What we're watching
- Former special counsel Jack Smith is testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee. The committee said the hearing will examine his alleged “abuse of authority” and targeting of Republicans. You can watch it in the livestream at the top of this page.
- Smith is expected to be questioned about not divulging that his office had seen the content of members’ text messages sent to White House staffers around the 2020 election and obtained through the White House phones.
- Smith has confirmed that his special counsel’s office sought records from phone companies of members of Congress’ call logs — an effort that’s lawful and typical of federal criminal investigations, but which members have heavily criticized.
- In his opening remarks, Judiciary Committee Chair Chuck Grassley — who has has released several rounds of documents from Smith’s investigation over the past year— accused Smith of undermining the rule of law.
Grassley accuses Smith of acting as a "partisan weapon" in opening remarks
Senate judiciary chairman Chuck Grassley, in opening remarks, accused former special counsel Jack Smith of undermining the rule of law and threatening “our very political institutions.”
In his accusations, Grassley did not mention the underlying actions Smith was investigating, namely then-President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results.
“Mr. Smith’s operation was a partisan weapon that broke the rules, lied to the court and engaged in bad faith throughout,” Grassley said. “His operation has no credibility — only to the partisan media and Democrats who cheered him on as they will today.”
Republicans set to grill Smith over obtaining lawmaker’s phone records. Here’s what to know.
Republican lawmakers are set to press former special counsel Jack Smith Tuesday over phone records he obtained from members of Congress over the course of his investigations.
Republican Chairman Chuck Grassley has repeatedly lambasted Smith for allegedly breaching norms by accessing the information and other lawmakers and have accused Smith of lying about the call records during his closed-door testimony last year.
The lawmakers, however, are conflating two separate subpoenas: one that asked for basic phone records of several lawmakers around the 2020 election — when Trump and his allies sought to overturn the election results — and a separate subpoena for communications from White House staff at the time.
The results of the subpoena of White House staff included messages between those members of the administration and several lawmakers. The subpoena for phone toll records of lawmakers, however, only included basic information of calls made and their duration, not the content of those calls.
Over the summer, Republican Sen. Mike Lee posted a clip online of Smith’s testimony on the hill last year where the former special counsel was asked whether he had accessed the contents of phone calls or messages from lawmakers through the toll records subpoena, not the separate subpoena of White House staffers.
During his testimony, Smith said the toll records did not include the content of messages or phone calls from lawmakers.
Here’s the trouble with testifying about Trump’s classified documents indictment
A lockdown on the evidence Special Counsel Jack Smith gathered has made it fraught territory any time he speaks under oath about the now-dismissed classified documents case against President Donald Trump.
In his previous testimony and again on Tuesday, Smith says he won’t answer in detail about evidence or findings captured in his final report on the investigation.
That’s because Judge Aileen Cannon, who oversaw the Trump case in Ft. Pierce, Florida, put a gag order on any sharing of the details of that report, commonly referred to as Volume II of the Smith special counsel report. The volume hasn’t been released publicly.
For context: The lockdown on Volume II is still working its way through the federal court system, with an appellate court set to review Cannon’s anti-transparency decision in the coming months.
The topic of how much Smith can say has affected others who worked on the case too in recent weeks.
Last week, five current and former FBI agents and analysts asked Cannon for help understanding what they can and can’t talk about related to the decision to search Mar-a-Lago in 2022. The agents and analysts have been sought out as witnesses in a new investigation by the Justice Department that looks back at the search.
Smith, the FBI officials and other former prosecutors who worked on the Trump probe have tried to get guidance as well from the current Justice Department — now led by Trump’s private lawyer in the classified documents case, Todd Blanche.
The DOJ has been scant in its responses, leaving several of the former Mar-a-Lago case investigators risking possible obstruction if they were to be too cautious in what they share.
Smith, however, has tried to address the issue as much as he can, defending his decision to charge Trump in the case.
Jack Smith hearing begins
The Senate Judiciary hearing with Jack Smith, the special counsel who twice indicted the president, has begun.
The hearing is likely to be contentious, as republican lawmakers have said that Smith acted politically and should be prosecuted.
Trump has repeatedly pushed for Smith to be put in jail
President Donald Trump has repeatedly bulldozed norms by pushing for prosecutions of his political foes. And forner special counsel Jack Smith is high on that list.
In fact, Trump has repeatedly called for him to be prosecuted and even jailed — to no avail so far.
Last October, Trump said at an event with then-Attorney General Pam Bondi that “what they did was criminal. Deranged Jack Smith, in my opinion, is a criminal.”
The same month, Trump posted on social media that Smith “is a CRIMINAL AND SHOULD BE IN JAIL.”
And in a pair of posts in January, Trump more expressly suggested it was time for Bondi to act.
“Hopefully the Attorney General is looking at what he’s done,” Trump said in one, adding: “A big price should be paid by them for what they have put our Country through!”
He later added that “there is no question that Deranged Jack Smith should be prosecuted for his actions. … At a minimum, he committed large scale perjury!”
Smith said in January that he expected to be indicted because of Trump’s legal pursuit of his foes. But it hasn’t happened yet.
Of course, that appears in large part because the GOP’s main allegation of perjury against Smith rests on a complete misreading of the evidence.
No evidence that GOP’s attacks on Jack Smith have penetrated
Senate Judiciary Committee Republicans are today likely to continue pressing President Donald Trump’s claims that he was railroaded in the criminal prosecutions that former special counsel Jack Smith led.
But there is no evidence they have convinced the American people of that.
Indeed, back in 2023 when Smith secured Trump’s classified documents and January 6 indictments, polls generally showed Americans felt the evidence backed him up.
One poll showed 56% said the investigations Trump faced were “fair” rather than a “witch hunt.” Another showed 57% said the Justice Department was holding Trump accountable like anyone else. And a CNN poll showed Americans said 47%-31% that the charges owed to Trump’s own actions rather than an abuse of the justice system.
It’s all a contrast to the Trump DOJ’s prosecutions of the president’s foes, which Americans generally view as improper retribution.
More recent polling on Smith’s investigations is scarce. But even after Trump won the 2024 election, a CNN poll showed Americans disapproved 54%-45% of Smith dropping the charges.
And Americans certainly haven’t been disabused of the notion that Trump might warrant criminal charges. A Reuters-Ipsos survey just last month showed Americans said by double-digits — 43%-32% — that it would be good for the United States if Trump were investigated and potentially charged for he and his family’s cryptocurrency ventures.
"I will not be silenced," Special Counsel Jack Smith will tell Senate panel
Jack Smith, the former special counsel who twice indicted the president, will tell senators on Tuesday that he continues to “stand by” his decision to prosecute Donald Trump.
“If asked whether to prosecute a former President based on the same facts today, I would do so regardless of whether that President was a Republican or a Democrat,” Smith will say, according to a copy of his prepared remarks.
His testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee will address his investigations into Trump’s retention of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago and his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Both cases were dismissed before trial.
Trump has denied wrongdoing and, along with his allies, has portrayed Smith’s investigations as politically motivated. But Smith will reject that characterization, saying the charges “were the result of the evidence.”
Smith will also warn that Trump’s attacks are weakening the justice system. People are “threatened with criminal investigation because they are perceived to have opposed the President,” he will say, and career employees who worked on his investigations were fired because of their “unwavering commitment to the fair and impartial administration of justice.”
“I will not be silenced by the continued threats of prosecution from the President or others,” Smith will say.
Smith appeared before the House Judiciary Committee earlier this year
Former special counsel Jack Smith, who brought two now-defunct criminal cases against President Donald Trump, defended the integrity of his investigation during a combative hearing on January 22 on Capitol Hill.
Making his first public appearance before lawmakers, Smith pushed back against Trump’s claims that he was a crooked prosecutor during a hearing that devolved into a partisan Rorschach test about Trump’s actions after losing the 2020 election.
“I am not a politician, and I have no partisan loyalties,” Smith told the House Judiciary Committee. “My career has been dedicated to serving our country by upholding the rule of law … I stand by my decisions as special counsel, including my decision to bring charges against President Trump.”
While Smith was testifying, Trump called him a “deranged animal” in a social media post, and also said he hopes then-Attorney General Pam Bondi “is looking at” supposed misconduct by Smith because “a big price should be paid.”
More on Smith’s background: From 2022 to 2025, Smith led the special counsel’s office at the Justice Department that investigated Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election, and his potential mishandling of classified government documents.
He eventually filed federal charges against Trump in both investigations. But Smith withdrew both cases after Trump’s 2024 election victory, citing longstanding Justice Department rules against prosecuting a sitting president.
Senate Republicans allege Smith abused authority and targeted GOP members
Former special counsel Jack Smith is scheduled to testify publicly before the Senate Judiciary Committee today — nearly two months after agreeing to appear.
Smith has been under oath on Capitol Hill previously, where he was highly critical of President Donald Trump and defended his investigation fully as within the law and Department of Justice policy. He also has declined to answer specific questions that may divulge grand jury information from his office’s work and sealed details of the Mar-a Lago classified documents case against Trump.
He has also confirmed that his special counsel’s office sought records from phone companies of members of Congress’ call logs — an effort that’s lawful and typical of federal criminal investigations, but which members have heavily criticized. Recently, House Judiciary chairman Jim Jordan asked the DOJ to potentially prosecute Smith for not divulging on the Hill that his office had seen the content of members’ text messages sent to White House staffers around the 2020 election and obtained through the White House phones.
Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley has also released several rounds of documents from Smith’s investigation over the past year, accusing him of conducting an improper probe and fueling Jordan’s complaint.
Smith and his lawyers maintain he has done nothing wrong, and the Justice Department has levied no charges.
