Trump ‘person most responsible’ for Jan. 6, Smith testifies

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Former U.S. Special Counsel Jack Smith testified Thursday in public for the first time about his two now-defunct criminal investigations into President Donald Trump.

Because both cases against Trump were dropped after he was reelected, the hearing represented an opportunity for both Democrats and Republicans to, in effect, try the case by laying out the evidence uncovered in Smith’s investigations.

Republican lawmakers tried to paint Smith as a shoddy prosecutor driven by partisan politics, while Smith forcefully defended his investigations, telling lawmakers that “the evidence established that he willfully broke the law.”

Throughout the five-hour hearing, Smith reiterated the strength of evidence he said he gathered that Trump engaged in a criminal conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election and mishandle classified documents.

“No one should be above the law in this country, and the law required that he be held to account, so that is what I did,” Smith testified.

Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee tried to tarnish Smith’s reputation and question his tactics and motivations in order to cast doubt on his conclusions that Trump broke the law.

Committee Chair Jim Jordan called the investigations a politically motivated “witch hunt” in an attempt to keep Trump from winning reelection.

“He’s got to stop President Trump from running, tie him up in court. He’s got to get to trial, or at a minimum, insert a 165-page political document into the presidential campaign. It was always about politics,” Jordan said in his opening remarks.

Smith maintained politics played no role in his decisions, and that neither President Joe Biden nor Attorney General Merrick Garland ever instructed him how to proceed.

Democrats used the hearing to highlight Smith’s evidence, asking pointed questions about his conclusions.

“Is that your judgment, then, that only Donald Trump could have convened the mob in the size that it was assembled on Jan. 6?” asked Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif.

“Our assessment of the evidence is that he is the person most responsible for what happened on Jan. 6. He caused what happened and it was foreseeable to him,” Smith responded.

Also attending the hearing was Michael Fanone, a former Metropolitan Police Department officer who suffered a heart attack after being assaulted in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. Fanone told Spectrum News he came to support Smith and that Americans do not believe that Trump did not try to overturn the 2020 election.

“Donald Trump is an insurrectionist president,” said Fanone. “He orchestrated, excited and funded an insurrection against this country and wanted to stay in power, which is what this is all about, that they’ve got to go along with that narrative. But the American people don’t buy it. They know who the villains are, and it ain’t us.”

As Smith testified, Trump wrote in an online post that he was a “deranged animal” and demanded his Justice Department prosecute him.

Democrats said they would like to hold another hearing with Smith, and Jordan has said he would be open to holding more hearings in the future.

“I mean we have hearings all the time around here. I think just about every other hearing we have, there’s some valuable information that we gather,” Jordan said in an interview with Spectrum News on Tuesday.