Former Special Counsel Jack Smith to Testify Publicly to Congress

Smith testified privately to the House Judiciary Committee in December 2025 about his criminal prosecutions against President Donald Trump.

Special counsel Jack Smith in Washington on Aug. 1, 2023. Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Jack Smith, the former special counsel who led two now-dismissed criminal cases against President Donald Trump, will testify before Congress later this month.

Republican members of the House Judiciary Committee announced on Jan. 12 that the hearing is scheduled for Jan. 22.

This will be the first time Smith publicly defends his failed prosecutions in an open hearing before the committee. In December 2025, he appeared before the panel for a more than eight-hour, closed-door deposition.

Smith brought two of the four criminal cases against Trump while the latter was running for a second term in the White House: one in Florida accusing Trump of illegally retaining classified documents, and the other in Washington accusing him of trying to illegally overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in the weeks leading up to the Jan. 6, 2021, breach of the U.S. Capitol.

Both cases had largely crumbled even before Trump won the 2024 election. In July of that year, while Trump was recovering from an assassination attempt, a federal judge dismissed the classified documents case, ruling that Smith was unlawfully funded and appointed. Smith’s team initially appealed the dismissal but wound down the case following Trump’s election victory.

In July 2024, the Jan. 6 case was put on hold after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Trump is entitled to presidential immunity from federal prosecution for official actions he took while in office. Smith then filed a superseding indictment that narrowed the allegations while keeping the same charges, but ultimately dropped the case days after Trump’s reelection.

Weeks before Trump took office a second time, Smith released a 130-page final report defending his special counsel investigation and the charges that were brought. He stated that the charges were dropped because of a longstanding Department of Justice policy discouraging the prosecution of sitting presidents, while stressing that he continued to believe in the merits of the cases.

At the most recent Dec. 17, 2025, deposition, Smith told the House Judiciary Committee that if presented with the same facts, he would again choose to bring charges against Trump.

“If asked whether to prosecute a former president based on the same facts today, I would do so regardless of whether the president was a Republican or Democrat,” Smith said in opening remarks, according to a transcript released on New Year’s Eve.

“The decision to bring charges against President Trump was mine, but the basis for those charges rests entirely with President Trump and his actions, as alleged in the indictments returned by grand juries in two different districts.”

In that deposition, Smith said he was still considering whether to pursue charges against Trump’s allies in the Jan. 6 case when Trump was reelected. He also said that, had the Jan. 6 case gone to trial, he planned to rely heavily on witnesses identifying as pro-Trump Republicans.

“All witnesses were not going to be political enemies of the president. They were going to be political allies. We had numerous witnesses who would say, ‘I voted for President Trump. I campaigned for President Trump. I wanted him to win,'” Smith said.