Republican calls out Trump’s weaponization of DOJ in live Senate hearing

U.S. Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC) attends a Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee hearing on the Financial Stability Oversight Council's annual report February 5, 2026. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

Outgoing Republican Sen. Thom Tillis (N.C.) didn't spend his full ten minutes questioning former special counsel Jack Smith during the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Tuesday. Instead, he made his own comments about President Donald Trump's weaponization of the Justice Department.

Tillis, who is not running for reelection, said that he asked AI to find some specifics about so-called "vindictive prosecution" and found some examples from Trump.

"The one thing I want to observe, where on may be a bit of an odd duck, is I have few skills, but good memory is one of them. I think it's fascinating how people want to pick up the mantle of a vindictive prosecution when their guy is not in office, but I was going through AI after you finished your opening statement," he said.

"I find it interesting people think they are the only party that is right and righteous on this. That is a general statement. I don't expect you to speak to it. Recently, I thought 8647 was not a solid basis for making a former FBI director, who disappointed me profoundly on this committee, probably not the right way to spend our time or the perp walk," he added, talking about Trump's targeting of former FBI Director James Comey.

"I had to get that out there," Tillis said, before wagging a verbal finger at his colleagues. "I think we all need to be mindful of how we behave and how we are perceived."

He said that while many of his colleagues want to accuse Smith of political motivation, he's still interested to see "if at some point in the future we can get down to who, precisely, was responsible for forcing every member of the U.S. Senate to be in this room while thugs destroyed this building and injured over 100 police officers. I hope we can find who is responsible for that and hopefully we can cool the political temperatures to get to that fact-based assessment."

Tillis then gave Smith an opportunity to say where he wished he'd done something different from those two cases.

Smith said, "One of the things I was taught as a prosecutor through my career is you only do your talking in the courtroom; you don't talk on the courthouse steps. One of the things I learned from this experience is if you stick to that and that alone people can unfairly malign your team, you, and your case in a way, and you really can't respond because you don't want to interfere with someone's right to a fair trial. And you don't want to get down in the gutter and start calling people names. At the same time, there are things being put out daily that are patently untrue."

He said that he's not advocating that prosecutors go online and start responding in the comments section, but that he agrees, in the future, prosecutors should be able to communicate with the outside world.

"I believe strongly we did our investigation the right way. But I limited myself and who I talked to about that," he continued. "I think I did two announcements under four minutes in the time I was special counsel. I think going forward to engender public trust in these cases, I think that's a real thing we need to think about, going forward, in the future."

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