Jack Smith to testify in Home over Trump investigations : NPR

[ad_1] <img src="https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims3/default/strip/false/crop/7052x4703+0+0/resize/1100/quality/50/format/jpeg/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F40%2F5e%2F79b36b4145d68fd55c75e18602f0%2Fgettyimages-2252376477.jpg" data-template="https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims3/default/strip/false/crop/7052x4703+0+0/resize/{width}/quality/{quality}/format/{format}/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F40%2F5e%2F79b36b4145d68fd55c75e18602f0%2Fgettyimages-2252376477.jpg" class="img" alt="A bearded man wearing a suit approaches an open doorway with a U.S. flag to the side." fetchpriority="high"/> Former particular counsel Jack Smith arrives to testify throughout a closed-door deposition earlier than the Home Judiciary Committee on Dec. 17, 2025, in Washington, D.C. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Pictures cover caption

toggle caption

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Pictures Former particular counsel Jack Smith has been itching to speak about his investigations into President Trump.

He'll get that probability on Thursday on Capitol Hill, with one huge caveat: Part of Smith's report that targeted on the president's mishandling of categorised supplies stays below wraps.

Smith's look earlier than the Home Judiciary Committee marks the primary open testimony about his work. He presided over two federal felony indictments of Trump. Neither of these instances reached a jury earlier than Trump received the election and returned to the White Home final yr.

Republican leaders of the panel have portrayed Smith as partisan.

However in a videotaped deposition, Smith stated the president had solely himself in charge, for costs he tried to overturn the desire of voters in 2020.

"The proof right here made clear that President Trump was by a big measure essentially the most culpable and most accountable particular person on this conspiracy," Smith stated within the deposition, which congressional Republicans launched on New 12 months's Eve. "These crimes have been dedicated for his profit."

Smith stated the violent assault on the U.S. Capitol, which injured 140 regulation enforcement officers, wouldn't have occurred, aside from Trump.

"Nobody must be above the regulation in our nation, and the regulation required that he be held to account," based on a replica of Smith's opening assertion he intends to ship to Congress on Thursday. "So that's what I did."

He is been wanting to defend the work of prosecutors and FBI brokers who labored on the investigations of the president. Most of these folks have been fired after Trump returned to energy.

The president highlighted these personnel strikes as an accomplishment at a information convention this week.

"Ended Joe Biden's weaponization of our authorities and eliminated his handpicked radical left Marxist prosecutors from the Division of Justice, like deranged Jack Sick Smith," President Trump stated. "He is a sick son of a bitch."

Trump has promised at completely different instances to launch a felony investigation into Jack Smith and even throw him in a foreign country.

Smith has stated he has little question the president desires to hunt retribution in opposition to him.

And one space the place he'll tread fastidiously in Congress on Thursday is the investigation into categorised paperwork the FBI present in a ballroom, a rest room, and an workplace at Trump's Florida resort. A second quantity of Smith's remaining report that issues that episode has been blocked from launch by Choose Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee who oversaw the case, however media organizations and nonprofit teams have pushed to launch it.

Trump's private lawyer made a contemporary plea this week to maintain these findings secret. The president argues that Smith's report incorporates grand jury and privileged supplies that might damage Trump's constitutional and privateness rights if launched.