Perhaps not unexpectedly, the awaited public appearance and grilling of Special Counsel Jack Smith on the alleged federal crimes of Donald Trump was more spectacle than illumination.
On some level, it was the most recent replay of the most familiar confrontations by defenders of Trump over political justice against those who believe that Trump was subject to the same law as everyone else.
It was the first public chance to hear what Smith had to bring to a judge and jury to demonstrate that Trump broke criminal law, though it became more a defense of how Smith conducted his investigation.
The public theater that unfolded before the House Judiciary Committee followed months of partisan negotiation, private questioning of Smith, and seemingly endless attempts to undercut and threaten the special counsel for holding Trump's behavior against criminal law in two cases arising from the January 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection attempt and the taking and obstruction of classified documents.
Both cases were halted when Trump was elected a second time to the White House.
Congressional Republicans took their task to be protection of Trump's legacy and, indeed, backed Trump's insistence that Smith is a criminal who should be jailed. The hope was to catch Smith in a legal snag that might result in a perjury charge. Along the way, Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, threw in the House Select Committee on January 6 proceedings, campaign statements, and previous investigations of Trump as if they were part of what Smith would have presented in court.
Democrats saw their job as encouraging Smith to lay out the evidence that fueled his prosecution case. If one could separate the politics — an impossibility — there was something quite normal going on: examination of a special counsel's final report. Their openly political point clearly was to highlight deeds that without immunity, without status, and without pardon would be found criminal.
From a substantive point of view, the outcome was already known. The Judiciary Committee's private grilling did nothing to derail or undercut Smith's presentation and evidence, and the fiercest questions were not about evidence, but about politics around the case. This was not about judicial guilt, just political blame.
Aggressive Questioning
From the first, it was clear that this was not a Trump trial on evidence. Rather, it was a debate about image and an aggressive attempt to find fault with Smith and a politically "weaponized" Justice Department in pursuit of politician Trump.
For his part, Smith said that letting January 6 pass without legal accountability would invite more problems with elections and endanger democracy as we have known it.
Smith insisted on being seen as non-political by people who only see partisanship in every issue that comes to Congress. As always in these hearings, congressmen are doing more talking than necessary in hopes of self-promotion over learning the strength of the evidence against Trump in two criminal proceedings.
To the degree that January 6-related matters arose, Republicans cherry-picked the possible inclusion of witnesses including Cassidy Hutchinson, whom Smith was not claiming as primary witnesses, or the phone records that included logs of congressional phones. Indeed, it was only the order of U.S. Judge Aileen Cannon in Florida that kept a cap on the details of the classified documents case, although she has long since declared the case dead.
For Smith himself, the point was to defend his prosecution effort as within Justice Department standards and rules. He stood by his decisions to bring charges, to subpoena records — including the telephone logs of Republican senators — and to defend those who worked on these cases from vowed retribution from Trump and the Justice Department.
Throughout, Smith maintained a cool, calm, lawyerly demeanor — perhaps more understated than necessary. He had plenty of evidence to share and the composure not to fall into word traps. In tone, some Republican questioners were far testier. After hearing an answer he did not like, Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., said, "I yield back in disgust of this witness."
Though he was spending the day in international diplomacy, Trump himself found time to tune into the hearings and offer commentary, posting: "Jack Smith is a deranged animal, who shouldn't be allowed to practice law. If he were a Republican, his license would be taken away from him, and far worse!"
Missing: The Trial
What we saw was unfocused partisan feints and defenses about process, not a systematic review of the evidence.
It's what we see in so many other unrelated public debates in Washington, from the practical fallout over what we are or are not learning from the Jeffrey Epstein files to substantive argument about whether sinking alleged drug-smuggling boats is considered legally valid.
We're missing the actual trial, where evidence and not political froth, no matter how intense, governs the day. We're missing the review of whatever was learned in Smith's 165-page indictment document that laid out the January 6 case or the equivalent documentation from the classified documents case.
Arguing about whether Trump was unduly targeted doesn't resolve whether the underlying materials leading to the now-dismissed indictments ever would pass review by citizen juries.
What Republican majority members chose to ignore was extensive testimony, much from Republican associates of Trump, about events leading to January 6, about Trump's incitement before the rioting and his silence as a Trump mob rioted, and about whether the whole matter was part of a scheme to keep Trump in office despite an election loss.
Likewise, the questions did not want to address testimony about extended refusal to turn over classified documents and the efforts to move them to keep them hidden while asserting that the "raid" on Mar-a-Lago was actually the serving of a judicially approved search warrant.
Our reality is that we have a president who is a convicted felon who escaped prosecution for more crimes only because of his reelection.