Donald Trump was facing four criminal indictments when he narrowly won the 2024 presidential election, and two of those criminal investigations were led by then-Department of Justice (DOJ) Special Counsel Jack Smith. Smith, citing DOJ's longstanding policy against prosecuting a sitting president, asked U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan to dismiss his election interference case — and she granted that request "without prejudice."
Smith, however, wasn't saying that his election case and his Mar-a-Lago/classified documents case (which was assigned to Judge Aileen Cannon) lacked merit — only that he was obligated to honor DOJ policy. And he discussed the cases during a closed-door House Judiciary Committee hearing that was attended by Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), who is the committee's ranking member.
In an article published on January 7, The New Republic's Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling stresses that Smith may still have a lot to say about the two Trump-related cases he prosecuted during former President Joe Biden's administration.
Houghtaling reports: "The American public may still have the opportunity to hear former special counsel Jack Smith's case against Donald Trump…. The investigator was invited by Republican Rep. Jim Jordan for a closed-door session before Congress last month, giving Smith a platform that top Democrats surprisingly claim was the most advantageous to eventually charge Trump."
The New Republic writer observed that Raskin offered some key takeaways on Smith's closed-door testimony suring a Tuesday, January 6 appearance on MS NOW.
"I left that closed-door deposition of Jack Smith, and I said that Chairman Jordan's decision to do it behind closed doors was the best decision he ever made in his life, because it was absolutely devastating for Donald Trump and for those who still want to try to pretend as if he wasn't guilty of these things," Raskin told MS NOW. "He was clearly guilty of these things."
Raskin believes it would be "devastating" for Trump if the public heard the extent of Smith's testimony during the closed-door hearing.
Raskin told MS NOW: "What's allowed (Trump) to escape, you know, Houdini-like, is the Roberts Court and the fact that he's been able to manipulate the levers of power to keep himself going. I mean, if he put, you know, a fraction of that energy into trying to actually do something for the American people, we might be in a different position in America today…. But he has been able to stay afloat, even as it's overwhelmingly clear that he engaged in an attempt to defraud the United States, disrupt this federal proceeding, and massively violate the voting rights of all Americans by stealing an election. He wasn't trying to stop election fraud. He was trying to commit election fraud for several months."
Read Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling's full New Republic article at this link.
