Washington – The Jan. 6, 2021 riots at the U.S. Capitol “won’t happen” without Donald Trump, former special counsel and Central New Yorker Jack Smith said earlier this month as he characterized the Republican president as “the most culpable and responsible person” in a criminal conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election.
The Republican-led House Judiciary Committee released on Wednesday a transcript and video of a closed-door interview Smith provided about the two Trump investigations. The documentary shows how Smith repeatedly defended the basis for the impeachment charges against Trump during the day’s testimony, strongly rejecting Republican suggestions that his investigations were politically motivated.
“The evidence here clearly showed that President Trump was by far the most culpable and responsible person in this conspiracy. These crimes were committed for his benefit. The attack that happened at the Capitol that is part of this case does not happen without him. The other co-conspirators did it for his benefit,” Smith said, bristling at the question of whether his investigation should have prevented the president20 from seeking Trump204 again.
“So in terms of why we would pursue a case against him, I completely disagree with any characterization that our work should have hindered him in any way in the presidential election,” he added.
The December 17 deposition was taken in private despite Smith’s request to testify publicly. The release of a transcript and video of the interview, Smith’s only appearance on Capitol Hill since leaving his position as special counsel last January, adds to the public’s understanding of the decision-making behind two of the most high-profile Justice Department investigations in recent history.
Smith, who grew up near Syracuse and graduated from Liverpool High School in 1987, was appointed by current U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland as special counsel to investigate Trump in 2022. Smith grew up in Clay and played football and baseball for Liverpool before transferring to SUNY Oneonta and eventually earning a law degree from Harvard Law School.
Trump was indicted for conspiring to overturn the 2020 election he lost to democrat joe biden and on purpose keeping classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. Both cases were abandoned after Trump’s 2024 election victory, with Smith citing the Justice Department’s policy against impeaching a sitting president.
Smith has repeatedly expressed his belief that the evidence gathered against Trump is strong enough to convict. Part of the strength of the Jan. 6 case, Smith said, was the extent to which it relied on the testimony of Trump allies and supporters who cooperated with the investigation.
“We had a voter in Pennsylvania who is a former congressman who was going to be a voter for President Trump who said what they were trying to do was an attempt to overthrow the government and illegal,” Smith said. “Our case was built on, frankly, Republicans putting their loyalty to country before party.”
The accounts of Republicans willing to stand up to the lie that the election was stolen “even though it might mean trouble for them” created what Smith described as the “most powerful” evidence against Trump.
When it came to the Capitol riots themselves, Smith said, the evidence showed that Trump “caused it and that he took advantage of it and that it was predictable to him.”
When asked if there was evidence that Trump ordered his supporters to riot at the Capitol, Smith said that in the weeks leading up to the riots, Trump made “people believe fraudulent claims that were not true.”
“He made false statements to state legislators, to his supporters in a variety of contexts, and in the days leading up to January 6th, he was aware that his supporters were upset when he invited them and then directed them to the Capitol,” Smith said.
“Now, once they were in the Capitol and once the attack on the Capitol happened, he refused to stop it. Instead, he issued a tweet that, without a doubt in my mind, threatened the life of his own vice president,” he added. “And when there was violence, his staff had to repeatedly push him to do something about it.”
Some of the testimony focused on Republican anger at the revelations that Smith’s team obtained and analyzed, phone records of GOP lawmakers who were in contact with Trump on January 6. Defending the maneuver as legal and by the book, Smith suggested that outrage over the tactic should be directed at Trump and not his team of prosecutors.
“Well, I think the person who should be responsible for this is Donald Trump. These records are the people, in the case of the senators, Donald Trump ordered his co-conspirators to call these people to further delay the proceedings. He chose to do that,” Smith said. If Donald Trump decided to call several Democratic senators, we would get the toll records for the Democratic senators.
Communications between Trump and Republican supporters in Congress were an important part of the case, Smith said. He cited an interview his office did with Mark Meadows in which Trump’s former chief of staff mentioned that Rep. Jim Jordan, Republican of Ohio and current chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, was in contact with the White House the afternoon after the riots.
“And what I remember was Meadows saying, ‘I’ve never seen Jim Jordan afraid of anything,’ and the fact that we were now in this different situation where people were afraid made it really clear that what was going on in the Capitol could not be mistaken for anything other than what it was,” Smith said.
Smith was also asked if his team rates explosive claims by former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson that Trump clutching the steering wheel of the president’s SUV when the Secret Service refused to let him into the Capitol after a rally on the Ellipse on January 6, 2021.
Smith told investigators that investigators heard an officer who was in the car “who said President Trump was very angry and wanted to go to the Capitol,” but the officer’s version of events “wasn’t the same as what Cassidy Hutchinson said she heard secondhand.”
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