Smith defends his Trump investigations at a public hearing, saying, ‘No one should be above the law’

WASHINGTON (AP) — Former Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith on Thursday defended his investigations of Donald Trump at a congressional hearing in which he insisted that he had acted without regard to politics and had no second thoughts about the criminal charges he brought.

Smith testified behind closed doors last month but returned to the House Judiciary Committee for a public hearing, his first since leaving the job last year. The hearing split along partisan lines as Republican lawmakers sought to undermine the former Justice Department official as Democrats hoped to elicit new and damaging testimony about Trump’s conduct.

“It was always about politics,” said Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, the Republican chairman of the House Judiciary Committee.

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

Smith told lawmakers that he stood behind his decision 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. He said that, as special counsel, he had “followed Justice Department policies, observed legal requirements and took actions based on the fact and the law.”

“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.”

“No one should be above the law in our country, and the law required that he be held to account. So that is what I did,” he said.

The hearing unfolded against the backdrop of an ongoing Trump administration retribution campaign targeting the investigators who scrutinized the Republican president. The Justice Department has fired lawyers and other employees who worked with Smith, and an independent watchdog agency responsible for enforcing a law against partisan political activity by federal employees said last summer that it had opened an investigation into him.