Jack Smith faces closed-door grilling by GOP lawmakers over Trump probes

Dave Goldiner, New York Daily News on Dec 17, 2025

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Former special counsel Jack Smith faced harsh grilling Wednesday by congressional Republicans behind closed doors about his historic investigations into President Donald Trump.

The deposition was held in private after GOP House Judiciary Committee lawmakers rejected Smith’s request to answer questions in public as part of their probe into his criminal cases against Trump along with some of his allies, employees and White House officials from his first term.

Trump himself has claimed he wanted to see Smith testify in public, claiming “there’s no way he can answer the questions.”

Smith, a seasoned nonpartisan public corruption prosecutor, was expected to discuss both of his probes of Trump and will likely seek to correct what he regards as mischaracterizations of his work from Trump and his Republicans allies.

He does not plan to answer questions that call for grand jury materials, which are restricted by law. He will seek to explain his team’s use of cellphone records belonging to some Republican lawmakers tied to the election interference plot, which many Republicans have objected to.

Smith was appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland to launch independent probes of Trump in 2022.

One of Smith’s cases accused Trump of illegally taking a trove of classified documents to his private Florida resort home when he left the White House after his first term and defying government efforts to retrieve them.

The second involved Trump’s sprawling scheme to cling to power despite losing the 2020 election to former President Joe Biden, an effort that culminated in the violent attack on the Capitol by MAGA loyalists on Jan. 6, 2021.

Smith won indictments in both cases, marking the first times in American history that a former president was charged with crimes.

The documents case was derailed when federal Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee, ruled Smith was improperly appointed and an appeal of that ruling was dropped.

Smith was preparing for a trial in the election interference case when Trump won reelection in November 2024. He had to abandon the case as Trump prepared to return to the White House, citing Justice Department legal opinions that say a sitting president cannot be prosecuted.

Trump has threatened to prosecute Smith for unspecified crimes, although legal experts mostly discount that possibility. The president pardoned many of the alleged co-conspirators in the election interference case, including ex-Mayor Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s onetime personal lawyer.