Jack Smith’s Testimony: A Reminder that Donald J. Trump Owns All of It

This article was originally published in CAFE on January 5, 2026.

Jack Smith accomplished a lot in his day-long testimony to the Judiciary Committee on December 17, 2025. But the bottom line was simple: the Special Counsel investigation began with Donald Trump’s actions, not the investigators who later followed the evidence.

Smith laid out the facts and the theory supporting his conclusion that the probe “developed proof beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump engaged in a criminal scheme to overturn the results of the 2020 election and to prevent the lawful transfer of power.” The scheme began in the weeks leading up to January 6 in which President Trump “created a level of distrust” which he used to “get people to believe fraud claims that weren’t true” about the 2020 election. He was “aware that his supporters were angry when he invited them and then he directed them to the Capitol.” Once the attack and violence ensued, he refused to stop it. Instead, “he issued a tweet that, without question…endangered the life of his own Vice President. And when the violence was going on, he had to be pushed repeatedly by his staff members to do anything to quell it.”

Smith repeatedly made clear that the evidence gathered against Trump was strong enough to sustain a conviction, explaining that the “timing and speed of our work reflects the strength of the evidence and our confidence that we would have secured convictions at trial.” Part of that strength was proof that Trump was told, knew, and purposefully disregarded allies – people he had handpicked for key roles – telling him “that what they were trying to do was an attempt to overthrow the government and illegal,” Smith said. “Our case was built on, frankly, Republicans who put their allegiance to the country before the party.”

Special Counsel Jack Smith announces the indictment of then-former President Donald Trump on Aug. 1, 2023. (C-SPAN)

Accounts from Republicans willing to stand up against the falsehood that the election had been stolen created what Smith described as the “most powerful” evidence against Trump. Smith also made crystal clear why as a legal matter Trump’s public statements after the 2020 election were not protected under the First Amendment and were not just regular election challenges: “The through-line of all of Mr. Trump’s criminal efforts was deceit -- knowingly false claims of fraud.”

Another chilling aspect of Smith’s testimony was the way in which he described a discernible pattern surrounding the scheme to overturn the election. Despite being told by some trusted advisors and allies that he should not do what he was doing, Trump “rejected it whenever it didn’t fit him staying in office.” There “was a pattern in our case where any time any information came in that would mean he could no longer be President he would reject it. And any theory, no matter how far-fetched, no matter how not based in law, that would indicate that he could, he latched on to that.” He “very consciously did not try to reach out to the sort of people who have the most expertise on these issues. He reached out to people who he thought could back him up.” This goes to Trump’s mens rea or state of mind — an element that federal prosecutors apply to people every day in courtrooms across this country. You can’t just decide you aren’t going to acknowledge certain facts, seek out people who tell you what you want to hear about how stolen money ended up in your bank account, for example, and then claim, “I didn’t know.” This is what Trump tried to do, with the help of the Rudy Giulianis, Jeffrey Clarks, John Eastmans, and Sidney Powells of the world, about a presidential election. It doesn’t fly for a bank fraudster and it shouldn’t fly for an elected official.

The pattern has persisted into Trump’s second term. Don’t like the answer from an experienced career prosecutor in the Southern District of New York that you hand picked stating that an indictment cannot be dismissed based on alleged political motivations? No problem – force that prosecutor out and find one who will. Don’t like the advice of an experienced career prosecutor you hand picked in the Eastern District of Virginia (EDVA) stating that an indictment should not be brought against a political foe? No problem – fire them and replace them with a prosecutor who will do the job anyway.

As with the January 6 scheme to overturn the election, it doesn’t happen without enablers – lawyers willing to tell Trump what he wants to hear and argue these falsehoods in court. This time around, however, the enablers of this pattern are not on the fringes as Giuliani, Eastman, Clark and Powell were. They are in the seats of power of DOJ and the heads of powerful offices like the EDVA and the DOJ Weaponization Office.

Perhaps the most important part of Smith’s testimony was his reminder of a very basic fact that Trump, his political allies, and complicit DOJ leadership, have so effectively obscured: that “the basis” for the indictments returned by two grand juries against Donald J. Trump, “rests entirely with President Trump and his actions.” Not with Jack Smith and not with the career public servants at the DOJ and FBI, as Trump has alleged over and over. Smith reminded the American people that, no matter how much they try to blame the investigators and the prosecutors, the responsibility for what happened on January 6th and for the investigation and prosecutions, all rest with Trump.

This is a powerful concept that federal prosecutors around the country remind jurors of every day when ordinary people are charged with crimes. The prosecutors don’t choose the cooperating witness–who might be a drug dealer, a violent gang member or a fraudster – the defendant does.

For example, many of the questions at the hearing focused on Republican anger at revelations that the Smith team had obtained and analyzed phone records of GOP lawmakers who were in contact with Trump on Jan. 6. Smith defended the maneuver as lawful and by-the-book and explained that it was Donald Trump who “directed his co-conspirators to call these [legislators] to further delay the proceedings. He chose to do that…If Donald Trump had chosen to call a number of Democratic senators, we would have gotten toll records for Democratic senators….I did not choose those members, President Trump did.”

One of the most painful and dangerous things to watch in this Trump administration has been the wholesale vilification and punishment of public servants by people in power who know better, yet have “sought revenge against career prosecutors, FBI agents, and support staff simply for doing their jobs and for having worked on those cases,” as Smith said. “These dedicated public servants are the best of us, and they have been wrongly vilified and improperly dismissed from their jobs.” Smith’s testimony is a powerful reminder of why exactly investigators were put in the position of conducting this investigation in the first place.

Despite Republicans’ best efforts to play “gotcha” with Smith, despite Smith’s knowledge that this president and his complicit DOJ leadership would try to seek retribution against him, he testified comfortably, as a seasoned prosecutor who knows his facts and the law and has confidence in his case. His testimony made clear why Trump’s allies did not want to let Smith testify in open hearing and why they finally released the transcript only hours before midnight on New Year’s Eve. It was a striking contrast to prosecutors recently standing up in the prosecution against James Comey, for example, trying to dance on the head of a pin to defend the DOJ’s actions. Jack Smith’s closed-door testimony felt like a breath of fresh air that reminded me of the years I spent at DOJ learning from people who had the certainty of conviction and integrity on their side.

Of course there will be some, maybe even many, who will dismiss Smith’s statement that the “decision to bring charges against President Trump was mine,” not that of President Biden or any other political figures; who will dismiss his assertion that he “made…decisions in the investigation without regard to President Trump’s political association, activities, beliefs, or candidacy in the 2024 Presidential election;” who will scoff at the claim that Smith and his team “took our actions based on the facts and the law, the very lessons I learned early in my career as a prosecutor” and that they “followed Justice Department policies and observed legal requirements.” Who will dismiss his assertion that this career prosecutor for three decades was guided in this investigation by the same principles he had always followed no matter the subject.

But, for those listening and watching with even a modicum of good faith, Smith’s statement, “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,” is clear and sincere.

Mimi Rocah was the district attorney of Westchester County, New York, from 2021 to 2024 and was a federal prosecutor from 2001 to 2017. Jennifer Rodgers was a federal prosecutor from 2000 to 2013 and is a legal analyst for CNN.