Klaus Marre 01/23/26 (whowhatwhy.org)
House Republicans wanted to use a hearing with former special counsel Jack Smith as an opportunity to demonstrate that he was involved in a political hit job on Donald Trump. The president undercut their (flimsy) argument by demonstrating in real time what political interference in the judiciary really looks like.
Former special counsel Jack Smith testified on Thursday that his investigation into Donald Trump conclusively demonstrated that the current president engaged in “criminal activity” when trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election and then again when he hoarded classified documents at his private residence and obstructed justice.
This isn’t news, of course.
Smith has detailed Trump’s actions in a pair of lengthy and detailed indictments that grand juries in two jurisdictions handed down, and the only reason the president didn’t have to stand trial is that he managed to run out the clock. And while Smith was eager to defend his work, the hearing didn’t provide him a lot of opportunity to do so. That’s because it was long on theatrics and short on substance.
For their part, Republicans, who were reluctant to allow Smith to testify in public, sought to portray the former special counsel as a partisan hack on a mission to get Trump.
While their efforts to do so, such as maligning the investigators’ decision to seek a court order to collect the metadata of several GOP lawmakers who supported Trump’s efforts to overturn Joe Biden’s victory, weren’t particularly convincing, they didn’t have to be.
That’s because conservative audiences will end up seeing the hearing through the lens of Fox News and right-wing media accounts in the form of short clips, which is why Republicans shouldn’t even have bothered to cut off Smith whenever he tried to answer their questions in detail.
They did it anyway.
And Judiciary Committee Democrats were also happy to perform for the cameras more than anything else.
As a result, the hearing will serve as yet another political Rorschach test: Most casual observers will take away from it what they want to, depending on how they feel about Trump.
Speaking of the president, he undercut the GOP’s argument that it was the Biden administration that weaponized the Department of Justice.
While Smith testified that nobody from DOJ tried to influence his investigation in any way, Trump demonstrated that this isn’t the case in his administration.
In a pair of social media posts, he called on “Deranged Jack Smith” to be prosecuted.
Referring to the former special counsel as a “deranged animal, who shouldn’t be allowed to practice law,” Trump said he hopes that Pam Bondi, his attorney general who has shown an eagerness to do his bidding, “is looking at what he’s done.”
Smith made it clear that he expects retribution but added that he will not be intimidated.
However, he expressed regret that his team faced “threats to our safety and unfounded attacks on our character and integrity.
“I am saddened and angered that President Trump has sought revenge against them, and others who worked on cases related to the attack on this Capitol, for simply having worked on these cases, for simply having done their jobs,” he said.
The president’s social media posts proved him right.
Perhaps the most poignant moment of the entire hearing came during Smith’s opening remarks, in which he warned Trump’s supporters that they are traveling down a dangerous road.
“Adherence to the rule of law is not a partisan concept or endeavor,” he said. “My fear is that we have seen the rule of law function in this country for so long that many of us have come to take it for granted. But, the rule of law is not self-executing — it depends on our collective commitment to apply it.”
On Thursday, the panel’s Republicans did not heed this call.
- Klaus MarreKlaus Marre is a former congressional reporter and current senior editor for US politics for WhoWhatWhy. He writes regularly here, and you can also follow him on Bluesky and Substack.
