Former special counsel Jack Smith will publicly testify on Jan. 22, the first time the public will hear directly from the prosecutor about his investigations of President Trump.
The hearing, announced by the House Judiciary Committee late Monday, comes after the panel’s GOP leadership rebuffed previous requests by Smith for a public hearing.
Smith sat for a more than seven-hour closed door deposition with the panel in December in which he asserted, if presented with the same facts, he would again choose to bring charges against Trump.
The prosecutor filed two separate cases against Trump, one focusing on the president’s efforts to block the transfer of power on Jan. 6 and the other addressing a tranche of 300 records with classified markings found at his Mar-a-Lago home.
“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 to the panel that were obtained by The Hill.
“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,” the former special counsel added.
In a transcript of the deposition released by committee Republicans on New Year’s Eve, Smith said he was still considering whether to bring charges against Trump’s co-conspirators in the Jan. 6 case when Trump was re-elected. Precedent limiting charges against sitting presidents pushed Smith to drop the charges.
Smith also said that had the Jan. 6 case been brought to trial, he was preparing to rely on a number of Trump allies in making his case.
“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.