{"id":194024,"date":"2025-12-18T09:56:21","date_gmt":"2025-12-18T09:56:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/jack-smith-tells-congress-he-could-prove-trump-engaged-in-a-criminal-scheme-to-overturn-2020-election-nbc-news\/"},"modified":"2025-12-18T09:56:21","modified_gmt":"2025-12-18T09:56:21","slug":"jack-smith-tells-congress-he-could-prove-trump-engaged-in-a-criminal-scheme-to-overturn-2020-election-nbc-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/jack-smith-tells-congress-he-could-prove-trump-engaged-in-a-criminal-scheme-to-overturn-2020-election-nbc-news\/","title":{"rendered":"Jack Smith tells Congress he could prove Trump engaged in a 'criminal scheme' to overturn 2020 election – NBC News"},"content":{"rendered":"

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WASHINGTON \u2014 Former special counsel Jack Smith told a congressional committee Wednesday that his team found “proof beyond a reasonable doubt\u201d that President Donald Trump engaged in a \u201ccriminal scheme\u201d to overturn the results of the 2020 election<\/a>, according to parts of his opening statement obtained by NBC News.
Trump also \u201crepeatedly tried to obstruct justice\u201d to keep secret his retention of classified documents found during an FBI search of his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, Smith told members of the House Judiciary Committee at a closed-door hearing.
Smith said his team turned up \u201cpowerful evidence that showed Trump willfully retained highly classified documents after he left office in Jan. 2021, storing them at his social club, including in a bathroom and a ballroom where events and gatherings took place.\u201d
House Oversight Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, subpoenaed Smith to testify<\/a> as part of Republican efforts to investigate the special counsel’s office. Smith’s investigations led to two indictments of Trump: in the classified documents case and in the 2020 election interference case. Trump-appointed U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon dismissed the classified documents case in July 2024<\/a>, and a separate judge agreed<\/a> to drop the 2020 case in November 2024 after Trump won re-election.
Trump has repeatedly <\/a>called for Smith to be prosecuted.
Facing a renewed wave of Republican attacks on his investigations into Trump, Smith was expected to try to use the hearing to correct what his team has described as mischaracterizations about the special counsel investigation.
Smith had wanted to testify in a public setting, but House Republicans refused to accommodate his request.
After the hearing Wednesday, House Judiciary Committee ranking member Jamie Raskin, D-Md., joked that Jordan \u201cmade an excellent decision in not allowing Jack Smith to testify publicly, because had he done so, it would have been absolutely devastating to the president and all the president\u2019s men involved in the insurrectionary activities of Jan. 6.\u201d
Lanny Breuer, Smith\u2019s attorney, told reporters Wednesday that his client \u201cis showing tremendous courage in light of the remarkable and unprecedented retribution campaign against him by this administration and this White House.\u201d
Pushing back against criticism of his team’s decision to obtain and analyze the phone call records of <\/a>nine congressional Republicans, Smith told members of the committee that those records \u201cwere lawfully subpoenaed and were relevant to complete a comprehensive\u201d investigation.
\u201cJanuary 6 was an attack on the structure of our democracy in which over 100 heroic law enforcement officers were assaulted. Over 160 individuals later pled guilty to assaulting police officers that day,\u201d Smith said. \u201cExploiting that violence, President Trump and his associates tried to call Members of Congress in furtherance of their criminal scheme, urging them to further delay certification of the 2020 election.\u201d
\u201cI didn\u2019t choose those Members,” Smith added, \u201cPresident Trump did.\u201d
Smith\u2019s report on Trump\u2019s efforts to overturn the election found that Trump \u201cinspired his supporters to commit acts of physical violence<\/a>\u201d on Jan. 6, 2021, and that Trump knowingly spread \u201cdemonstrably and, in many cases, obviously false\u201d claims about the election as part of the effort.
Smith is not expected to testify about Volume II of his report, which focused on Trump\u2019s handling of classified documents.
After Trump\u2019s team moved to block its release, Cannon banned<\/a> the release of that report, as well as the sharing of \u201cany information or conclusions in Volume II,\u201d with anyone outside the Justice Department. In a legal filing<\/a> this month, a lawyer representing Trump wrote that “Volume II of Jack Smith\u2019s Final Report should not be made public.\u201d
The Trump administration fired career prosecutors<\/a> who worked on Smith\u2019s team early in the year, and more recently it fired FBI special agents<\/a> and even support staffers<\/a> linked to Smith. Trump has called Smith \u201ca criminal\u201d<\/a> who should be \u201cinvestigated and put in prison.\u201d
Smith said in his testimony Wednesday that while he is responsible for having made the decisions to charge Trump in both the election subversion and the classified documents cases, the basis for those charges \u201crests entirely with President Trump and his actions, as alleged in the indictments returned by grand juries in two different districts.\u201d
Smith recounted that he was taught as a young prosecutor to follow the facts and the law \u201cwithout fear or favor\u201d and to do \u201cthe right thing, the right way, for the right reasons,\u201d principles he said guided his career.
\u201cIf asked whether to prosecute a former President based on the same facts today, I would do so regardless of whether the President was a Republican or Democrat,\u201d Smith said.
Rep. Dan Goldman, D-N.Y., demanded that Jordan hold a public hearing so the \u201cAmerican people can hear what the special counsel said.” Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., said Smith \u201cwas extremely upset with the vilification, the mischaracterizations of things that he has said or who he is.\u201d
\u201cHe said it\u2019s deeper than even witness intimidation,\u201d Jayapal said. \u201cIt would drive people away from public service.\u201d
Ryan J. Reilly is a justice reporter for NBC News.
© 2025 NBCUniversal Media, LLC<\/p>\n

source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

news AlertsThere are no new alerts at this timeWASHINGTON \u2014 Former special counsel Jack Smith told a congressional committee Wednesday that his team found “proof beyond a reasonable doubt\u201d that President Donald Trump engaged in a \u201ccriminal scheme\u201d to overturn the results of the 2020 election, according to parts of his opening statement obtained by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":194025,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-194024","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-us","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194024","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=194024"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194024\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/194025"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=194024"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=194024"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=194024"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}