The deposition of former Special Counsel Jack Smith has been released. In it, Smith stood behind his prosecution of President Trump, declaring that his team “developed powerful evidence” against him.
“I made my decisions in the investigation without regard to President Trump’s political association, activities, beliefs, or candidacy in the 2024 Presidential election,” Smith claimed. “We took our actions based on the facts and the law, the very lessons I learned early in my career as a prosecutor. We followed Justice Department policies and observed legal requirements.”
“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,” he further asserted.
Smith was asked by Congress, “So did you develop evidence that President Trump, you know, was responsible for the violence at the Capitol on January 6th?” He responded, “As I said, our evidence is that he, in the weeks leading up to January 6th, created a level of distrust. He used that level of distrust to get people to believe fraud claims that weren’t true. He made false statements to State legislatures, to his supporters in all sorts of contexts and was aware in the days leading up to January 6th that his supporters were angry when he invited them and then he directed them to the Capitol.”
Smith also acknowledged that some of the most publicized testimony from a key witness lacked firsthand evidence and relied heavily on hearsay, American Faith reported. Addressing testimony from Cassidy Hutchinson, a former White House aide, Smith told lawmakers that portions of Hutchinson’s statements suffered from evidentiary weaknesses that would have drawn challenges in court. “If I were a defense attorney and Ms. Hutchinson were a witness, the first thing I would do was seek to preclude some of her testimony because it was hearsay,” he said.
