President Donald Trump and his top supporters have repeatedly been embarrassed in their attempts to prosecute Jack Smith, the official who himself prosecuted Trump for alleged crimes involving his election denial and document theft scandal.s. Yet even as Trump and his team fail to nab Smith over and over and over again, they continue to take swings at the lawman whose prosecutions against them apparently got under their skin.

Now his Justice Department is literally running scared of Smith.

"Trump DOJ runs scared from Jack Smith," AllRiseNews editor-in-chief Adam Klasfield posted on X on Monday. "Citing regs concerning "current or former employees," DOJ tries to block BBC from deposing Smith about Trump and the Jan. 6 insurrection. Smith agreed to testify."

Klasfield continued, "It cites grand jury secrecy, classified info privilege, exec privilege & more."

"Upon consideration of your request, the Department rejects it," the Justice Department wrote in a filing regarding the BBC's request to subpoena information about Smith from their ongoing cases with him. "Specifically, your request is denied because the testimony you seek is subject to the grand-jury-secrecy privilege, classified information privilege, law enforcement privilege, and executive privilege. See id. § 16.26(a)(2) (“In deciding whether to make disclosures pursuant to a demand, Department officials and attorneys should consider . . . [w]hether such disclosure is appropriate under the relevant substantive law concerning privilege.”). To the extent that the testimony you seek encompasses non-privileged information, Mr. Smith’s extensive public testimonies and report are adequate substitutes. Additionally, your request is denied because the deposition of Mr. Smith—a former high-ranking government official—would impose an undue burden on Mr. Smith and the Department."

Later, they further elaborated on why they did not want Smith to testify.

"The sought testimony pertains to information obtained by Mr. Smith in his former role as Special Counsel for the Department," the Justice Department argued. "You have not met your burden of establishing the presence of “extraordinary circumstances” to justify your request. See FDIC v. Galan-Alvarez, 2015 WL 5602342, at *3 (D.D.C. Sep. 4, 2015) (explaining that the party seeking the testimony of the high-ranking government official bears the burden of showing “extraordinary circumstances”). Extraordinary circumstances exist if “the official has unique firsthand knowledge related to the litigated claims or that the necessary information cannot be obtained through other, less burdensome or intrusive means.” Id. at *3 (citation omitted). As noted above, you have not shown that Mr. Smith has “unique firsthand knowledge,” of the events of January 6, 2021."

Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn (Tenn.) is fighting to make it into the governor's mansion in her state, but she's not leaving without going after former special counsel Jack Smith.

Blackburn, 74, filed a lawsuit on Wednesday against Smith and the Justice Department, alleging that she was harmed by "the grave abuse of authority that this case seeks to rectify."

The 46-page suit makes seven demands

"A declaration that Defendant Smith was unlawfully named and acting as Special Counsel at the U.S. Department of Justice from November 18, 2022 to January 1, 2025, in violation of the Appointments Clause, because he was an attorney from outside the United States Government who was not nominated by the President or confirmed by the Senate—nor was he appointed by the head of a department with legal authority to make such appointments," she demands.

This issue goes back to Judge Aileen Cannon's ruling that Smith was not a legal special counsel because she claimed he was not approved by the U.S. Senate. Until Smith, no special counsels were required to be approved by the U.S. Senate.

Her second demand is "A declaration that Defendant Smith’s collection of Senator Blackburn’s telephone toll records, and those of any other Senators and Members of Congress with whom she was communicating, pursuant to the Arctic Frost investigation and the grand jury subpoena issued in or about May 2023, was unlawful and violated Senator Blackburn’s constitutional and civil rights, including rights afforded by the Constitution’s Speech or Debate Clause, the First Amendment right of association, the Fourth Amendment, and the Civil Rights Act."

Something like this would be such a significant ruling by a U.S. court that it would create a precedent for future congressional records investigations.

Third, Blackburn asks for "An injunction requiring Defendant Smith to destroy any of Senator Blackburn’s legislative materials, or any notes or records reflecting the content of those materials, that are in his possession, custody or control."

Smith testified for the third time on Tuesday that "toll records" do not contain the content. Still, lawmakers appear to believe that the contents of their messages were obtained. Normally, a DOJ special counsel wouldn't personally keep evidence from his investigation in his personal possession. Typically, prosecutors are meant to keep work materials at the DOJ upon leaving.

Blackburn then demands that the judge mandate "An injunction requiring Relief Defendant to return all copies of the toll records to Senator Blackburn and permanently redact any reference to the toll records or the content of the toll records, in its possession, custody, or control."

Fifth, she asks for $1 in damages, though in her sixth demand she asks that all court expenses and lawyers' fees be paid by the DOJ.

There is currently a fund that allows the DOJ to make "settlement agreements" with anyone it sees fit if they launch a lawsuit against the government. Several Jan. 6 attackers have made that move, as have members of President Donald Trump's first campaign. As part of his lawsuit against the IRS, Trump made an agreement with the DOJ that it would create a "fund' for $1.8 billion that would hand out "settlements" to those it wanted, including Trump, his family members, allies, staff or anyone else it wanted. Critics have called it nothing more than a government "slush fund."

Finally, Blackburn said she'll accept any other relief the court deems "just and equitable."

Congressional Republicans were recently fact-checked during a live hearing with former special counsel Jack Smith after they tried to claim he was in Atlanta conspiring with a separate prosecutor investigating President Donald Trump, even though their evidence actually proved he was in Maryland. But despite the GOP's humiliation, Trump's team is continuing its crusade against Smith.

Trump's communications director posted an angry X screed on Monday because he is upset at Smith for wearing an anti-Trump shirt at a rock concert.

"Steven Cheung tore into Jack Smith in an X post after the former special counsel, who previously investigated criminal allegations against the president, was photographed at an anti-Trump concert wearing a 'No Kings' protest T-shirt," reported The Daily Beast's Will Neal on Monday. In his post, Cheung complained that “Jack Smith is a scumbag who was the partisan attack rat for Democrats who weaponized the justice system against President Trump for political purposes. Don’t think they won’t go after innocent Americans again if they get their way.”

Neal reported, "Smith’s T-shirt was from the merch line for anti-Trump rocker Bruce Springsteen’s 'Land of Hope and Dreams' tour, during which Springsteen was often explicitly critical of the second Trump administration."

He continued, "The former special counsel, 57, wore the shirt while attending the 'Power to the People' festival in Maryland, organized by Rage Against the Machine and Audioslave guitarist Tom Morello, also a fervent Trump critic."

Despite Republican attempts to deflect from their hearing faux pas, the main story regarding the Smith testimony is the fact that Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-MO) accused Smith of perjuring himself when the attorney said he had not been to Atlanta in February 2024. Schmitt made this claim based on the fact that Smith had attended a basketball game with a team known as the "Hawks," but it turned out he was mixing up the University of Iowa Hawkeyes (who had played in Maryland) with the Atlanta Hawks. It later came out that Schmitt was warned the information, which he received from Trump's Justice Department, had not been vetted, but he went ahead with the line of questioning anyway.

“It would be funny if it weren’t so concerning,” journalist Jonathan Rauch told political analyst Charlie Sykes last week. “It just reminds us that the charges that are being used are totally bogus.” He cited as another example David Hearn, an Olympian wrongly charged with a felony charges when Trump blamed him for his own botching of the Reflecting Pool renovations.. “They fell apart at the touch of reality. They fell apart so badly that a federal judge dismissed the charges with prejudice. That almost never happens. But that means that the judge trusts the Justice Department so little that they’re not even allowed to bring back the charge no matter what they come up with. The judge is saying, we just can’t trust these people. So all these demonstrations of comic incompetence. They have a serious grim side, but it’s kind of a saving grace that the folks running MAGA are not more capable than they are.”

A Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist said she would have felt suicidal if she had made a mistake as egregious and foolish as that committed by Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-MO) when he tried to pull a "gotcha" on Jack Smith, the prosecutor who attempted to hold President Donald Trump accountable for his 2020-2021 insurrection.

"Here's what I would say," said MS NOW host Chris Hayes on Tuesday when interviewing the acclaimed Carol Leonnig. Hayes and Leonnig were discussing how Schmitt tried to prove Smith had lied about never being to Atlanta — and, by implication, had colluded with another prosecutor investigating Trump — by showing he had been to an Atlanta Hawks game. It was quickly proved that in fact Smith had attended a basketball game by a team called the University of Iowa Hawkeyes, one held near his home in Maryland. Even conservative commentators like Scott Jennings admitted Schmitt embarrassed himself, while right-wing pundits like Sean Hannity and Benny Johnson, who initially characterized the encounter as a win for Schmitt, later deleted their posts.

"You talk to all sorts of people in the world who have different views of the media," Hayes told Leonnig. "And one of the things I always say is, when we do this show here, us and the whole team, people know where I'm coming from, what my views are, but we really do try to make sure we get things right. It's a real point of pride. We do our due diligence. And I just can't believe that level of sloppiness."

Leonnig replied, "I think there are some journalists who might have, I don't mean to be grim, but would have been suicidal" if they had made that kind of mistake. "It's not cool and it's not copacetic, and it would be heart palpitations forever."

She added, "I'm a reporter. I'm not an anchor. I'm not a host... but I agree with you about MS NOW's position, which is: okay, yeah, we ask hard questions. As a network, the anchors are generally progressive-leaning and worried about democracy, but the reporting here is fact-based. And my jaw opened as far as it could when Schmitt began accusing Jack Smith of perjury. I could see Jack Smith saying, 'Whoa, whoa, I've never been to Atlanta, except maybe through the airport on a connecting flight.'"

She concluded, "The guy is being criticized for various things, but he's not going to perjure himself. He's a [careful] lawyer. And so that was all going very, very fast in front of our eyes. That's a problem I think all of us fact-based journalists are kind of wrestling with: this administration is pushing this grand conspiracy case, and there are no facts suggesting that people got together in a big plot to try to hurt Donald Trump."

This is not Schmitt's first encounter with national controversy. Last year he delivered a speech widely characterized as white nationalist, one in which he argued that America was not founded on a "proposition" but were instead “believed they were fighting for a nation, a homeland for themselves and their descendants."

He added, “They fought, they bled, they struggled, they died for us. They built this country for us. America, in all its glory is their gift to us, handed down across the generations. It belongs to us. It’s our birthright, it’s our heritage, our destiny. If America is everything and everyone, then it is nothing and no one at all.”

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A former special prosecutor’s epic takedown of a fumbled MAGA conspiracy theory before viewers on Tuesday had CNN anchor Kasie Hunt wondering if the GOP was finally done with pursuing half-baked attacks on Jack Smith.

“Could that be it? Could that be it?” Hunt later asked her panel on CNN’s “The Arena with Kasie Hunt.”

“I think this is what political scientists often refer to as a face plant,” CNN analyst and Axios political reporter Alex Thompson responded, referring to Sen. Eric Schmitt’s (R-MO) failed attack on Smith before Smith decimated Schmitt on live television.

Schmitt claimed he had text messages from Smith's own team that Smith was in Atlanta Feb. 2024, one day after DA Fani Willis admitted a relationship with co-worker Nathan Wade, in addition to various name-calling and verbal attacks. But Smith deftly destroyed Schmitt by explaining that he had attended an entirely different game.

“It was a rough moment, and I say that as someone who likes Eric Schmidt very much,” admitted GOP pundit and possible White House media candidate Scott Jennings. “Uh, and I think he's been a really good politician and senator in Missouri. So obviously this was a mistake.”

But Jennings rallied as best he could, pointing out that what Republicans are really worried about with Smith is that he obtained communications from members of Congress regarding local Republican donors who had written checks for five and $10.

“Apparently, he got records of at least one journalist, Mollie Hemingway, from the Federalist. And so, the Republican argument here has been that this was partisan, uh, that this was dramatic amount of overstepping, uh, and that it really did encroach upon the job duties of a lot of these senators and members of congress that he was digging into, in their view, for no good reason and without disclosing it to them at the time,” said Jennings. “So, I think legitimate concerns were aired, even if there was a rough moment on the committee today.”

But panelist and former prosecutor Ellie Honig told Jennings that Republican lawmakers flubbed their whole argument.

“The way that Republicans have chosen to attack Smith is just not the most effective way to criticize him. If you want to criticize the guy, you can point out that his entire career leading up to the Trump prosecution was marked by overcharging and over aggression. He had high profile cases rejected by judges, by juries, unanimously in one case by the Supreme Court. You can

point out the fact that he asked for a gag order that violated Donald Trump's First Amendment right, to the point where a judge and a court of appeals judge overturned Smith's gag order. You can point to the fact that he insisted on trying Trump for months after an indictment with 13 million pages of discovery. There's no way Trump could have engaged his due process to prepare for trial. You can point to the fact that he dumped a whole bunch of information into the public sector in October of 2024 by reversing the rules of criminal procedure. There are very effective and fair criticisms of smith, but these Republican senators are not on them at all,” said Honig.

Jennings quickly glommed onto Honig’s hurled life-saver, saying “listen to Elie. This guy made mistake after mistake, and it all leads back to the central Republican argument that this was overly partisan, overly prosecuted. And that was the point of the hearing today.”

Hunt agreed that “Elie ... did a better job than the senators that we saw.”

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Republicans brought former special counsel Jack Smith into a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing Tuesday to discuss his investigations into President Donald Trump.

Earlier this year, the New York Times reported that Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) urged the Justice Department to indict Smith, alleging he perjured himself before the House Judiciary Committee when he talked about toll records vs. a wiretap. Smith appeared before that committee in January and nine months later, Attorney General Todd Blanche has failed to indict him.

Former federal prosecutor Brendan Ballou told MS NOW that Republicans are getting into specifics and minutiae about the case, in large part because "they want to talk about Jack Smith's investigation without talking about what the investigation was about."

Sen. Eric Schmitt (Mo.) became a subject of ridicule online during the hearing after a contentious round of questioning in which he angrily demanded answers about a slew of strange things.

New Mexico civil rights lawyer Owen Barcala noted Schmitt's question about Smith's work putting war criminals behind bars.

"Very funny to try to attack Smith by making him out to be, like, a superhero that travels the world convicting corrupt presidents," he said on BlueSky.

Election and law policy expert Andy Craig said in a thread on the hearing, "Aside from toeing the party line, these senators really hate Jack Smith because they're viscerally opposed to the idea of prosecuting politicians. They are committed to their own elite impunity above and beyond whatever they think of Trump. Thus their obsession with the phone records is a non-issue."

"Smith never tried to prosecute a member of Congress, even though some probably should have been ... But that his investigation even glancingly touched their bubble infuriates them. Not even J6-ers themselves care about that, but they do. Thus their how dare you huffing and puffing," he added.

"They'll do performative outrage for Trump. They're actually outraged at the idea that they aren't so special as to be above the law. They have a genuine class solidarity with Trump insofar as the class they care about is people in high elected office not being subject to the criminal justice system," Craig said.

Former FBI lawyer Andrew Weissmann said that one of the key things he's watching in the hearing is that the Republicans aren't talking about the specific facts of the case.

"The problem is that none of the questions deal with the actual facts about the two indictments that were brought by grand juries in Florida and Washington D.C.," said Weissmann. "In other words, there's been no questions to say this is a defense. This is why Donald Trump is innocent of one or both of those charges. In order to claim a political witch hunt you would think you'd need to say, 'Look, there was no there-there. But you were still going after him.' So, that's sort of this big picture that's worth noting when you hear all of this discussion: how many people are actually talking about the facts? What actually was charged against Donald Trump in D.C. and Florida."

He went on to call it nothing more than a "game" and said there were "subpoenas that were issued by the grand jury at the request of special counsel Jack Smith." Since grand jury investigations are secret, it is not unusual for subpoenas to be secret as well.

Fox Business host Brit Hume shamed Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) for trying to worm his way out of his disastrous 10-minute questioning of former special counsel Jack Smith on Tuesday in the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Schmitt was caught in an embarrassing mistake when he tried to claim that Smith was somehow colluding with Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis over the 2020 election fraud in Georgia. He alleged that Smith was somehow at an NBA game to see the Atlanta Hawks play on Feb. 3. Over and over, Schmitt mocked Smith as committing "perjury" and said he was lying or that he'd somehow caught Smith in a lie.

The reality is that Smith was at the Iowa Hawkeyes game as they played the Maryland Terps. As Smith explained, he wanted to see Caitlin Clark play. She was a big story in the news at the time, and College Park, Maryland, is not far from the Justice Department.

Hume blasted Schmitt, saying, "He brought this on himself and deserves the obloquy."

Schmitt appeared on several far right outlets attempting to claim that he was somehow still right because the only "men's basketball" game he could have seen was in Atlanta. Smith made it clear he was watching women's basketball. It was such a notable comment that even Sen. Katie Britt (R-Ala.) went off on a tangent about women's sports and keeping them "safe."

It wasn't until the Hollywood site TMZ caught up with Schmitt and hammered him on the lie he refused to acknowledge that the senator finally confessed that Smith could have been where he said.

"He's not answered truthfully before," Schmitt kept saying to justify his beliefs. "So, people can decide if that's the truth or not. I mean, I suppose that the Department of Justice really knows where he was that night. I don't know."

"The Hawkeye game! Wasn't he?" the TMZ person laughed.

"That's what he says!" Schmitt said awkwardly.

"Oh, no, no, no. There's — we can see he's in the audience and he's in that section. I've seen him in the section that night," said TMZ

"That's great. For that night? Great. Well, then he was at the Hawkeyes' game. I just asked him if he was in Atlanta cause there's a text message of him at a game, and the only NBA game that night was in Atlanta," Schmitt said.

The reality is that Schmitt wasn't merely "asking questions." He falsely claimed that he had "a series of text messages" that said Smith had attended the Warriors-Hawks game. It was not only a lie, he also didn't have those texts; but Schmitt also mistook what information he actually had.

As "March Madness" fans know, there are many more basketball games than the NBA. In fact, there's the WNBA, the women's NCAA and men's NCAA. There's also the NBA-G, which is like a minor-league basketball league, Ice Cube's Big3 professional basketball league and the TBL (The Basketball League), which is a minor professional semi-pro league. That doesn't count international clubs or leagues, the junior college league and the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics. There are also the Skyhawks, Black Hawks, Seahawks, a slew of regular "hawks" as well as the Hawkeyes.

As legal commentator Liz Dye wrote, "Schmitt did not explain how attending a basketball game in Atlanta would be evidence of Smith cahootsing with DA Willis. But the GOP playbook relies on an absolute lack of shame, so Schmitt dutifully bellied up to the microphone to celebrate his flawless victory with the chuds keeping the grift alive in Charlie Kirk’s old studio."

After a full day of ridicule, Schmitt finally posted on X, "Who knew that Jack Smith was a Caitlan Clark fan." The reactions were about what one would expect.

Newsweek reports all four active U.S. district judges in Middle Tennessee have recused themselves from a lawsuit brought by Republican Tennessee Sen. Marsha Blackburn against former special counsel Jack Smith over the collection of her phone records. This includes two judges that Trump himself appointed.

Blackburn filed the lawsuit on September 30 over Smith’s Arctic Frost investigation into efforts to overturn the 2020 election. As part of that inquiry, Newsweek reports investigators “obtained phone metadata linked to Blackburn and several other lawmakers.”

“Through his Arctic Frost witch hunt that targeted conservatives across America and even the President of the United States, Jack Smith perpetrated one of the worst abuses of government power in our nation's history," said Blackburn. "This lawsuit is solely about holding Mr. Smith accountable and ensuring that our nation's justice system can never again be weaponized against the American people."

This issue goes back to Trump appointee Judge Aileen Cannon's ruling that Smith was not a legal special counsel because she claimed he was not approved by the U.S. Senate. Until Smith, no special counsels were required to be approved by the U.S. Senate.

Blackburn claims that obtaining the records violated her constitutional rights, even though Smith said the records did not include call contents and that his office consulted the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section before issuing the subpoenas. Her lawsuit alleges violations of the Speech or Debate Clause, First Amendment and Fourth Amendment, and also challenges the legality of Smith’s appointment as special counsel.

But now, Newsweek reports, an order filed October 5 in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee reveals that no judge is willing to take up Blackburn’s argument.

“All District Judges of the Middle District of Tennessee have recused in this matter.”

“The order, signed by Chief U.S. District Judge William L. Campbell Jr., said a judge from outside the district will now be designated by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit and the case will then be reassigned,” reports Newsweek. “The October 5 order does not give a reason for the recusals, and it does not say that any judge has a specific conflict of interest or bias in connection with the litigation. Two of the judges were appointed by President Donald Trump, while one was appointed by Bill Clinton and another by Barack Obama.”

Blackwell’s complaint points out that Smith and others who worked on the investigation subpoenaed toll records associated with a cellphone she used for legislative purposes. The lawsuit said those records revealed who Blackburn communicated with and the times and duration of the communications. But Blackburn herself does not allege that investigators intercepted the contents of her calls.

Blackburn is currently running for the governor's mansion in her state.

One federal prosecutor thinks that Rep. Jim Jordan's (R-Ohio) efforts to bring down former special counsel Jack Smith won't make it, regardless of how determined Jordan is during the Tuesday hearing.

Jack Smith will be on Capitol Hill again Tuesday to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee over what he told Jordan earlier this year.

Republicans cornered Smith in a previous hearing after discovering that Smith saw call logs between President Donald Trump and lawmakers. While Republicans railed against it as "overreach" by the former Joe Biden administration, it became clear that the information didn't come from spying on GOP lawmakers.

“I stand by my testimony before the House of Representatives,” Smith will say before Jordan's hearing, according to his opening statement, which he has released. “I will not be silenced by the continued threats of prosecution from the president or others.”

Smith will also make it clear that he would prosecute Trump again today, whether he were a Republican or Democrat.

Jordan thinks that Smith lied to them and Republicans want to prosecute him, but CNN legal analyst Ankush Khardori poured cold water on Jordan's efforts.

"So, first of all, he absolutely did not lie under oath when he testified before the House Judiciary Committee. What happened is, he did not affirmatively disclose a separate mechanism that they pursued to get messages that Republican members of Congress had in the White House," said Khardori.

Host Audie Cornish asked if that was a lie of omission, but Khardori said that under federal law it is not a lie.

"He was asked a question about how, you know, whether certain messages were obtained through a certain mechanism. He answered that question truthfully," the ex-prosecutor explained. "Jim Jordan is angry, and Republicans are angry that he did not disclose separately that his team had acquired some communications from the National Archives, communications that were actually from the White House. Not retrieved from members or their devices."

Khardori made it clear that Jordan has no shot at prosecuting Smith.

"If there is any effort to prosecute Jack Smith on the basis of the exchange that Jim Jordan has been invoking here, it will fail miserably," he said. "I would be surprised if it gets past a grand jury. And even if they did manage to indict him, my guess is a judge would throw it out. That is how tenuous Jim Jordan's allegation is."

Republican political strategist Ashley Davis said that she doubts anyone from the Republican base will even pay attention to this.

"I think it's personal," she said.

"Yeah, well, I don't know," confessed Khardori. "I mean, we're a month out from the election. There's a lot of interesting stuff going on in the country. There's a major hack of FBI agents, information that ordinarily you would expect the Senate Judiciary Committee to maybe care about."

He thinks it is a "reminder to people who are angry with this administration heading into the November elections, that Trump could have been in prison right now if the Republican Party had not prevented the Justice Department from" doing its job.

Khardori said that it's clear the Justice Department, and Attorney General Todd Blanche in particular, desperately want to investigate Smith.

"By the way, you know, I've spoken with members of Smith's team over the course of the year. None of this fazes them," Khardori said. "They understand and believe that this is a wholly political process. Jack Smith, you'll notice, is not taking the fifth. I believe this is the third time, actually, he will testify in front of Congress."