Last week I watched the entire House Judiciary Committee testimony of Special Counsel Jack Smith from January 22, 2026 to save you about five and half hours of your life.
This is a breakdown of the first hour, subsequent hours will follow over the course of the next couple of days. The news cycle has been especially punishing since President Donald J. Trump invaded Venezuela at the start of the year.
I’ve removed long statements that don’t play much of a role into the investigation of Donald J. Trump or Special Counsel Jack Smith.
I’ve also skipped over questions that had little value.
In some cases I’ve included questioning by Republicans just to show how desperate they’ve become to protect their glorious leader at all costs. Rep. Jim Jordan truly seems pathetic as he spends most of his time criticizing one part of the testimony of Cassidy Hutchinson.
Hutchinson, the former assistant to Chief of Staff Mark Meadows during Trump’s first term, testified as part of The United States House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol.
I wanted to break this monster up into bitesized pieces so folks who don’t have five hours to sludge through will still have the opportunity to watch more of it than quick two-minute clips.
Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) opening statement (summary)
Jim Jordan’s opening statement. He went on an extended rant about subpoenaed phone records of Republican elected officials who may have been involved with the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol building. Jordan and other Republicans have implied that the DOJ obtained taped phone conversations.
The DOJ only received a log of phone calls made and received. The agency did not tap anyone’s phone. Throughout this testimony the phone records will be referred to as a ‘toll record.’
A lot of what Jordan said was inaccurate. Jordan also refused to comply with a subpoena to testify for The United States House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol.
Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) opening statement (summary)
Raskin: Well, thank you kindly, Mr. Chairman. I want to start by recognizing the presence of four American heroes here today, four of the hundreds of officers who defended us on January 6th, 2021, Michael Fanone, Aquilino Grenell, Daniel Hodges and Harry Dunn. And I thank them for being here today.
Raskin went on to praise Smith at length and give a history of his career which includes Manhattan DA’s office, Eastern District of New York, and at The Hague as chief prosecutor in the Kosovo trial.
Smith has worked for both Democratic and Republican administrations.
Raskin also supplied examples that proved President Donald J. Trump knew he lost the 2020 election.
Raskin: That’s when Trump incited mass violence on January 6th, when more than 140 officers were being brutally assaulted by Trump’s mob while rioters beat them with flagpoles and sprayed them with chemical agents and crushed them in doorways. And while they chanted ‘Hang Mike Pence’ and chased the vice president out of the Capitol, Trump and his team worked the phones, calling not the National Guard, which was under the direct unilateral control of Donald Trump, but calling members of Congress, urging them to delay certification and to nullify the election results.
Raskin: Special Counsel Smith, you pursued the facts. You followed every applicable law, ethics rule and DOJ regulation. Your decisions were reviewed by the Public Integrity section. You acted based solely on the facts. The opposite of Donald Trump, who now is purporting to take over the Department of Justice. He’s in charge of the whole thing under his unitary executive theory. And he acts openly, purely based on political vendetta and motives of personal revenge. And he doesn’t deny it.
Raskin: Our colleagues have complained about the special counsel’s review of toll records, which are phone records, like a phone bill showing only the timing and duration of calls and containing no content, no substance whatsoever from the calls. But those records were lawfully subpoenaed because Donald Trump made those members of Congress relevant to the investigation. It was Trump who chose to call them to advance his criminal scheme. As you testified, Mr. Smith, if Donald Trump had chosen to call a number of Democratic senators, we would have gotten toll records for them, too
Raskin also mentioned the classified documents found in Mar-a-Lago and the details surrounding the investigation.
Raskin: Trump has now pardoned and released into our communities hundreds of extremists, insurrectionists and cop beating felons who have proceeded to commit dozens more crimes against the American people since they were pardoned.
Jack Smith Opening Statement (summary)
Smith: President Trump was charged because the evidence established that he willfully broke the law, the very laws he took an oath to uphold. Grand juries in two separate districts reached this conclusion based on his actions as alleged in the indictment they returned. Rather than accept his defeat in the 2020 election. President Trump engaged in a criminal scheme to overturn the results and prevent the lawful transfer of power. After leaving office in January 2021. President Trump illegally kept classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago social club and repeatedly tried to obstruct justice to conceal his continued retention of those documents.
Smith: Highly sensitive national security information was held in a ballroom and a bathroom. As I testify before the committee today, I want to be clear I stand by my decisions as special counsel, including the decision to bring charges against President Trump. Our investigation developed proof beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump engaged in criminal activity. 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 Democrat or a Republican.
Rep. Kevin Kiley (R-CA) - A summary
Kiley mainly criticized Smith’s decision to subpoena the phone records of various members of congress.
Kiley also cited Jonathan Turley, a legal expert who has been critical of Smith. Turley is a frequent guest on Fox News.
