Jack - Jack Smith Testifies

Episode Date: January 4, 2026

Jack Smith testified for 8 hours to House Judiciary.Allison picked some of the key moments to talk about.You can watch the video here:https://www.youtube.com/live/6a1TCDYI4cE?si=5noQnlq3M-REYTaf Follow AG Substack|MuellershewroteBlueSky|@muellershewroteAndrew McCabe isn’t on social media, but you can buy his book The ThreatThe Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and TrumpWe would like to know more about our listeners. Please participate in this brief surveyListener Survey and CommentsThis Show is Available Ad-Free And Early For Patreon and Supercast Supporters at the Justice Enforcers level and above:https://dailybeans.supercast.techOrhttps://patreon.com/thedailybeansOr when you subscribe on Apple Podcastshttps://apple.co/3YNpW3P Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

MSW Media. Hi, everybody. I'm Allison Gill, and we're bringing you this very special episode of the Unjustified podcast in partnership with the Midas Touch Network. Now, this is our first episode of 2026. And as you know, this past Wednesday, New Year's Eve, the majority on the House Judiciary Committee released the transcript of Jack Smith's recent interview conducted behind closed doors. And they followed that up shortly by releasing the video

of that interview. Now, I immediately went to work carefully reading through this transcript multiple times. As you may know, former FBI deputy director, Andy McCabe and I hosted a podcast about the special counsel's investigations into Trump. It was called Jack. And as part of that podcast. I can guarantee you I have read every single motion, every brief, every word written by Jack Smith, every order from the district court, the appellate court, and the Supreme Court. We read every word of both volume one of Jack Smith's final report into the record as a podcast, as well as his 165 page immunity brief that he filed with Judge Chutkin just before the election. I am very familiar with this case inside and out. And after spending the last two,

days parsing the transcript and watching the video testimony, I decided to compile a series of clips to share, the ones that stood out to me the most. And I wanted to provide a little bit of commentary for you. Now, Andy McCabe is out this week, so I'm going to walk you through these carefully selected and curated clips. So thank you very much for being here. Now, Jack Smith's testimony is noteworthy for several reasons. His command of the facts, his calm demeanor. His recollection is on point, very different than Robert Mueller's public testimony in July of 2019. Jack Smith was so measured and so serious, he was unflappable and unimpeachable with his decades of experience that it really made it hard for Republicans to feel comfortable

spouting any of their ridiculousness that we generally hear from them. Now, Smith commanded respect, though that didn't really stop Jim Jordan or his staff from trying to get gotcha moments, but they failed at every turn. This is a very embarrassing piece of testimony for the Republicans on this committee. So let's start at the beginning with former special counsel Jack Smith's opening statement. Thank you for the opportunity to discuss my work as special counsel. I was taught as a young prosecutor to follow the facts in the law and to do so without fear or favor. To do the right thing, the right way, for the right reasons. For nearly three decades,

I've been a career prosecutor. I've served during both Republican and Democratic administrations, and I've been guided by those principles in every role I've held. I continued to honor those principles when I was appointed to serve as special counsel in November of 2022. The decision to bring charges against President Trump was mine, but the basis for those charges rests entirely with President Trump and his actions, as alleged in the indictments returned by grand juries in two different districts. Our investigation developed proof beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump engaged in a criminal scheme to overturn the results of the 2020 election and to prevent the lawful

transfer of power. Our investigation also developed powerful evidence that showed that President Trump willfully retained highly classified documents after he left office in January of 2021, storing them at his social club, including in a ballroom and a bathroom. He then repeatedly tried to obstruct justice to conceal his continued retention of those documents. I remain grateful for the counsel, judgment, and advice of my team as I executed my responsibilities. I am both saddened and angered that President Trump has sought revenge against career prosecutors, FBI agents, and support staff, simply for doing their jobs and for having worked on those cases. These dedicated public servants are the best of us, and they have been wrongly vilified and improperly dismissed from their jobs.

I made my decisions in the investigation without regard to President Trump's political association, activities, beliefs, or candidacy in the 2024 presidential election. We took our actions based on the facts and the law, the very lessons I learned early in my career as a prosecutor. We follow Justice Department policies and observed legal requirements. The timing and speed of our work reflects the strength of the evidence and our confidence that we would have secured convictions at trial. 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. Recent narratives about my team's work are false and misleading, including stories about our collection of toll records. Toll records were sought for historical telephone routing information, collected after calls had taken place, identifying the incoming and outgoing call numbers, the time of the calls and their duration. Toll records do not include the content of calls.

Those records were lawfully subpoenaed and were relevant to complete a comprehensive investigation. January 6th was an attack on the structure of our democracy in which over 140 heroic law enforcement officers were assaulted. Over 160 individuals later pled guilty to assaulting police that day. Exploiting that violence, President Trump and his associates tried to call members of Congress in furtherance of their criminal scheme, urging them to further delay certification of the 2020 election. I did not choose those members. President Trump did. I hope that my testimony today serves to correct these mischaracterizations about my work, and to that end, I welcome your questions. Straight to the point. First, we've got powerful evidence, proof beyond a reasonable

doubt that Trump tried to stop the peaceful transfer of power. He did a coup, and he willfully retained classified documents and obstructed justice. He also praised the people that worked on his team, something that we don't see from this particular administration. We heard that Trump did this to himself. Were it not for Trump, we would not be here. We learned that the phone records collected from Republicans in Congress was legal, and Trump was the reason for it. He picked those people. And also finally stop mischaracterizing my work, kind of a callback to what Bill Barr did with the Mueller report. So let's talk about what I consider to be the standout moments in this interview. And I want to start with Jack Smith easily and swiftly debunking multiple

right-wing conspiracy theories. These are all Republican talking points that they brought up one by one and he continued to debunk. So early in the hearing, a staffer, I think, for Jim Jordan, tried to corner Jack Smith with the right-wing conspiracy that Merrick Garland was against bringing the charges, that somehow Jack Smith went rogue.

I'm sure this is probably one of the bases for their criminal investigation into Jack Smith, which I'm sure will go nowhere. But Jack Smith shuts this down pretty handily. Here's that clip. In June of 2023, you had a meeting with the Attorney General to present a prosecution memo and basically asking for his blessing to bring the indictments. Is that correct? We did have a meeting and I think it was around that

time. I didn't think about it as his blessing. I was presenting what I intended to do and he had the ability to countermand that if you wanted to. Okay. But certainly you couldn't bring an indictment without his authorization he could he could block me from doing that that's correct okay um and during that june 2023 um meeting with the attorney general uh would did you guys discuss both indictments potential indictments or just just the florida indictment or just the dc indictment if it was i don't have a specific recollection of dates um and so you can check me on public records but i believe by late june the classified documents case had already been indicted okay so again this is my recollection but that would have been a discussion in late june would have

likely been about just the elections case okay if it was about an indictment okay and the attorney general in the in the june meeting it's been reported that he expressed some reservations about the dc case is that correct uh i had several meetings with the Attorney General about both cases. And in those meetings, we regularly discussed legal issues, factual issues, things of that nature. Never in those meetings did he tell me I couldn't or shouldn't go forward or should go forward. It was more talking through with another experienced lawyer, the legal issues, president, in the cases, as well as if I was going to go forward, how to best frame those. Now, the Republicans also implied that Merrick Garland forced Jack Smith to

speak to the Solicitor General about the D.C. case, but Smith rebutted that as well and informed Jim Jordan and his staffers that he alone made the choice to meet with the Solicitor General because he wanted to discuss Trump's First Amendment rights, his First Amendment defense that was inevitably going to come up. And we'll get to his testimony about the First Amendment later, but let's get back to debunking more of these Republican conspiracy theories. In this next clip, Jack Smith quickly dispenses with the right-wing theory that he conspired against Trump with state attorneys general. Let's listen. Did your office coordinate with state officials? What? You mean interview state officials? No, coordinate. You know, several other, you know,

state probes cropped up, you know, in Arizona, in Fulton County, Georgia. And I'm wondering how. you coordinated those efforts? I know that we got inquiries from state authorities. I'm aware of that. My recollection is that we did not share any evidence with them. And I don't think my recollection is we did not get any evidence from them. We got it from, that is my recollection that it was all or largely from public sources. Okay.

Was there somebody on your team who had responded? for liaisoning with the Attorney General for the State of Arizona, Chris Mays? I don't believe so, but also the liaisoning. I don't think that my recollection is that there was not like an ongoing discussion. What I was thinking of, I know we got a letter, for example, from the Attorney General in New Mexico asking for information from us. I don't have a specific recollection as well as to other states. It may well be that we got other inquiries. So there was no proactive coordination? No.

Okay. There was no proactive coordination, regular communications with Chris Mays's office in Arizona? I don't recall any regular communications, but I'm hesitating just because I don't recall as I sit here how many times they might have reached out to us or that sort of thing. How about with the Fulton County DA's office with Fannie Willis and Mr. Wade? Yeah, I've never had contact with either of those people. So no, no coordination. I never spoke with those people. Don't know what you're talking about.

Shut it down. Next, more collusion and coordination conspiracy theories because they want to ask Jack Smith about his communications with the January 6th Select Committee. Now, here, we learned something that I wasn't aware of. We learned that the committee actually waited until the very last minute. We knew they waited until the very last minute, but we didn't know that people went to actually get their information from them from Jack Smith's team. That was another cause of delay in this case.

It took months to get that information. But more importantly, Smith's answer shuts down the Republican theory that Democrats on the January 6th Select Committee deleted all their files to hide. the truth because as Jack Smith testifies here, he actually handed over all of the January 6th committee's work to Trump's team in discovery. So they had it. Watch. What types of communications did you or your staff have with the January 6th committee?

So when I was appointed at special counsel, I asked at some point whether we had, gotten evidence from the special counsel from these select committee we had not and so I directed my staff to get that evidence give whatever evidence we could from them and I think it was I think it was in December or so that we did in fact get evidence from them and get a copy of their final report and this is the this is referenced in the um uh in our final report there's a paragraph or footnote during that do you know who at the select committee your staff was communicating with were you i was not okay so you didn't have any communications with members or staff at the select

committee i did not know okay and who on your staff did what i wrote writer what i recall is asking j p cooney to do this i don't i don't know if you he then cast somebody else or if he did it himself or with somebody else. But that's who I remember speaking to about this. The book we've been referring to reports that on January 1, less than 48 hours before Republicans could lock down all the evidence or perhaps deleted entirely. A committee staffer summoned an attorney from Smith's team to Capitol Hill

to receive a hard drive containing the committee's work. Is that consistent with your understanding of what happened? I wouldn't have remembered that level of detail if you hadn't read it, but we asked to get everything they would give us, and we took everything they gave us, and we disclosed to the defense everything we got. Okay. You disclosed everything you received from January 6th committee? Yes, the stuff we got from the January 6th committee, I directed my staff to disclose it to the defense. And the book reports that, you know, Cooney drove to the Capitol and at the last minute succeeded in collecting two hard. hard drives containing about 200 interview transcripts less than 24 hours before Republicans began

shutting down the committee's website. Is that something you have any recollection of? That level of specificity, I don't. I can't say that that's not accurate, but I don't recall that level of specificity. And do you know if the hard drives that you obtained contains video of the interviews that January 6th committee conducted? As I sit here right now, I don't recall one way or the other. If they were in there, we looked at them and we provided them to the defense, but I don't know one way or the other. And when it comes to deleting documents, you know, while the Republicans didn't do that, what I can tell you is that the January 6th committee files, when we were able to have access to them, did not include the videos that they recorded. And so the question is, you know, do you know, and I apologize from repeating this, but do you know if the special counsel's office, you know, took possession of the videos of the

interviews? Because we didn't get it. They were wrong by the time we had access to it. Yeah. As I sit here now, I don't know. What I recall is give us everything you can. Give us any evidence you can. And then we reviewed that evidence and disclosed it to the defense. what it included in terms of that level of specificity. I don't have that recollection right now. The videos that they used at the public hearings were obviously snippets, and they were cherry-picked. I don't really mean that in a pejorative way,

but they were selected to make the points they wanted to make. And, you know, if there was a defense attorney involved with proceeding, if there was an active minority involved with that proceeding, you know, we would have had a chance to point out that, you know, the videos are selectively edited and didn't have, you know, the full context. And you would agree as a prosecutor that if there is a video, you'd want the whole video, not just the snippet. Yeah, we asked for everything they would give us.

So we wanted whatever they were willing to give us. All right. the next debunked right-wing conspiracies are about election interference. As you know, Trump and Republicans claim that Jack Smith's investigation amounted to election interference, political retribution, and that's also part of their ridiculous criminal investigation into special counsel. He interfered in the elections. He didn't follow DOJ policy, and he interfered in the elections. Now, here, they're implying that the investigations into Trump moved too quickly and too aggressively. And Jack Smith went rogue and he did that to get them done before the election

when in fact the election wasn't a consideration at all, but rather the speed necessary for the public's right to a speedy trial. Let's listen. Getting back to the Robert Jackson you know, statement that I read this morning, you know, he concludes that a sense of A sensitiveness to fair play and sportsmanship is perhaps the best protection against the abuse of power, and the citizen safety lies in the prosecutor who tempers zeal with human kindness, who seeks truth, not victims, who serves the law and not factional purposes, and who approaches his task with humility. Do you think in hindsight that you exhibited the kindness in dealing with President Trump

that Robert Jackson evinces here? I think in our conducting both of these investigations, we did it consistent with the best traditions of the department and the principles that Justice Jackson was talking about there. So, yes, I do think in both cases we adhere to those principles. And is it also fair to say that you were, in fact, trying to get these cases wrapped up before the election in 2024? We were trying to move these cases expeditiously in our briefs. We cited to repeated Supreme Court precedent that states that the interest in a speedy trial, the right to a speedy trial isn't just the defendant's right. It's the public's right as well.

And given the gravity of these crimes and the public interest, it was our duty to move them forward as expeditiously as we thought fair and reasonable. So in hindsight, there's nothing about the aggressiveness of your schedule that you would have done differently? I thought the schedule was appropriate. Also, I don't know if you caught that. I can't believe they asked him if he thought he was too mean to Donald Trump. It's like, no, we followed the facts in the law. Now, this next clip debunks the Republican theory that Jack Smith interfered in the election when he filed his 165-page immunity brief.

This was his response to when the Supreme Court said the president enjoys immunity. He did a superseding indictment and filed a 165-page immunity brief with all of his evidence. That was before the election. Andy and I read that brief in full on the unjustified podcast. It's still available if you want to hear it. We did that when it was filed. And as it turns out, the government, Jack Smith, actually didn't object to releasing the evidence after the election. But the court disagreed.

So it wasn't his decision. further the Department of Justice policy about election interference about not doing anything within 60 days of an election first of all it's just a policy so he's not violating any law but also that's about overt investigatory steps like executing search warrants or indicting someone not filing an ordered brief in an already indicted case so check out this clip the 165 page brief that you filed the beginning of October did you ever was there a consideration of maybe filing it under seal, at least until the election was over? Well, obviously, do you have to go to the court, and all parties would have to agree, but certainly if all parties agreed, the judge would be amenable.

I feel like this came up in the status conference that we had. I can't recall. What I can recall, though, now that you're reminding me, is there was an issue, and this is referenced in our final report, where we filed our brief. they were given time to file their brief they wanted more time which would put their brief after the election we had our exhibits which were really the evidence you know that we were citing that evidence they made a motion that that should that that evidence the key facts should be filed under seal and they

before filing their motion usually the practice is to ask opposing counsel which a position about this. But they filed their motion before they could get our position. And so we contacted the court, and we said that we had no objection to that evidence being filed under seal if the court agreed. Now, the court ultimately did not agree. And so this is referencing a footnote in our report. I think that that is pretty direct evidence that we were not seeking to put the maximum amount of facts in the public record, that we were happy to have that be under seal. and even after the election if that's what the court agreed okay but you you could have you could have saw permission to to file that big brief under seal right i suppose we could have and again

this is where my memory is escaping me i feel like this issue was possibly discussed with the court and um i think the record of with any briefing on this or what the court said will be better than my memory about this okay did you think it was important did that evidence be in the public realm before the elections so you know people could make up their mind about about who they were going to vote for no I did not see it as our rule to provide evidence for people to make their voting decisions on yeah if I if I could just the final report on page 107 footnote 258 on the 17th of October mr. Trump filed a motion to delay public disclosure of our appendix to the brief, meaning the actual

evidence. Yeah, sure. It's 107. I'll let you get to it. 107, footnote 258. They filed a motion to delay the appendix, meaning the evidence, until after he filed his own appendix, which would have been November 14th, well after the election. Yeah. So that both appendices will be released simultaneously after the election. He filed that motion before obtaining our position. So we emailed the court's chambers, copying defense, informing the court that we did not object to that procedure. All right, everybody, I have tons more clips to share with you. But we need to take a quick break. So stick around.

We'll be right back. All right, welcome back. Continuing with Jack Smith swiftly and succinctly refuting right-wing conspiracies. There are so many of them, and I wanted to go over what I thought were the most important ones. Let's look at a couple clips that deal with misinformation about the search executed at Mar-a-Lago in the classified documents case. In this next exchange, Jack Smith defended Merrick Garland's decision to search Trump's residence. That was Merrick Garland's decision. And you'll hear at the end that they had just gone through the indictment, which they had.

they spent a lot of time going through that whole indictment bit by bit because he couldn't talk outside of the indictment and we'll get to the reasons why in a minute but I'm leaving that out because we've gone over that indictment on this show and on many other shows with a fine-toothed comb we all know what's in that indictment but watch this

we're going to enter into the record two exhibits I believe there'll be exhibits 14 and 15 Exhibit 13 will be a House Judiciary GOP tweet that says this is what happens in third world countries now the United States. Doesn't the FBI have better things to do than harass the former president? And this tweet is from August 8th of 2012.

and then exhibit 15 will be in August 8th, 2020 tweet from Speaker, Kevin McCarthy that says Attorney General Garland, preserve your documents and clear your calendar. What is your response to statements? And actually, I want to preface this by saying, like, I understand that you were not the special counsel when this search was conducted in office. August of 2022. But what is your response to statements made accusing the FBI of harassing Mr. Trump in the aftermath or after the FBI conducted as a court-authorized search of Mar-Lago?

I don't think those statements are accurate. Do you explain why you not believe they're accurate? The search of the Mar-a-Lago Social Club was conducted pursuant to a warrant. a search warrant as the Department of Justice and FBI does every day, continues to do every day. It was approved by a United States magistrate and in your prosecutorial experience, can you describe what types of factors a prosecutor would consider before seeking a court order to search someone's home or private residence? Well, most clearly you would need to have a factual support for that basis and need a reason to believe that evidence of a crime would be

recovered and probable cause to believe it would recover at the location in drastic the search based on the facts. That's kind of we just went through for the indictment of there's paragraph. We just went through the indictment. Is that correct? That's correct. And do you remember when Trump and his allies tried to get the whole case tossed out because some documents had ended up out of numerical order in the boxes during transit?

Now, Republicans asked about that. They harped on this for a very long time. And then they go on to imply that Jack Smith was stealing stuff that Trump wanted to put in his presidential library. Now, Smith's answer is pretty great here. And then the discussion turns into Republicans trying to allege that the documents were totally safe at Mara Lago to be stored there. And then finally, whether Jack Smith tried to remove Judge Cannon. That's all in the this clip. Check it out. Do you know if he was intending to save those materials for his presidential library? You mean the classified documents? The items in the box is all. Well, if he, if his defense were that he was intending to take classified documents that he had no authority to take and he did it intentionally because he wanted to, uh, a presidential library and keep those documents in the locations that we talked about today, that's a crime. No, my question was all the items in the boxes, the shirts and the, you know, the mementos,

were they being saved for a presidential library? To the extent you were able to develop that in the course of your investigation? You know, I mean, there were newspaper clippings in there. There were, I think, you know, different sorts of things that I wouldn't, wouldn't, to me, seem like the sort of things. that would be in a presidential library. I had, to be honest, I've never been to a presidential library. So, um, but if I were starting one, I don't think that's the sort of things I would put in it.

Okay, but you didn't develop any evidence during the course of your investigation that the materials were intended to, to be saved for a presidential library? I don't recall that. And I also want to be careful of not getting outside the Permanent. of these filings because I don't think we addressed that issue in the filings we're talking about. Okay. During the times relevant that we're discussing, Mar-a-Lago was protected by the Secret Service. Is that correct? That's correct. So to the extent an adversary you want to come in and steal some of these classified documents, they would have had to go

them through the Secret Service to get them, right? Well, as well, as well, as well, we allege in paragraph 13 of the indictment, the Secret Service provided protection services to Trump and his family after he left office, including at Marilago. But it was not responsible for the protection of boxes of their contents. And the indictment states that Trump did not inform the Secret Service. He was storing boxes of classified documents at Marilago, meaning they didn't know that they were protecting classified documents. But if Joe Q citizen had classified documents from their time serving in government and they brought it home to their basement and some foreign adversary was aware of that, it would be much easier for a foreign adversary to break into the Joe Q Publix basement and take those classified documents. If a foreign adversary wanted to go and get those documents out of Mar-a-Lago would have been a lot more difficult.

I mean, a person can't just walk into Mar-a-Lago and try to abscond with these materials, right? I would very much like to answer that question, but I cannot answer that question due to the final report. Was there an effort by your office? Did you consider seeking the removal of Judge Cannon? Again, I don't think that's in any public filing, and so I cannot address that, given the, the injunction whether you know the internal office discussions involve consideration of removing judge canon i mean that's not something you can talk about i don't think i can talk about things today again consistent with our discussion this morning if it's not in a public filing i haven't seen the final report in almost a year i'm not comfortable discussing issues like that um

because solely because of that issue okay i'm trying to be as consistent as i can about that. Okay. The book by the Washington Post reporters that we were referencing earlier reported that you considered, and by you, I mean, your office, your, collectively, the collective view, considered petitioning the removal of Judge Cannon, but the Solicitor General's office recommended against it because... And if you had gone to the Attorney General, that would have had to have been reported to, publicly reported, reported the Congress. Is that something you have a recollection of? Mr. Commissioner, sorry.

I just, on this point, I just want to make sure that we're in agreement that the Department of Justice has taken an expansive interpretation of Judge Cannon's order in its application to Mr. Smith, and that he's not permitted to disclose non-public information that may be contained. in volume two of the special counsel's reports. And I know you cited this book, but the email that we both received from the Department of Justice this morning said that this prohibition does not apply to information

that has been made publicly available through authorized means. And so if something was leaked to some reporters wrote a book about it, I would not consider that to be made publicly available through authorized means. Now, up next, I have a series of exchanges about the Republican theory that Jack Smith had weaponized his office to go after Donald Trump and Republicans. Listen to this exchange about why Smith only charged Trump and no one else in the January 6th case. Why didn't you charge any of those?

I'm sorry. Why didn't you charge any of those? As we stated in the final report, we analyzed the evidence against different co-conspirators. My staff determined that we did have evidence to charge people at a certain point in time. I had not made final determinations about that at the time that President Trump won re-election, meaning that our office was going to be closed down. So yeah, Republicans sitting there trying to say, oh, you only went after Trump. That's because you were focused on Trump and you wanted to interfere in the elections and it was political and you went rogue.

That's part of their whole theory here. And he just completely set that aside very calmly, very succinctly, and said, no, I was considering indicting others. We then had an election. But Trump was the central reason for this whole thing. So that's who I was investigating. there was so much evidence. I love it. And he's like, there was so much evidence against Trump. We had to streamline the case because we had so much evidence. And then here's a great clip where Representative Jasmine Crockett helps Jack Smith rebut the weaponization theories by exposing the actual

weaponization of Trump's Justice Department. Watch. The majority was asking you about why it is that you characterize your belief that there was guilt. as it relates to the indictment that you sought. As a trained prosecutor, typically, are you supposed to go after people that you don't believe are actually guilty? I'm trying to... There's a couple of negatives in that question.

They were trying to... You're not supposed to go after people who you believe are not guilty. Okay, thank you. In your experience of three... decades. Have you ever needed to seek the same indictment three times while being rejected? Never. Now, this next one is pretty great. A Jordan staffer tries to shoehorn in some old Republican election conspiracy theories about Pennsylvania, and Jack Smith just drops the hammer in his own

subtle but devastating way. Mr. Jordan wanted me. to point out that there were the discussion earlier, I think it was with Congresswoman Scanlan, talking about the Pennsylvania election, and I think you used the term that, you know, in the normal course of things, the, you know, things that happened in Pennsylvania, am I jogging your memory with this? I know we spoke about that. There was another series of questions. about this, so I do remember that, yeah. Okay. And we just wanted to point out for the record that, I mean, there was nothing normal about what happened in Pennsylvania during the, you know, the 2020 election.

I mean, the, you know, the state legislature who ordinarily is responsible for making, you know, the election law picking the time, place, and manner, and prescribing the blood-led lows in an election was, you know, basically usurped by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. And they changed all sorts of things in the 2020 election. You know, for example, they said that the election, instead of ending on, ordinarily would end on Tuesday, election day, was going to end on a Friday. The Supreme Court said that where signature verification was ordinarily required, that was the Pennsylvania state legislatures.

You know, that's how the statute set up, you know, in terms of administering elections. And the Supreme Court changed that and said that, you know, signature verification wasn't required. You know, the volume of absentee ballots was completely different than an ordinary election. There were over two million, you know, absentee ballots. And so, you know, we just wanted to point out, and I guess, ask you the question, were you aware of all these irregularities and disparities because of the, you know, because of the COVID and so forth? So many things had changed by the time I got to Election Day in Pennsylvania. What I can say is that some of the issues you raised are the sort of

issues that a campaign or someone who's a candidate can raise in the courts. And I believe a lot of these issues were raised in the courts. I think Donald Trump lost those litigation. All right. I've got two more clips of Jack Smith shutting down conspiracy theories. This one is a big conspiracy theory. And it really is hampering the current Justice Department's pursuit of the alleged pipe bomber that January 6th was actually an inside job. It was carried out by the feds, which Trump was in control of at the time. So this is a weird conspiracy theory. But it was carried out by the feds, the deep state within the FBI. And you can kind of hear how pained. this questioner is asking, knowing, ridiculous questions of this very serious man. Watch. Were you during the pendency of the investigation, were you aware that at the Capitol on January 6th, FBI had confidential human sources? I'm sure I probably was. I think there was public reporting on that. But did you know that also as a part of your work? I'm sure. Yeah.

and do you know how many there were as i sit here now i can't recall i know there was an office of inspector general report about this that there were no undercover officers there as had been reported but there were uh informants there some who had gone on their own And did your office oppose President Trump discovery requests for information relating to the confidential human sources? I would have to look at our filings on that. Okay. As we understand it, your office did oppose that and said any such information is not relevant to the charge conduct or as a valid defense in the case. And so consequently, you were not in favor of that.

Does that ring any professional recollection at all? I'm not disputing what you're saying. I haven't read the filing. What I recall is there was also a database of evidence from January 6th that the U.S. Attorney's Office would give access to, to, to, to, defendants who were involved in those cases, and we gave President Trump and his attorneys access to that. I'm not sure they ever accessed it, but I do recall that, and there may have been a filing like you talked about. Okay, and finally, this clip refers to the conspiracy theory that Trump

tried to use to discredit the entire classified documents investigation when they alleged that Jay Bratt had threatened Walt Nauta's attorney, Stanley Woodward, by insinuating that they would shut down his application for a judge ship if he didn't get his witness, Walt Nauta, to cooperate with the government. That is all explained here perfectly. Do you think it was inappropriate for Mr. Brat to make a suggestion to Mr. Woodward that, you know, he ought to cooperate? And if he does cooperate, if Mr. Ruaada chooses to cooperate, that that, you know, the implication

was that his application to be, you know, a judge will be looked on more favorably by the Democrats at the Justice Department. I don't think that happened, but I'm happy to share with you my perspective on this. Okay. And let me just say one thing if I may have. Sure. You know, these judges for the District of Columbia, I mean, the Justice Department weighs in. Is that not the case? I mean, the White House Counsel's office, you know, works to come up with the names they're going to submit for a nomination but the way the procedure works is the justice department you know does the vetting uh i don't think i knew that

until this issue came up which i'm again happy to explain so um with the district of columbia is particularly okay um so um very short time before this matter of days um this is right around the time we had given notice that we intended to move forward with an indictment in classified documents case of both Mr. Trump, President Trump, and Mr. Nata. As was my practice in cases like this, we gave Mr. Trump's attorneys an opportunity to come in and give me arguments as to why not to indict the case. And in the course of my life, I've heard those arguments and sometimes not move forward on cases. In this particular situation because my decision would ultimately be reviewed by the Attorney General who

could countermand it that meeting was with me and Bradley Weishheimer who was in the Justice Department mr. Trump's attorneys were there it was Jim Trustee Lindsey Halligan and there was a third attorney who I can't remember but I'm sure there's a record to you that was they gave reasons why they thought the case shouldn't be indicted. And for the first time, this is my recollection, they raised this issue that somehow Jay Brad has had threatened Stanley Woodard. Now, I was surprised by this because we had interacted, I hadn't, but my counsel had interacted with Mr. Woodard numerous times over my time as special counsel. He not only represented Walt Nata,

He represented other witnesses on the classified documents case. He represented, I believe, multiple people in the elections case. And so all this time passing, this has never been raised before. I went back to my office. That meeting was at the main justice building. I went back to my office. And very shortly afterwards, I informed my deputy, J.P. Cooney about this and Ray Holzer about this. They contacted Mr. Wardard to ask him about this.

I believe there are notes about that, notes of either J.P. Cooney or Ray Halcer, I'm not sure. My recollection of that, and again, they would remember this better, is that Mr. Woodard expressed surprise that anybody had raised this, and he said something to the effect of, well, I know how to make a complaint if I want to take that for what you will. That was the initial response. What day was this?

The time frame, generally. Like early June. So like the before the meeting on with the attorneys was in the days before we ultimately went forward with the case. I'm not sure how late this letter was after this, this when I came back to the office. Mr. I tasked Mr. Cooney and Mr. Hulser to speak to the people who were present for this meeting. None of them believed that Jay Bratt would threaten Mr. Woodard. It didn't make a lot of sense that a career prosecutor would, in a first meeting with the council that never met, threaten them. One of the things they asked about was this issue about the judicial

nominating thing. And Mr. Brad explained that he had not met Mr. Woodard before and not had a case with him, so he had looked him up. And when you pull up information about Mr. Woodard at the time, there's a page that comes up. And we attach to this in one of our motions that says, Stanley Woodard, judicial nominating commission. That page makes it look like he is on, at least if you look at it quickly, on the judicial nominating commission, not that he has a candidacy. Mr. Bratt explained to us that he was under the impression that Mr. Woodard was on the commission and raised it as sort of like icebreaker, like, I understand you're on this commission. Now, whether Mr. Woodard misunderstood that

or some other reason, here he says he drew an inference that he was making some sort of sort of threat. That didn't make a lot of sense to me, given all the interactions he'd had with our office. I think Mr. Woodard later started talking about a campaign against him, but he had meetings with people in my office repeatedly in positive ways. And finally, I also thought it was noteworthy that Mr. Woodard didn't bring up this issue for many months. And then the first time that he brings it up in this letter, he's doing it to seek strategic advantage because he didn't report it to OPR, didn't want it reported OPR, never asked that, and now he wants it not only reported to OPR, but he actually wants to delay the indictment of the case until that's concluded.

I will say that when we confronted, I say, my deputies spoke to Mr. Bratt about this, he self-reported it to OPR, which is pretty standard in these sort of situations. And so, and I would also just say this was some time ago. We did a filing on this that I believe is public, and that filing will reflect my best recollection of these things. And so I did not credit these allegations, but we made, we made sure they were referred to OPR. So Woodward never complained about it until things went south.

Brat thought Woodward was on the nominating commission because like me, I mean, who on earth would believe Stanley Woodward was up for a judicial nomination? So he thought he was on the nominating commission. It was like, oh, very cool, used it as an icebreaker. And Jay Bratt self-reported to OPR afterwards. So case closed. By the way, they grilled him on this for like 20 minutes.

And he just stone-faced was like, no, that's not how it was. That's not what happened. All right, everybody, we'll be back with testimony. The Republicans spent the most time on that, you know, their phone records, that their phone records were subpoenaed. They're very mad about this. And we'll talk about this after this break. Stick around. We'll be right back.

All right, everybody, welcome back. There's nothing like our elected members of Congress, providing. important oversight for themselves, the number one grievance from Republicans in the behind closed doors interview of Jack Smith wasn't anything that impacts the American people or government generally. They're mad that Jack Smith got their phone records and not even the content, just the toll records so they could see when calls were placed and to whom. And I'm not going to bore you with the dozens and dozens of pages of whining, Republicans whining about these toll records. But I do have a couple of clips that I thought were important that I wanted to share

that illustrate how Jack Smith handled these questions. Here's a clip that includes Jack Smith using Jim Jordan himself as an example. After you became the special counsel, that information obtained from the subpoena, you know, was available to the special counsel team. What did the team do with it after you became you were sworn in you mean when you say that information you're talking about the toll record subpoena for the chairman of the committee um well i can tell you that for example um there were um there was contact on for example january 6th um that again another example for you is mark meadows uh when he uh interviewed when we interviewed him um He referenced the fact that that afternoon, Chairman Jordan had been in contact with the White House.

And like Congressman McCarthy's contact with the White House, it was relevant because, and again, Meadows stated this, that these were supporters. They were credible people that the president relied on. And what I recall was Meadows stating that I've never seen Jim Jordan scared of any. anything. And the fact that we were in this different situation now where people were scared really made it clear that what was going on at the Capitol could not be mistaken for anything than what it was. And it goes back to that sort of information from someone who is a credible source to

the president proving that that actually happened and that there's actually a record of that call and exactly when it happened and what actions happened after that or didn't happen after that extremely probative to our case right but DOJ took mr. Jordan's phone records from January 2020 through November um you through January the subsequent I mean what what on earth could could the Justice Department want with with his phone records before times relevant sure and the breadth of that subpoena was before I was special counsel office and I wasn't involved in the deliberations about seeking that subpoena or the breadth of it. And so I can't speak to that.

Okay. I mean, anyone else remember Jim Jordan on TV being asked if he spoke to the president on January 6th? I talk to the president all the time. I don't even know what you talk about. Maybe. I don't know. I talk to him all the time.

I talk to him all the time. I talk to the president. I'm a congressman. It's not weird. I, da, da, blah, ba, ba, ba, oh my gosh. It was, it was hard to watch. But there it is, laid out for you by Jack Smith. Now, here's some related questioning.

about who should be held accountable for the terrible, terrible crime of subpoenaing members of Congress according to the law. You have to watch this. You know, to the extent members of Congress and senators are up in arms that this happened to them and they're seeking accountability, you know, who should be held accountable for answering these questions? Well, I think who should be accountable for this is Donald Trump. These records are people, in the case of the senators, Donald Trump directed his co-conspirators to call these people to further delay the proceedings.

He chose to do that. If Donald Trump had chosen to call a number of Democratic senators, we would have got told records for a number of Democratic senators. So responsibility for why these records, why we collected them, that lies with Donald Trump. Donald Trump should be held responsible. He chose them. he called them or he asked meadows to tell epstein to tell meadows to call them he did he chose those people not jack smith so maybe don't get on the phone and do crimes if you don't like it

when your when your toll records are subpoenaed and when jim jordan is tired of being embarrassed he sends in his staffers this happens a lot either that or he just doesn't think it's that important. And Jack Smith explains again why the toll records are legal and necessary, this time using Kevin McCarthy as an example. But do you know what happens with the records once they get it? The analysis, like how they do the analysis? What do you do with the records? That would not be in my area of expertise, how the analysis is actually conducted. And how does that get rolled back into the team? What do you mean? The teams work, the prosecutors work. So you subpoenaed, um, Speaker McCarthy's toll records after he became speaker.

And you sought records from November 2020 through January 8th, 2021. But what were you looking for with his records? Like what did you do with the information you obtained? Okay. So what the relevance of those records would be several examples. But his contacts with either co-conspirators, the president, or conduits of information to the president was relevant to our investigation. And an example I could give you is on January 6th, we had information from Mark Meadows, who was present for a call where Congressman McCarthy was asking for help. He was asking the president to come to his aid while the capital was being seized.

Getting the exact toll records for when that happened was relevant for our investigation, both to question other witnesses about, so we had an accurate timeline, and also to corroborate that the call happened in approximately the time witnesses said it happened. But it's pretty significant to subpoena the Speaker of the House's toll records, right? We followed department policy and we followed all legal requirements in getting those records. You know, to get the information you're looking for, nobody disputed the speaker and the president were having communications on January 6th. So one way you could have gotten that information is you could have asked the speaker's lawyer to look at his phone records and to give you the information you needed, right? Well, you say now that nobody is disputing.

But my experience in criminal investigations is that people often at trial dispute things that you never thought were going to be in dispute during the investigation. And so when I conduct a criminal investigation, I don't assume there will be no disputes. Having a record that is a hard record, but a time in the timeline that afternoon was particularly important because that violence started. The president refused to stop it. endangered the life of his vice president, then he's getting calls and not just not calls from from Democrats, not calls from people he doesn't know, calls from people he trusts, calls from people he relies on, and still refuses to come to the aid of the people at the Capitol. That's very important evidence for criminal intent in our case. Right, but you could have asked

Elliot Burke for that information, the Speaker's lawyer. You could have asked Elliot Burke to say, can you get us the Speaker's phone records for this time? And he probably would have said, of Of course, in avoiding a toll record subpoena. And your question? Why didn't you do that? We got these records in a manner that was consistent with the law and consistent with department policy. There was nothing improper about how we got these records.

All right. Next, I'd like to share a few exchanges about Jack Smith's strategies, both for the investigations themselves and some things that he had planned for trial and how to bring witnesses and which witnesses to bring. Here's an exchange with Jamie Raskin about why Jack Smith charged Trump with Title 18 U.S. Code Section 241, conspiracy against rights. A lot of folks were expecting him to be charged with inciting an insurrection or sedition. But Jack Smith went with Section 241 and he explains why. I served on the January 6th Select Committee, and we spent a lot of time looking through the criminal statutes that may have been implicated in the attack on the peace

transfer of power, the attempt to overthrow the election, and then the violent assault on the Capitol. And we, in our conclusions, cited a number of statutes, which ended up, I think, being part of your investigation, including conspiracy to obstruct. the federal proceeding, conspiracy to defraud the United States, false statements, and so on. But you added something which I think was very interesting, which was a conspiracy to violate voting rights, which is something that we haven't done. And I wonder if you would take a moment to expound on why you thought you had sufficient evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that there was a conspiracy to violate the voting rights to people.

Sure. The right to vote in a presidential election is one of the most sacred rights that American has. Americans have. And in this particular case, we had strong evidence that the defendants in this case sought to interfere with, obstruct, injure that right. We had evidence in just a couple examples where President Trump was asking local officials to find 11,000 votes. When you find 11,000 votes, you're diluting other people's votes. We had evidence that they were targeting certain states and particularly certain parts of certain states, generally urban parts of states, to have those votes thrown out with no factual basis whatsoever. I believe we cited this in our final report, but there's even statements of the co-conspirators in this

case, at least one I'm coming to mind now, you know, specifically saying we want to get rid of these votes. We want to subtract them. And diluting the vote count in that way, there's strong precedent for that being a violation of the statute that we charged. Now, next up is a fascinating exchange. This one really stood out to me as one of the more important exchanges in this testimony, because I constantly asked myself throughout the entirety of the Trump, you know, being here in politics, actually, not just the entirety of the investigation, but since he rolled down that golden escalator, I always wondered if they believe their own lies. Now, this clip starts with questions about which members of Congress Trump interacted with, and it ends with us learning

that neither Rudy Giuliani nor Trump himself believed their own election lies and that Jack Smith had proof of that. Check this out. So let's dig down a little bit of that. Let's start on January 6th. So I believe in the evening, did your investigation uncover or learn that Mr. Trump personally called members of Congress in the evening of January 6th? Yes. Do you remember who those members were?

I'd have to look at the records to be sure, but the best of my recollection, he was trying to get in touch directly himself with Senator Howley and Senator Haggerty. And then there were several senators who he directed Rudy Giuliani to get in touch with. And who were those senators that Mr. Trump directed Mr. Giuliani to get in contact with, to the best of your recollection? To the best of my recollection, and this comes from an email, or I think it was a text maybe,

Boris Epstein sent to Mark Meadows, and it basically said something to the effect of the president told the mayor to call these senators and they needed numbers. And what our investigation ultimately showed was they sent that text after they'd already started trying to call members and didn't think they had and ended up understanding that they didn't have the right phone numbers. In fact, the message that they left for Senator Lee, which he voluntarily provided to our office, that was meant for Senator Tuberville, I believe. And the message that he left for Senator Sullivan, I believe it was, was for Senator, the name's escaping me now, but it was another senator that he meant to call. We had also interviewed Boris Epstein before these subpoenas were issued. He corroborated that they were, in fact, trying to call senators. He dissembled and tried to imply that the president hadn't directed him to do it, even though there was a text message saying specifically that they had.

But he agreed that they tried to call these senators and that they had certain senators' numbers themselves and so they didn't need those numbers and that would be I believe it was Senator Cruz and possibly I think he said they possibly tried to call Senator Graham as well I want to touch on a point because it seems like the evidence you uncovered showed certain members of Congress including Republicans pushing back on this assertion about the big lie and I'm characterizing some of these claims about the election as the big lie is that is that okay if I if I use that term you can use whatever term you like oh I'm going to use the big lie so do you

Do you recall any evidence when you were talking to Mr. Giuliani that he truly believed all the voter fraud claims that he was putting out around the country? Our evidence was he did not. And in fact, when we interviewed him, he disavowed a number of the claims. He claimed they were mistakes or hyperbole, even the claim about Luby Freeman, where he, you know, basically destroyed this 12-1's life by claiming she was a vote scam. or President Trump did the same thing in a recorded call as Secretary of State. He disavowed things he'd said in that interview. All right. Next up is rep Zo Lofgren, who gets to the bottom of why Roger Stone and Steve Bannon

weren't charged. I had thought they should be immunized. I thought they should be questioned. But Jack Smith explains why he didn't go down that road. We attempted in the Senate's Committee to question Peter Navar. as well as Steve Bannon, and they were both prosecuted and spent time in jail, Roger Stone appeared but took the fifth. Were you able to provide, to get information from any of those three individuals,

and in case with Mr. Stone provide use of immunity so that he would have to testify? We did not. Why not? We pursued the investigative routes that we thought were the most fruitful. We pursued those that we thought were necessary to get a complete understanding of the scope of the conspiracy. And given the highly uncooperative nature of the individuals you talked about, I didn't think it would be fruitful to try to question them.

And the sort of information that they could provide us, in my view, was wasn't worth immunizing them for their own possible conduct. Next, Jack Smith lists some of Trump's knowingly false claims of election fraud. We know most of these from the indictment, if you read the indictments and the court filings, but it's something else to hear Jack Smith lay them out, one after the other, off the top of his head. His command of the facts are unimpeachable. Watch. So I want to start with how that level of distrust was created. In your report, you say, and this is a quote, the through line of all Mr. Trump's criminal efforts was deceit, knowingly false claims of fraud.

Can you generally describe some of these knowingly false claims of fraud that were spread after the 20-20 election? Sure. There's a number of them. And, you know, part of the explanation is why they're false. And so, you know, just off the top of my head, an example is there was, um, there was, um, He was on notice in this election that in Pennsylvania, for example, that he would be ahead in the vote count for a period of time. And then when the mail-in ballots were counted, his lead would dissipate. He chose to represent that phenomena that he'd been briefed on that was the normal course of an election that all sides knew that that's how it was going to be. he chose to present that as evidence of fraud.

And to people who are not maybe as informed as him or informed as his campaign managers who told them these things, that's the sort of thing that creates distrust. There were fraud claims in Michigan, Georgia, where he was specifically disabused by people he trusted, by political allies, by the people when he chose to call them who were best situated to know.

In Georgia, I'm thinking of the Secretary of State. He reflexively rejected those things and continued to state false things after he'd been told that repeatedly that they weren't true. And why was it important? It probably goes to the minds, but why was it important of all of these repeat statements from individuals that Donald Trump's claims were untrue? How did that play into your overall investigative findings? Well, I think the pattern and the depth of the pattern and the length of the pattern was

pretty damning evidence that he knew these things were false. He only brought fraud claims that involved states that he'd lost. He only approached people generally who had party allegiance to him. When he was told that a fraud claim wasn't true, he didn't stop making it. Another example I can give is that Sidney Powell, who's alleged as one of the co-conspirators, was part of his team at the beginning of this conspiracy. Shortly after, she began making statements that really nobody could credit, that were facially false.

And at some point, Giuliani made a statement that she wasn't on the legal team anymore. And Trump, at one point, was on a call, President Trump, where he, he based, if I recollected, right, he muted the call and said she was crazy. But then after that point, he continued to promote her fraud claims and lawsuits. He considered putting her as a special counsel, even though he'd admitted, you know, he used the word crazy and the statement she was making could by any reasonable person be viewed as true. And so I think that sort of like claims that were so outlandish and so just fantastic continuing to push those sort of claims after they've been disabused with strong evidence of our case. So Jack Smith had evidence that Trump knew and understood the red mirage, especially in Pennsylvania. Do you remember that?

The red mirage, meaning the initial vote would look very red. And then that would be chipped away slowly and his lead would dissipate as more mail-in votes. were counted. And Jack Smith had evidence that Trump knew about that. He knew about the red mirage, but claimed it was fraud anyhow and used that to break the law. So that's not part of your First Amendment rights. And we'll talk more about that later. He knew he was lying about election fraud. So the next logical question is whether Trump knew he actually lost the election. And I have to say, just another stellar example of Jack Smith's command of details and his recall watch. Did President Trump ever acknowledge that he knew that he had actually lost the election of President Biden?

Yeah, so this paragraph references different statements that he made in the presence of other people. One is that it doesn't matter if you won or lost the election, you still fight like hell. And then the other was, can you believe I lost to this effing guy? So. Referring to Joe Biden. So if this would have gone to a trial, and using your years of experience, being a prostitute and a trial attorney, how would you have argued this admission of Mr. Trump? Or how could you, what's a way you could have argued this admission from Mr. Trump to a jury?

Well, I think I saw these admissions as corroborative of the larger case. We would have presented what I viewed as very strong witnesses from each state to explain how the elections occurred in that. state and why the events of the outcomes were trustworthy and debunking various fraud claims that President Trump made. We would present, we would have presented the false claims that he made repeatedly interspersed with debunkings to him or other evidence that showed they weren't true and that they, that evidence got to him. This sort of evidence would cooperate that.

But it would sort of be the cherry on top, if you will. The evidence that I felt was most powerful was the evidence that came from people in his own party, who, as I said earlier, put country before party and were willing to tell the truth to him, even though it could be in trouble for them. I think witnesses like that, in my experience, would be very powerful witnesses in front of a jury, and this sort of evidence that you're pointing to here would be extra. but I think those other evidence, those other witnesses would be very strong proof. All right. Next up, we have Jack Smith thoughts on whether the Supreme Court's immunity ruling exonerated Trump. That's something else that a lot of right-wing influencers claimed as soon as the Supreme Court granted him immunity, that it somehow exonerated him from these crimes. But Smith shuts that down as well.

Mr. Smith, do you believe that the Supreme Court's decision on executive immunity constitutes an exoneration of President Trump's conduct in the months and weeks leading up to January 6th and January 6th? No. Would you just explain that for us why you don't see that as an exoneration for what he did? Sure. I understand the Supreme Court's decision. I just go back for a second. This was an issue we litigated in the district court. The district court agreed with us. We litigated it in the Court of Appeals. Court of Appeals agreed with us. We litigated in the Supreme Court. Supreme Court majority did not agree with us. They took a view of executive power that was more expansive than what we argued. disagreed with it for the reasons we set forth in our brief and the reasons stated by the dissent in the case, Justice Sotomayor, but it is the law of the land. And what my office sought to do and responding to that was to follow the law and see, do we still have a case? And I think the evidence that we had after that decision remained powerful. All right. And let's end

this block with Smith's thoughts on Trump pardoning the insurrectionists and why he thinks that's that is in contravention to to the rule of law watch so believe here um your report talks about the riders the crowd that violently attacked the law enforcement officers attempting to secure the building on page 25 of your report uh one of those rioters was daniel Rodriguez who multiple times plunged a stun gun into the neck of Officer Michael Phenone, causing Officer Phenon to suffer a heart attack and sustain other injuries. Mr. Rodriguez was subsequently sentenced to 12 years in prison after a federal judge called him a quote, one-man army of hate. Are you aware of President Trump pardoning Mr. Daniel Rodriguez? I am, not him specifically, but my understanding

is he pardoned all the people who violently assaulted police officers that day. So in pardoning all the people who assaulted police officers that day, another example is a Mr. Patrick McCahey, the third, who used a stolen police riot shield to crush Officer Daniel Hodges in a metal doorframe at the entrance of the Lower West Terrace Tunnel, and he left Officer Hodges trapped, bleeding, even crying for help from his fellow officers. Officer Hodges testified, and this is a quote, if I was there much longer being assaulted in such a way, I knew that there was very likely I wouldn't be able to maintain my consciousness. Judge Trevor McFadden described Mr. McKay as a, quote, poster child of all that was dangerous and appalling about January 6, stating that his actions were, quote, some of the most egregious crimes ever committed that day, end quote. Mr. McKay, he was sentenced to more than seven years in prison. Are you aware that Mr. McKay was one of those rioters who assaulted law enforcement on January 6

that were pardoned by President Donald Trump? Again, I don't know his specific name, but I know people like him who did things like he did were pardoned. And are you aware of the more than 140 police officers who were hindered by the pro-Trump mob on January 6th, the standing injuries such as cracked ribs, traumatic brain injuries, smashed spinal discs, and heart attacks as rioters used bats, flag pulls, chemical sprays, stolen police shields and batons to beat officers. Are you aware of those facts from that day? Very much so. Do you believe that parting individuals like this who committed crime against law enforcement

that day makes our country safer? It does not. My view. Can you explain why from your prosecutorial experience, prosecuting gangs, prosecuting violent crimes, why parting individuals who committed violence on January 6 doesn't make our country safer? Well, I don't think it's really my opinion. I think we've already seen some of the people who are pardoned go on to commit other serious crimes and I don't have much doubt that in the coming months and years we'll see more of that

people who would otherwise be incarcerated communities protected from them they're going to be their outing communities and my my view is that we will continue unfortunately to see people who are pardoned for committing violence on January 6th continuing to commit additional crimes that's my view you know I just I don't understand why you would pardon people who assaulted law enforcement. I think it sends lots of messages. One of the messages is to law enforcement, the people who defended the Capitol that day,

in my view, are heroes. And I think pardoning people who assaulted them is wrong. All right, everyone, I have a few more clips to share. Thanks for hanging in. Stick around. We'll be right back. All right, everybody. Welcome back. You may have noticed there's not a lot of testimony about the classified documents case. And there's a reason for that. Judge Cannon, Judge Eileen Cannon, still has a standing order blocking the release of Volume 2 of Jack Smith's final report. She said it to expire February 24th. The 11th Circuit said it to expire just this Friday, January 2nd. So we're keeping an eye on that. But he addressed that multiple times during the hearing. And he Here's how we answered an early question about it. Before I turn over to Mr. Drapaw, are you able to speak about volume two today?

I'm not. Can you explain what you can and cannot speak about with respect to volume two? Well, there is an order of Judge Cannon and injunction regarding volume two. I want to make very clear that I do not want to do anything to violate that injunction of that order. And so, given that I have not seen looked at volume two, since I see it, submitted it to the Attorney General almost a year ago. I do not have a exact recollection of what is in there and not. And so unless something is in a public filing or people can point me to a public filing or in I think the category that was mentioned in the letter that we got

this morning of publicly, I can't remember the terminology, but properly publicly released information, I do not want to, I want to be clear, I do not want to violate that order, and I don't want to do anything they could even be remotely construed as violating that order. Wait, so, I'm sorry, but DOJ did not let you review volume two of your report? It may well have been there, but I chose not to review it because I didn't want any implication whatsoever that I was somehow violating the order by looking at it, not being a member of the department now. And then Dan Goldman asked about volume two, but in the context of course, Trump yanking Jack Smith's security clearance, which Smith says is actually quite normal when you leave government. But the security clearance of his attorneys will come up in a later clip, but watch this. Can I go back to volume two just for a second? You said that the department

gave you access to volume two and we chose not to use it. That's correct. I believe so. I did not, given the injunction, want to look at that. And so I believe it was there, but I was looking at other things. I didn't look at that. Did they give you access to any classified information that was a part of your files? No. Did you or your attorneys have any discussions with the department about that? i don't recall do you still have your um security clearance no um when and how was that taken away

uh i think in the normal course of things when you leave government service you sign papers basically saying you don't have your security security clearance anymore that's i it's vague but that's my recollection of what happened in my conclusion of my service Do you know if your attorney's requested for you to have temporary security clearance so you could review your own files? I don't believe we did. And because you didn't look at the volume two that when they provided to you, you don't know whether or not classified material was provided to you in that volume?

Again, I don't want to speak about anything that could infer the content of volume two. And of course, don't forget, Kosh Patel comes up in volume two. That's why a lot of senators, at least on the Democratic side, wanted to get volume two while considering and providing advice and consent when Kosh Patel was nominated to be the FBI director because he's in volume two. So he's asked about that, and he comes up with, he comes up in the, Kosh Patel comes up in this exchange. So watch how Jack Smith handles this.

In the last hour with the minority, Mr. Smith, talked, we asked you about folks that were interviewed during the course of your January 6th investigation. I think we talked about Mr. Giuliani. We mentioned Mr. Meadows, we mentioned Vice President Pence. An individual that I failed to ask about was whether you interviewed Director Cash Patel as part of your investigation with the special counsel's office. I can't get into that because of the Judge Cannon's injunction. Okay. Did Director Patel testify before the grand jury as part of investigation? Same answer. You mind saying that just for the record to make it the record?

I cannot answer that question due to Judge Cannon's injunction. And did Dr. or Director Patel assert his right against self-incrimination as part of your investigation? Can't answer that question. In general, just using your years of experience as a prosecutor, are you aware of any prohibitions that would prevent Mr. Patel or Director Patel from disclosing his own testimony if you did testify with the special counsel's office? Just as a general matter, not specific to anything with this case. My understanding is the witnesses can disclose their own testimony. Thank you.

All right. Next, we have a couple of questions about why this testimony happened behind closed doors and not publicly, because there was a public back and forth with letters between Jim Jordan and Jack Smith's attorneys. So here's an exchange with Jared Moskowitz. Watch this. Did you see the comments about the president's chief staff talking about great. I did.

So everyone was fired. You're here on a deposition. Your lawyers lost their security things. It seems like it means not only a definition in West or it seems like this is exactly what Trump's chief of staff was talking about. No? I have no doubt that the President wants to seek retribution against me. I have no doubt that that's the intent.

I don't know. The exact book was he doesn't wake up thinking about it, but when there's an opportunity, he goes for it. I mean, it seems like an opportunity. You think the White House gave instructions to Chairman Gordon to set this definition? So I am eyes wide open that this president will seek retribute. retribution against me if he can. I know that. I don't, frankly, connect that with this hearing. I don't have any connection. I came here. I was after coming. No, you think there were zero

conversations between the White Alps and Chairman Horm? I don't know, but I'm here in good faith, and I was asked to come testify. So it's interesting that this took place behind closed doors. Jim Jordan denied it. I think we can tell by the content of the interview and the release in that the fact that they released it in the evening on New Year's Eve, that Jim Jordan was very glad that he didn't interview Jack Smith in public. And here's Congresswoman Jayapal asking about whether Smith would still be willing to testify publicly at some point in the future. And why were you willing to appear voluntarily in public? We conducted our investigation in a way that I'm proud of.

I'm particularly proud of the people I conducted the investigation with, and I wanted to speak for them. And is it generally the practice of special counsels to appear in a public hearing? I know you have a problem of questions for this, but I want to reiterate this. That is my general understanding, yes. And can you tell us again why the American, I understand you want to stick up for the prosecutors, the people that were part of the investigation. Can you tell us why it's important for the American people to hear direct? to hear directly from you about your investigations to what you discovered the process of

well as i said in the beginning of i think in my opening remarks uh there have been mischaracterizations about my work uh the um we did our work in the best traditions of the department and i know i keep coming back to this uh but the attacks that the mischaracterizations that most offend me are not just prosecutors but career FBI agents support staff in the department these are people who devoted their lives to public servants to being public servants they have not they're not self-promoters they're not people who like to go in front of the cameras and defend themselves and I feel that they have been vilified in a way that I think is awful well I think it drives

people away from public service yeah is it a form of witness and intimidation i i think i think it's even deeper than that i think you know when we get to um attacking the people who are the good guys um i just don't know where that goes i i counter to how i was raised and let me ask you even after this deposition today are you still willing to hear the public hearing before this committee and speak directly to the American people without you. Yes. Notice he's, Jack Smith is very adamant. This came up over and over again in his testimony. He's very adamant about standing up for the people, the career prosecutors and agents at the FBI and people who worked at the DOJ and prosecutors on his team, all of the people on his staff that

worked for him. He's very, very keen on defending them and their honor. That is quite a difference from people like Kosh Patel and Dan Bongino who never mentioned their employees, ever. They are just like, it's been the honor of a lifetime to work for Trump by, you know, because Dan Bongino's leaving. But they never mention them. They never stick up for them.

And Jack Smith is making sure to do that in this testimony. Like I said, it happened quite a bit. Now, earlier I said we'd get into the First Amendment arguments. And although Jack Smith laid all this out in detail in the indictments and one litigation in briefings over the fact that the First Amendment doesn't cover fraud and its well-established precedent, up to and including the Supreme Court. Republicans still can't get the hang of how the First Amendment works. Here is a Republican staffer trying to, first of all, normalize what Trump did on January 6th

and Jack Smith refuting it soundly. The president's statements that he believed the election was rife with fraud, those certainly are statements that are protected by the First Amendment, correct? Absolutely not. If they are made to target a lawful government function and they are made with knowing falsity. No, they're not. That was my point about fraud not being protected by the First Amendment. I mean, there's a long list of disputed elections.

I mean, the election of 1800, 1960, year 2000, where, candidates believe they were wronged by the, you know, because they lost. And there's a long history of candidates speaking out about they believe there's been fraud, there's been other, other, you know, problems with the integrity of the election process. And I think you would agree that those types of statements are sort of at the core of the First Amendment rights of a presidential candidate, right? There is no historical analog for what President Trump did in this case. As we said in the indictment, he was free to say that he thought he won the election.

He was even free to say falsely that he won the election. But what he was not free to do was violate federal law and use knowingly false statements about election fraud to target a lawful. government function that he was not allowed to do. And that differentiates this case from any passes. Now here's Jack Smith again discussing the very clear carve out for fraud, which, you know, again, citing case law off the top of his head. And he compares that with what Trump did. He compares what Trump did on January 6th to affinity fraud. He likes it to affinity fraud. this is a very good succinct argument. If there's anybody in your life who doesn't quite understand how fraud isn't covered

by the First Amendment, this is a great clip to play for them. Can you help now bring us full circle on how you analyze the First Amendment claims with the knowledge of the fraud that Mr. Trump was putting out the American public in 2020 and 2021? Sure. From a legal perspective, this is really quite clear. I think all of us want to make sure people's First Amendment rights are not abridged in a way that they shouldn't be. I think I certainly feel that way.

I'm sure everybody in this room feels that way. But there is a very clear carve out for fraud in our case law. Supreme Court, I think there's one case is the Stevens case talks about that and there are others. And so when you're committing a fraud, meaning you're not just saying something that's untrue, you're saying it knowing it's untrue or with reckless. disregard for the truth, that's not protected by the First Amendment. People commit crimes all the time using words. And when someone commits a fraud, an investment fraud, or someone

commits an affinity fraud, where you try to gain someone's trust, get them to trust you as a general matter, and then you rip them off, you defraud them. That's all words. But it's not protected by the First Amendment. And in a lot of ways, this case was an affinity fraud. The president had people who he had built up, who had built up trust in him, including people in his own party. And he prayed on that. Some people wouldn't do it. Others would. We're lucky that enough wouldn't, that the election would have helped. All right. And to wrap it up today, I wanted to point out some exchanges about the threats. that Jack Smith faces and his staff and his team and his lawyers and the retribution that he's

facing. He's facing a criminal investigation into his investigations. And these lines of questioning are important in the face of the onslaught of Republican questioning that happened over the past eight hours of testimony, implying that Jack Smith is the one weaponizing the Justice Department. And here in this clip, Jamie Raskin asked Jack Smith about the removal of career professionals by the Trump administration. Have you made any statements or are you willing to make any statements on the firing and removal of the Department of Justice prosecutors who worked on January 6th, on people at the FBI who were involved in the FBI investigation, or on the president's mass summary pardon of

1600 January 6th, the insuffinists and other people involved? Yeah, I think what has happened to career prosecutors and career FBI agents is awful. It's contrary to the world of law. It's contrary to who I think we are as a country. One of the agents on our case, he served his country overseas multiple times, war zones, of dedicated public servants wife's family dedicated public servants he got fired for doing his job two weeks after his wife died I went to the funeral I saw his family I saw a church full of public servants no reason a person like that should

have to go through that and I'm getting emotional I'm sorry about that but I just that's wrong. And in this next exchange, he lays out Trump's weaponization and retribution against Jack Smith pretty succinctly. Mr. Smith, you spoke earlier today about threats and attacks against made by Donald Trump against witnesses, prosecutors, judges with a challenge him, including threats against yourself. Do you remember that? Yes. Did President Trump target you personally, in quotes, truth, social? Yes. Are you aware, for example, that he called you a, quote, deranged, lunatic, unquote, quote, Trump hater, unquote, and, quote, psycho?

Yes. Do you recall that on October 15th this year, President Trump speaking to reporters standing in. next to the Attorney General and the Deputy Attorney General, said, quote, deranged Jack Smith, in my opinion, is a criminal, unquote. Then he also talked about investigating Visa Monaco, Andrew Wiseman, and Adam Schiff, saying, quote, I hope they're looking at all these people, and I'm allowed to find out. I'm in theory, the Chief Law Enforcement Officer, unquote. Yes, I'm aware of that.

And are you aware that President Trump posted on truth, on October 29th of this year, that, quote, these thugs should all be investigated and put in prison, a disgrace to humanity, deranged Jack Smith as a criminal, with three exclamation marks. That may be, I know there were several boasts like this. Okay.

Do you think those were a direction, potential directions to the Department of Justice to retaliate against you because of your role as special counsel in the investigation of him? Yes. You are joined by your counsel today from Covington and Burley. Is that right? Yes.

And the President Trump or the White House take any actions against your attorneys due to their relationship with you? Yes. And what action did they take? They filed an executive order against the law firm and sought to withdraw the security clearances of my attorney. I'm just going to offer this as Exhibit 20,

and this is exactly what you just talked about. So Exhibit 20 is an executive order issued by the White House on February 25, 2025. And it is entitled Suspension of Social. security clearances and evaluation of government contracts. And I just want to read into the record that this executive order says, I hereby direct the Attorney General and all other relevant heads

of executive departments and agencies to immediately take steps consistent with applicable law to suspend any active security clearances held by Peter Koski and also members, partners, and employees of Covington and Burling LLP who assisted former special counsel Jack Smith during his time as special counsel pending a review and determination of their roles or responsibilities, if any, in the weaponization of the judicial process. And the executive order also directs the Attorney General and heads of agencies to take such action as are necessary to terminate any engagement of Covington and Burling LLP

by any agency to the maximum extent permitted by law and consistent with a memorandum that shall be issued by the director of the Office of Management and Budget. Did I read that correctly? Yes. To your knowledge, is this executive order still in effect? I believe it is. What do you think was his purpose for issuing this executive order? to seek retribution against me. Is it also to harm your relationship with your attorney and to make it more difficult for lawyer to represent you?

I think it's to chill people from having an association with me. I just want to say for the record, we're still here, proud to represent Jackson Man. And I figured we'd end the show on my favorite moment. I think that this tiny little piece of testimony spoke volumes. And it came pretty early on in the testimony, too. And I think it sort of set the tone for how the rest of the testimony would go. Like I said, despite the numerous conspiracy theories that Republicans have about Jack Smith's investigation and what really happened, you know, what they say really happened on January 6th.

they seemed reticent to continue to parrot those ridiculous talking points in the face of Jack Smith because of his demeanor and the things that he was saying, his succinct answers, his recall of law and case citations. So I think that even though I want to end on this clip, even though it came early on in his testimony, but I think it's just a really good way. I think it's just a really good way to end this particular set of clips. Let's watch. And just to kind of finish up on this point, you yourself, I'm not sure if this was discussed by the majority,

but have you yourself been intimidated as a result of the actions that you in this case? I'm not going to be intimidated. I will not be intimidated. so good all right there was some testimony i didn't include with jim jordan trying desperately for a gotcha moment questioning jack smith about how he got his job he said he was offered the job and that's how he got it but that he did have a conversation with a friend of his when smith was still at the hague he called a friend of his because um you know he he had heard that his his friend had gotten a job at the justice department coming back out from private service. And so he called

his friend to congratulate him. And during that conversation, Smith testified that his friend asked him if he'd ever return to Maine Justice because he was at the Hague at the time prosecuting war crimes. And Jack Smith told the committee and told Jim Jordan that he told his friend that if the job was right, if he got the right offer, that he would come back to the Department of justice. And so it's actually my hope that in January of 2029, that someone calls Jack Smith from the president-elect's transition team and offers him the job of Attorney General of the United States. Yeah, some may say he's too entrenched in politics because he investigated Donald Trump to be considered. But I think this testimony demonstrates his apolitical nature,

his command of the facts and his details are astounding. His time at the Hague prosecuting war crimes is more than relevant. And his willingness to follow the facts in the law without fear or favor, I think make him an excellent candidate for the job. And I think it might be a job that he's willing to do. Also, his willingness to speak out, I think, is important. I think we were missing that in the Merrick Garland Department of Justice. There was just a lot of silence. So I'd like to think he would consider Attorney General as the right job for him to return to Maine Justice again. There were a lot of policies that he had to follow as special counsel, and I could tell he didn't always agree with them, but he was bound by them nonetheless. And I think he would have no problem reforming them, and I think we're going to need a reformer in that job come 2029, just my two cents. Now, thank you all so much for watching.

watching and listening to this special episode of Unjustified in partnership with the Midas Touch Network. Andy McCabe will be back next week. I'm Allison Gill. We'll see you then. Unjustified is written and executive produced by Alison Gill with additional research and analysis by Andrew McCabe. Sound design and editing is by Molly Hawke with art and web design by Joelle Reader at Moxie Design Studios. The theme music for Unjustified is written and performed by Ben Folds and the show is a proud member of the MSW Media Network, a collection of creator-owned independent podcast dedicated to news, politics, and justice. For more information, please visit MSWmedia.com.