Jack Smith is “not afraid” of Donald Trump, whom he unsuccessfully tried to take to trial throughout the 2024 marketing campaign, his legal team instructed NCS Wednesday.
The former particular counsel has spoken to the House Judiciary Committee earlier than, in non-public, however on Thursday the cameras can be on, and his team is ready for members of congress to have interaction within the political theater that comes with that. Long speeches, they mentioned, are anticipated.
Smith’s position — wherein he introduced two felony indictments towards a president — was unprecedented. His public testimony is anticipated to be main and flashy second, as Trump has repeatedly referred to as for Smith to be criminally prosecuted. Smith must stroll a tightrope to keep away from violating court docket secrecy guidelines across the circumstances and offering Congress fulsome solutions which are prone to be carefully scrutinized for accuracy.
Smith’s December 17 testimony earlier than the House Judiciary Committee lasted greater than eight hours. Lawmakers grilled him over the 2 felony investigations into Trump, one probing the mishandling and retention of categorized paperwork and a second inquiry into his position in making an attempt to overturn the 2020 election.
Both circumstances Trump confronted from the Smith particular counsel probe are actually dismissed. One ended as a result of Trump gained the 2024 presidential election, and the opposite was dismissed by a Trump-appointed choose who believed Smith’s workplace wasn’t correctly backed by Congress. That choose, Aileen Cannon in South Florida’s federal court docket, has stored half of Smith’s last report underneath seal, primarily blocking Smith’s capacity to debate intimately what his investigation discovered concerning the allegations that Trump unlawfully stored bins of categorized paperwork in unsecured room at Mar-a-Lago starting in 2020.
While information shops together with NCS have revealed a lot about that investigation — corresponding to the audio recording of Trump discussing conserving a categorized report in a gathering with employees, and what a key witness who labored for Trump’s Florida resort noticed and instructed Smith’s team — Smith is prone to decline to explain way more than what was specified within the June 2023 indictment of Trump and two of his workers.
Smith, a profession prosecutor who had labored in each Republican and Democratic administrations, will emphasize in his testimony his three a long time of expertise and that he’d prosecute any former presidents on the identical info at the moment, in line with his team.
As he did throughout the closed-door testimony, he is additionally anticipated to once more clarify why he believes the investigation bore proof past an inexpensive doubt that Trump engaged in felony exercise.
At least three prosecutors from Smith’s particular counsel’s workplace have spoken to lawmakers up to now few months. That contains Thomas Windom, who led in court docket the obstruction case towards Trump associated to the January 6, 2021 US Capitol riot; Jay Bratt, who led the prosecution of Trump over mishandling categorized information and obstruction of justice following his first time period in workplace; and JP Cooney, Smith’s deputy within the particular counsel’s workplace.
The key prosecutors on the particular counsel’s team — together with Windom, Bratt and Smith — are not works for the Justice Department.
Republicans have made a felony referral to the Justice Department on Windom over the best way he answered some questions. And Bratt declined to reply questions in his deposition and as a substitute asserted his Fifth Amendment protections towards self-incrimination.
Smith had the choice to take the fifth as effectively, his legal team instructed NCS, regardless that they imagine he and the particular counsel’s workplace violated no legal guidelines of their work.
But Smith is welcoming the chance to explain his work within the Justice Department, his team mentioned.