Smith defends his Trump investigations at a House hearing. 'No one should be above the law,' he says

“It was always about politics,” said Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, the committee's Republican chairman.

“Maybe for them,” retorted Rep. Jamie Raskin, the panel’s top Democrat, during his own opening statement. “But, for us, it’s all about the rule of law.”

The hearing was on the mind of Trump himself as he traveled back from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, with the president posting on his Truth Social account that Smith was being “DECIMATED before Congress" — presumably reference to the Republican attacks he faced. Trump said Smith had “destroyed many lives under the guise of legitimacy.”

Smith told lawmakers that he stood behind his decisions as special counsel to bring charges against Trump in separate cases that accused the Republican of conspiring to overturn the 2020 presidential election after he lost to Democrat Joe Biden and hoarding classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, after he left the White House.

“Our investigation developed proof beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump engaged in criminal activity,” Smith said. “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."

Republicans and Smith spar over phone records

Republicans from the outset sought to portray Smith as an overly aggressive, hard-charging prosecutor who had to be “reined in” by higher-ups and the courts as he investigated Trump. They also seized on revelations that the Smith team had collected and analyzed phone records of more than a half-dozen Republican lawmakers who were in contact with Trump on Jan. 6, 2021, as his supporters stormed the Capitol in a bid to halt the certification of his 2020 election loss.

The records revealed the length and time of the calls but not the content of the communications, but Rep. Brandon Gill, a Texas Republican, said the episode showed how Smith had “walked all over the Constitution.”

“My office didn’t spy on anyone,” Smith said, explaining that collecting phone records is a common prosecutorial tactic and necessary in this instance to help prosecutors understand the scope of the conspiracy.

Smith describes a wide-ranging conspiracy on 2020

Under questioning, Smith described what he said was a wide-ranging conspiracy to overturn the results of the election that Trump lost to Democrat Joe Biden and alleged how the Republican refused to listen to advisers who told him that the contest had in fact not been stolen. After he was charged, Smith said, Trump tried to silence and intimidate witnesses.

Smith said one reason he felt confident in the strength of the case that prosecutors had prepared to take to trial was the extent to which it relied on Republican supporters of Trump.

"Some of the most powerful witnesses were witnesses who, in fact, were fellow Republicans who had voted for Donald Trump, who had campaigned for him and who wanted him to win the election,” Smith said.

The hearing unfolded against the backdrop of an ongoing Trump administration retribution campaign targeting the investigators who scrutinized the Republican president and amid mounting alarm that the Justice Department's institutional independence is eroding under the sway of the president.

In a nod to those concerns, Smith said: "I believe that if we don’t call people to account when they commit crimes in this context, it can endanger our election process, it can endanger election workers and, ultimately, our democracy.”

Smith was appointed in 2022 by Biden's Justice Department to oversee investigations into Trump, who has denied any wrongdoing. Both investigations produced indictments against Trump, but the cases were abandoned by Smith and his team after Trump won back the White House because of longstanding Justice Department legal opinions that say sitting presidents cannot be indicted.

GOP says Smith wanted to wreck Trump's White House bid

Republicans for their part repeatedly denounced Smith, with Rep. Kevin Kiley of California accusing him of seeking “maximum litigation advantage at every turn” and “circumventing constitutional limitations to the point that you had to be reined in again and again throughout the process.”

Another Republican lawmaker, Rep. Ben Cline of Virginia, challenged Smith on his efforts to bar Trump from making incendiary comments about witnesses. Smith said the order was necessary because of Trump's efforts to intimidate witness, but Cline asserted that it was meant to silence Trump in the heat of the presidential campaign.

And Jordan, the committee chairman, advanced a frequent Trump talking point that the investigation was driven by a desire to derail Trump's candidacy.

“We should never forget what took place, what they did to the guy we the people elected twice," Jordan said.

Smith vigorously rejected those suggestions and said the evidence placed Trump’s actions squarely at the heart of a criminal conspiracy to undo the 2020 election.

“The evidence here made clear that President Trump was by a large measure the most culpable and most responsible person in this conspiracy,” Smith said. “These crimes were committed for his benefit. The attack that happened at the Capitol, part of this case, does not happen without him. The other co-conspirators were doing this for his benefit.”

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Associated Press writer Joey Cappelletti in Washington contributed to this report.

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Follow the AP's coverage for former special counsel Jack Smith at https://apnews.com/hub/jack-smith.