Susan Estrich
Fri, 23 Jan 2026 23:00:00 -0800
Opinion

Jack Smith finally got his chance to defend his investigation publicly in testimony before the House Judiciary Committee on Thursday.

Smith is a dinosaur by this administration's standards. He is the polar opposite of Pam Bondi, which should be a frightening thought. He is a career prosecutor who doesn't play politics, and never has.

In his testimony, Smith stood firmly by his decision to prosecute President Donald Trump both for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election and his mishandling of classified documents. "If asked whether to prosecute a former president based on the same facts today, I would do so regardless of whether that President was a Republican or a Democrat. No one should be above the law in our country, and the law required that he be held to account. So that is what I did." No one really took him on about the "overwhelming evidence" his team amassed; the Republicans just repeatedly attacked him for being partisan and political like them.
Updated: Sat Jan 24, 2026

Jack Smith finally got his chance to defend his investigation publicly in testimony before the House Judiciary Committee on Thursday.

Smith is a dinosaur by this administration's standards. He is the polar opposite of Pam Bondi, which should be a frightening thought. He is a career prosecutor who doesn't play politics, and never has.

In his testimony, Smith stood firmly by his decision to prosecute President Donald Trump both for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election and his mishandling of classified documents. "If asked whether to prosecute a former president based on the same facts today, I would do so regardless of whether that President was a Republican or a Democrat. No one should be above the law in our country, and the law required that he be held to account. So that is what I did." No one really took him on about the "overwhelming evidence" his team amassed; the Republicans just repeatedly attacked him for being partisan and political like them.

Speaking of the 2020 election case, he said, "The evidence here made clear that President Trump was by a large measure the most culpable and most responsible person in this conspiracy. These crimes were committed for his benefit. The attack that happened at the Capitol, part of this case, does not happen without him. The other co-conspirators were doing this for his benefit."

"Jack Smith is a deranged animal, who shouldn't be allowed to practice Law," Trump responded on Truth Social while the testimony was going on. "If he were a Republican, his license would be taken away from him, and far worse! Hopefully the Attorney General is looking at what he's done."

What choice does she have? Lindsay Halligan, the finally deposed former Trump personal attorney who pretended to be the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, has some free time and experience falling flat on her face with indictments. Maybe she'll be brought into the Justice Department to give it a whirl. The Trump administration seems to have no shortage of lawyers willing to try their hands as prosecutors, ready and willing to abuse their discretion with politicized investigations.

Jack Smith is a different breed. An old-fashioned type. The Justice Department used to be full of them. Professionals.

Maybe if Smith were a more political animal, things would have worked out differently. Smith started late; Democrats did not rush into this investigation, and they should have. He proceeded judiciously. He did not try his case in the press. He did not play the press. He got a terrible judge in Florida. The Supreme Court terminally slowed things down.

Trump ended up as president, and Jack Smith is supposed to worry about going to jail ...

Asked by a Democratic member of the committee whether he was concerned that the Justice Department would find a way to indict him, Smith gave the only honest answer. He said, "I believe they will do everything in their power to do that, because they've been ordered to by the president."

The fish rots from the head.

The Republicans on the committee tried to portray Smith's work as the Biden administration's efforts to punish their political enemies. That's not what the Jack Smith's do.

"Maybe they're not your political enemies, but they sure as hell were Joe Biden's political enemies, weren't they? They were Harris's political enemies," Darrell Issa said. "They were the enemies of the president. And you were their arm, weren't you?"

Jack Smith: "No." He was not.