Former Special Counsel Jack Smith slammed President Donald Trump in his opening statement before a Senate panel on Tuesday, saying his investigation uncovered “proof beyond a reasonable doubt” that the commander in chief “engaged in serious crimes against our nation.”
Smith, who was tasked with investigating Trump in 2022, spoke out as he faced lawmakers from the Senate Judiciary Committee. “I stand by my decisions as special counsel, including my decision to bring charges against President Trump,” Smith said in his opening statement. “I made those decisions without regard to President Trump’s political association, activities, beliefs, or candidacy in the 2024 presidential election.”
He went on:
Our investigation developed proof beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump engaged in serious crimes against our nation. If asked whether to prosecute a former president today based on the same facts, I would do so regardless of whether that president was a Republican or a Democrat. The charges against President Trump were the result of the evidence. Grand juries in two separate districts reached this conclusion based on his actions as alleged in the indictments they returned. Rather than accept his defeat in the 2020 presidential election, President Trump engaged in a criminal scheme to overturn the results and prevent the lawful transfer of power.
And the crimes didn’t stop there, according to Smith.
“After leaving office in January of 2021, President Trump illegally kept classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago social club and repeatedly tried to obstruct justice to conceal his continued retention of those documents,” he said.
Smith added that Trump kept “highly sensitive national security information” in a bathroom and ballroom in an event space.
But Smith’s evidence-gathering has been a topic of controversy among Republicans, who have fumed about investigators accessing text messages from members of Congress and Trump’s inner circle as part of his investigation.
“This is a blatant abuse of power, and exactly what our Founders warned about,” Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) said in July.
Trump himself threatened to slap Smith with a criminal indictment in a January Truth Social rant.
Smith said he’s well aware of those threats, but he remains “confident that the rule of law will endure because so many continue to uphold it faithfully.”….
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