House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan said in an interview Friday he will invite former special counsel Jack Smith to testify in an open hearing as soon as this month in what would be a politically high-stakes event for members of both parties and the White House.
“He’s coming in,” the Ohio Republican said of Smith, who led the federal criminal cases against President Donald Trump.
Smith sat for over eight hours, with breaks, before Judiciary Committee members and staff investigators last month behind closed doors while his legal team has repeatedly requested a public forum for their client to argue his case.
Jordan released a transcript and video record on New Year’s Eve and said Friday he now wants Smith to stand before the public and defend his claims of misconduct against the president.
Smith found Trump guilty of working to circumvent the results of the 2020 election, mishandling classified documents and obstruction of justice, but was forced to drop the charges when Trump won reelection in 2024.
“One of the key takeaways in the transcript is, we said, ‘did you [have] any evidence that President Trump was responsible for the violence that took place at the Capitol?’ He had no evidence of that whatsoever,” Jordan said of the committee’s December interview with Smith.
Jordan said he is eager for Smith to answer that question, and others, before live cameras.
Lanny Breuer, one of Smith’s lawyers and a partner at the firm Covington & Burling, said in a statement that “Jack has been clear for months he is ready and willing to answer questions in a public hearing about his investigations into President Trump’s alleged unlawful efforts to overturn the 2020 election and his mishandling of classified documents.”
Republicans have been going after Smith for years with allegations that he was presiding over a partisan witch hunt with the support of the Biden administration, but they have redoubled their efforts after revelations that Smith’s office secretly obtained phone records for GOP lawmakers in the days around the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.
Smith has maintained he never spoke to Biden or White House staff during his investigation.
Smith defended his work last month to House Judiciary members and staff, but his testimony was hamstrung, in part, by a federal court order that has kept the second volume of his report surrounding the classified documents case under seal. He has maintained he is interested in sharing the results of this investigation, but the Justice Department has interpreted that the order precludes him from discussing details with Congress.
These potential restrictions on his testimony back in December will likely be the same for a public hearing in the near future.
Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, is celebrating the opportunity for Smith to discuss his work publicly, believing he has information that will damage the president.
“After Republicans forced Jack Smith into a backroom interrogation and rejected our calls for an open public hearing, now they decide they want a public hearing with Jack Smith after all,” Raskin said in a statement. “Their backroom strategy backfired in historic fashion.”
“Even with many hours of private testimony, Republicans could not lay a glove on Jack Smith, his evidence, or his case. That will not change now that they have finally heeded our call to have him come testify publicly,” he added. “This upcoming hearing is a win for truth-seeking Americans and yet another looming humiliation for Donald Trump and Congressional Republicans, who depend on a daily diet of lies to keep their administration afloat.”
