WASHINGTON ― Jack Smith has no regrets about pushing criminal charges against President Donald Trump, the former special counsel told lawmakers on Thursday.
“President Trump was charged because the evidence established that he willfully broke the law, the very laws that he took an oath to uphold,” Smith said in his opening statement before the House Judiciary Committee.
Smith secured two grand jury indictments against Trump for his schemes to overturn the 2020 presidential election result and his hoarding of classified documents after the end of his first term as president.
Since the Justice Department has a policy against prosecuting a sitting president, the cases went away after Trump returned to the White House, and Smith never had a chance to take Trump to trial. Thursday’s hearing is Smith’s first chance to defend his work in public ― and to square off against some of the Republicans who’ve spent years vilifying him.
“Democrats have been going after President Trump for a decade, and the country should never, ever forget what they did,” House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) said in his opening statement, which claimed Smith used underhanded prosecutorial means in a purely political quest to keep Trump from getting back into the White House.
