Jack Smith, the former Special Counsel at the Department of Justice (DOJ) testified before the House Judiciary Committee in a long-awaited public hearing, and Rep. Darrell Issa (R., Calif.) forced the Trump foe to admit that he withheld critical information to target President Donald Trump and other Republicans.
“You spied on the Speaker of the House and the Senators and so on, and informed no one, and in fact put on a gag order, so they could not discover it,” Issa told Smith during the contentious hearing, with a list of Republicans who were on the “Biden DOJ Enemies List” behind him that was held up by Issa’s Legislative Director, Giulia DiGuglielmo.
Issa’s questioning went “off the rails” in the words of Forbes when Rep. Jamie Raskin (D., Md.), the ranking member on the Judiciary Committee, accused him of not giving Smith sufficient time to respond to his line of questioning. “Let me finish this,” Issa told Raskin. “The amazing thing here today is that we have…the evidence that an Article I representative on the president withheld” key information. “I yield back in disgust of this witness,” he said, with Raskin shouting objections over him.
Some of Smith’s moves during his prosecution of Trump were criticized by Republicans as being a departure from precedent that others in his position had done; they argued that he asserted guilt without a jury verdict, violating a key part of the American legal system.
Once instance Republicans honed in on was how Smith sought then-Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s (R., Calif.) private toll records to corroborate evidence his office already possessed. One piece of prior testimony by Smith that Republicans had no objection to was how he discredited Cassidy Hutchinson’s testimony to the January 6th Select Committee; he noted that what she said was unreliable and contradicted by other witnesses who had better knowledge of the events.
The hearing itself had no shortage of drama aside from Issa’s questions themselves. At one point, Michael Fanone — a law enforcement officer who was present at the Capitol on January 6th, 2021 — was seen giving Republicans on the Judiciary Committee the middle finger; Fanone separately almost came to blows with a member of the audience.
Following the hearing, Issa told the Washington Reporter that he “was proud to stand with Chairman Jordan and my Judiciary colleagues in exposing the truth about Jack Smith and the Biden DOJ, but it is history that will judge them even more harshly. Jack Smith may have no regrets, but the country is now aware of his shameful targeting of the Biden White House’s Republican enemies list and clear attempt to tamper with future elections by trying to stop President Trump from seeking the support of the American people.”
Issa, who called Smith a “a rogue prosecutor who twisted the law, targeted political opponents, secretly got the phone records of Congressional Republicans, and tried to send President Trump to prison,” added elsewhere that “this was the worst kind of lawfare, a clear abuse of power, and his own attempt to nullify future elections by preventing Donald Trump from serving again as president. I asked him directly, and he admitted today that he intentionally withheld key information from a court to gain subpoenas so he could block innocent people from ever learning he was tracking and targeting them.”
With the benefit of hindsight, Issa said that his “disgust” at Smith was, if anything, “a understatement.”
“The mistakes, mendacity, and pure partisanship Jack Smith demonstrated as special counsel represent a permanent black eye to the disgraceful legacy of Joe Biden’s Department of Justice, and, hopefully, a closed chapter I hope this country never experiences again.”
