WASHINGTON — Former special counsel Jack Smith cut a forlorn figure Wednesday as he arrived on Capitol Hill for a deposition with a House committee investigating his prosecutions of President Trump.
The unsmiling Smith, who resigned days before Trump returned to the White House, was expected to face tough questions from the House Judiciary Committee about the cases he brought against the once and future president for allegedly hoarding classified documents and seeking to overturn the 2020 election.
The former International Criminal Court prosecutor is also expected to explain his and the Biden Department of Justice’s push for a search warrant to be executed at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence in August 2022 — over the objections of FBI officials.
And the ex-special counsel will almost certainly be grilled in the closed-door deposition about his decision to secretly subpoena Republican lawmakers’ phone logs in connection with the latter case.
Smith maintained in an exit report on his prosecutions that “but for Mr. Trump’s election and imminent return to the presidency, the office assessed that the admissible evidence was sufficient to obtain and sustain a conviction at trial.”
The classified documents case had been thrown out in July 2024, when South Florida US District Judge Aileen Cannon ruled that Smith had been improperly appointed as special counsel without congressional approval.
Republicans in both chambers of Congress have been demanding Smith’s testimony for months, but he only appeared in response to a subpoena from House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio).
The former special counsel indicated that he was open to appearing for a public hearing before the subpoena was issued.
Closed-door deposition afford lawmakers more time for follow-up questions, with members of each party being given more than just the five minutes typical of the public format — without the prospect of grandstanding for the cameras.
The FBI’s Arctic Frost probe quietly seized phone metadata from at least 10 GOP members of Congress and fired off subpoenas to hundreds more Republican individuals and entities.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), who first released DOJ records revealing the extent of the investigation into sitting lawmakers, described it as a “fishing expedition” that targeted the “entire Republican political apparatus.”
