This is a breakdown of the second hour of the House Judiciary Committee testimony of Special Counsel Jack Smith from January 22, 2026, subsequent hours will follow over the course of the rest of the week.
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. The section here that is the most illuminating is between Rep. Cohen and Jack Smith.
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. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) - a summary
The first half of Nadler’s questions were variations of the congressman asking Smith if he was biased or if he approached his work from a partisan or politically motivated way. Smith repeatedly answered that he had worked for both Democrats and Republicans.
A lot of this section just went over some of the background into Smith’s career. Smith brought cases against Democrats and Republicans. Smith also said multiple times that his decision to pursue a case was driven by the law not politics.
Nadler: According to you deposition before this committee, it sounds like your problem was not determining if you had enough evidence to charge Donald Trump, rather that you might have had too much evidence and struggled to determine how to present a clear narrative to a jury. How would you characterize the evidence against Mr. Trump about, inciting an insurrection against the laws of this country? Did you have too much?
Smith: Well, with respect to presenting the case that we charged, one of the central challenges was trying to present that in a concise way, because we did have so many witnesses. Some of the most powerful witnesses were witnesses who, in fact, were fellow Republicans who had voted for Donald Trump, who had campaigned for him and, who, wanted him to win the election. These included state officials, people who worked on his campaign and advisers. I will say, however, with respect to the charge of insurrection, we did not charge that. As I set forth in my report. Well, I believe that there is, courts have found that that was an insurrection and that there’s a reasonable interpretation a reasonable prosecutor could interpret, the evidence to support that charge. I chose not to do that. Looking at the facts in the law, I thought the charges we brought were appropriate. Given the evidence that we had.
Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) - a summary
Rep. Issa’s questioning was extremely strange. Most of what Issa said was nonsensical. I’ve included the first two questions to show how most of what Issa asked was not useful or helpful to the investigation.
Issa: Mr. Smith. Do you see, criminals to my left? You don’t see any. Do you see people who are committing crimes because they continue to believe things that just aren’t true? That’s paraphrasing Ronald Reagan, that liberals aren’t stupid. They just know things that don’t happen to be true. If the president believed that he was cheated in an election, that there was fraud, or in some other way, a number of items led to his defeat, when in fact he should have won according to the Constitution. Does that make him a criminal?
Smith: Sir?
Issa: No. No, that’s a yes or no. Please, Mr. Smith, these people here are continuing to grapple constantly with things that are true, like socialism works, or that somehow everything the Republicans do is evil and everything they do is right. They’ve never reached a conclusion in a typical partisan case in which we’re not evil because we think something different and we’re not wrong, you understand the Constitution. Do you understand the Bill of Rights, that someone has the absolute right to believe something, whether it’s true or not, and to advocate for something, whether it’s true or not? Do you understand that in addition to your oath to the Constitution, that that’s one of the things the First Amendment allows for, isn’t it?
Smith: Yes, sir.
I’ve made a slight edit here because Issa’s questions are closer to monologues. Smith hardly said anything.
Issa: No. Oh, great. So you spied on the Speaker of the House and these other senators and so on, and informed no one and in fact, put it in a gag order so they couldn’t discover it if they were not subjects of a conspiracy investigation. Why did Congress, a separate branch that you, under the Constitution, have to respect? Why is it that no one should be informed, including the judges, as you went in to spy on these people, did you mention that you were spying on seeking records so you could find out about when conversations occurred between the U.S. Speaker of the House and the president? Did you inform the judge or did you hold that back?
Smith: My office didn’t spy on anyone.
Issa was bringing up Smith’s decision to subpoena phone records - no one’s phone was tapped and no conversations were recorded. Smith only obtained a record of phone calls.
Rep. Raskin intervened and there was a bit of back and forth between the two congressman. Raskin was trying to get Issa to let Smith answer a question.
Rep. Jim Jordan also interrupted to try to wrap up Issa’s questioning. Things got really messy so I’m skipping over it.
Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA)
Lofgren: Mr. Smith, thank you for being here today. You know, earlier, the chairman spent a lot of time talking about Cassidy Hutchinson, who we know is just one of many witnesses. It’s important to note that, there was testimony that, she was told something by Mr. Ornato she had personal knowledge. And, of course, Mr. Ornato was a very questionable, veracity. We had a testimony from a metropolitan police Department official about an argument, a big argument that the president was having about going to the Capitol and the fact that the vehicle was delayed, going back to the Capitol while that argument occurred. But having said that, I want to focus on something my colleagues across the aisle seem to want to ignore the fact that your investigation into President Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election was built on testimony from members of the Republican Party in fact, last week, The New York Times published grand jury transcripts from Georgia that show the same pattern in Trump’s Georgia criminal case.
Lofgren: Georgia’s Republican Attorney general Chris Carr, testified that he told, quote, in this quote, we’re just not seeing the things that you are seeing. And the late Georgia House Speaker David Ralston, also a Republican, testified that Trump’s fake elector scheme was, quote, the craziest thing I’ve heard. And then there’s Senator Lindsey Graham, one of the president’s closest allies in his secret grand jury testimony. Senator Graham told the jurors, quote, “I have told him more times than we can count that he fell short,” unquote. And then he said this, quote, “if you told them Martians came and stole votes, he’d be inclined to believe it.” Martians. That’s him. Senator Graham speaking under oath. So here’s my question, Mr. Smith, in your deposition with this committee, you testified and here’s a quote “our case was build on, frankly, Republicans who put their allegiance to the country before the party.”
Lofgren: Also, that the president’s closest allies are telling him that his claims of election fraud are wrong. And, so I’m just wondering, can you explain what you meant in your deposition, that it was Republicans who were putting their allegiance to their country ahead of their party?
Smith: Yes. There were witnesses who I felt would be very strong witnesses, including, for example, the secretary of state in Georgia who, told Donald Trump the truth, told him things, that he did not want to hear and put him on notice that what he was saying was false. These were people who knew, how the elections were conducted in these states. And I believe that witnesses of that nature, witnesses who are willing to tell the truth, even if it’s going to impose a cost on them in their lives. My experience as a prosecutor over 30 years is that witnesses like that are very credible, and that jurors tend to believe witnesses like that, because they pay a cost, for telling the truth.
Lofgren: In terms of the grand jury testimony that’s now been released, the fact that, Donald Trump, according to Senator Graham, would believe that martins stole the election. What does that tell you about Trump’s state of mind?
Smith: That that statement is consistent with what we found in our investigation in that, our investigation revealed that Donald Trump was not looking for honest answers about whether, there was fraud in the election. He was looking for ways to stay in power. And when people told him, things that conflicted with him staying in power, he rejected them or he chose not even to contact people like that who would know, if the election was done properly in the state? On the other hand, when individuals, would say things that would allow him to stay in power, no matter how fantastical, he would latch on to those that pattern, over time, we felt, was powerful evidence that he, in fact, knew that the fraud claims he was making, were false.
Lofgren: You know, who were some of the Republican witnesses who told you that President, who told President Trump that his claims of election fraud were false? Can you can you share that with us?
Smith: There were, a range of witnesses. They ranged from, people, on his campaign, team who had, wanted him to win, were employed to help him win the election. They included state officials, state Republican officials who, wanted him to win, voted for him, campaigned for him, asked him to provide, asked him and his coconspirators to provide evidence to support their claims and invariably, they never did. It included, officials, advisers, people he worked with in the White House who he relied upon, for important decisions and who he trusted in other contexts. We felt we had strong evidence from a variety of sources . .
There was a brief fight over Rep. Lofgren’s time.
Smith: Yes, sir. And just conclude saying we felt that that a, constituted powerful evidence of his the knowing falsity of his statements in furtherance of the fraud.
