Trump administration to investigate Jordan\u2019s assertion that Smith \u201cseemingly\u201d<\/a> made false statements in congressional testimony. <\/p>\n

Smith\u2019s lawyers said he provided \u201ctruthful, responsive answers\u201d and that Jordan\u2019s referral \u201creflects a chilling eagerness to weaponize the justice system by attacking a career, nonpartisan public servant who faithfully and fearlessly performed his duties by following the facts and the law.\u201d Former federal prosecutors have told NBC News<\/a> that the Justice Department would have a tough time bringing a perjury case against Smith.<\/p>\n

Smith didn\u2019t discuss the classified documents investigation because Trump-appointed U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon ordered that that portion of his report as special counsel cannot be released. The Justice Department has taken the position that answering questions about that investigation would violate Cannon\u2019s order.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON \u2014 Former special counsel Jack Smith told senators Tuesday that he would not be silenced \u201cby continued…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":865022,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-865021","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/865021","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=865021"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/865021\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/865022"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=865021"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=865021"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=865021"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}