Former special counsel Jack Smith, who charged President Donald Trump with crimes in Florida and Washington, D.C., is testifying in public before the House Judiciary Committee on Thursday.
Smith was tasked with investigating Trump’s alleged interference in the 2020 election and alleged mishandling of classified documents — and his alleged refusal to turn them back over to the government.
Former Special Counsel Jack Smith arrives to testify before a House Judiciary Committee hearing about his criminal investigation President Donald Trump, on Capitol Hill in Washington, January 22, 2026.
Kylie Cooper/Reuters
Smith asked the judge overseeing the election interference case to dismiss it after Trump’s election in 2024 due to a long-standing Justice Department policy that bars the prosecution of a sitting president. And he filed a motion to dismiss the appeal of the classified documents case for the same reason.
Trump has denied wrongdoing in both cases.
His Thursday appearance marks Smith’s second time before the committee — he appeared behind closed doors last month. It is customary for former special counsels to appear before Congress publicly to discuss their findings.
Chairman Jim Jordan told ABC News that the committee always intended to have Smith appear in public.
In this Dec. 17, 2025, file photo, former Department of Justice Special Counsel Jack Smith departs at the end of a Republican-led deposition before the House Judiciary Committee as part of its oversight into DOJ investigations into President Donald Trump, on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C.
J. Scott Applewhite/AP, FILE
“He’ll be there in a public setting so the country can see that this was no different than all the other lawfare weaponization of government going after President Trump,” Jordan said. “Jack Smith is sort of the culmination of that whole effort to stop President Trump from getting to the White House. But thank goodness it didn’t work and the American people saw through it.”
Smith, according to his team, is voluntarily appearing before the committee and will utilize his experience as a nonpartisan prosecutor.
He will also say that the facts of Trump’s cases would lead to a prosecution of anyone, whether they were a Democrat or Republican, his team said.
In his closed-door testimony, Smith defended his decision to twice bring charges against Trump — telling lawmakers his team “had proof beyond reasonable doubt in both cases” that Trump was guilty of the charges in the 2020 election interference and classified documents cases, according to a transcript of the hearing.
And Smith fervently denied that there was any political influence behind his decision — contrary to allegations of Republicans on the Judiciary Committee, who requested the testimony — such as pressure from then-President Joe Biden or then-Attorney General Merrick Garland, the transcripts shows.
“No,” Smith responded continuously to those allegations, according to the transcript.
Just over an hour before his testimony on Dec. 17, the Department of Justice sent an email to Smith’s lawyers preventing him from discussing the classified documents case, according to the 255-page transcript of the deposition, released last year by the Judiciary Committee along with a video of the hearing.
This meant Smith was unable to answer most questions on that case and the deposition — intended to ask questions about the alleged weaponization of the DOJ against Trump and his allies — mainly focused on the 2020 election case instead.
His team also said Smith will comply with Judge Aileen Cannon’s order that blocked the release of the second volume of his report.
Smith’s counsel said the DOJ also refused to send a lawyer to advise Smith on whether his statements were in line with their determination of what he could or could not say regarding the cases, according to the deposition. Smith did say, however, that Trump “tried to obstruct justice” in the classified documents investigation “to conceal his continued retention of those documents.