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SEVEN TAKEAWAYS FROM JACK SMITH’S CONGRESSIONAL TESTIMONY  
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Kyle Cheney, Hailey Fuchs and Jordain Carney
December 31, 2025
Politico
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_ The New Year’s Eve transcript release buries details from the
former special counsel’s investigation into Donald Trump. Smith
repeatedly restating his view that Trump was guilty of a historic
crime and revealed new information about his witness list. _

Jack Smith testifies before the House Oversight Committee, Dec. 17,
2025, screen grab

 

House Republicans decided to publicly release the transcript of
special counsel Jack Smith’s Dec. 17 closed-door deposition on New
Year’s Eve — while most of Washington was tuned out for the
holiday.

Smith used the day-long grilling
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before the House Judiciary Committee to mount a robust defense of his
investigation into Donald Trump for seeking to subvert the 2020
election. He forcefully rebutted claims that his work was tainted by
politics and delivered a granular defense of his office’s tactics
and prosecution strategy — all while repeatedly restating his view
that Trump was guilty of a historic crime. He also revealed some new
information about his witness list, and gave Judiciary Republicans a
new opening to attack Cassidy Hutchinson’s infamous testimony.

A spokesperson for Smith declined to comment.

Here’s what we learned from the 255-page transcript
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Smith built his case around Trump’s allies

Some of Smith’s most substantive testimony centered on his
never-implemented trial strategy: using Republicans who believed in
Trump to make the case against him.

“The president was preying on the party allegiance of people who
supported him,” Smith said. “The evidence that I felt was most
powerful was the evidence that came from people in his own party who
… put country before party and were willing to tell the truth to
him, even though it could mean trouble for them.”

Smith repeatedly drew on diehard Republicans to make the case against
the man they wanted to become president but who they acknowledged had
been defeated. Smith said former Vice President Mike Pence and several
of the GOP elector nominees — like Pennsylvania’s Lawrence Tabas
— would have fit that bill and made strong trial witnesses.

“That witness, Mr. Tabas, was of a similar group of witnesses who
— these are not enemies of the president. These are people in his
party who supported him,” Smith continued. “And I think the fact
that they were telling him these things … would have had great
weight and great credibility with a jury.”

Smith said he came to believe that Trump’s Jan. 6, 2021, tweet
attacking Pence while he was at the Capitol “without question”
exacerbated the danger to Pence’s life.

Smith hadn’t made his final charging decisions

The former special counsel said he never officially decided whether to
bring additional charges against the figures he alleged were Trump’s
co-conspirators — including attorneys Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell,
Kenneth Chesebro, John Eastman and Boris Epshteyn.

“I had not made final determinations about that at the time that
President Trump won reelection, meaning that our office was going to
be closed down,” Smith said.

Smith said he had no plans to call Eastman — an architect of
Trump’s last-ditch bid to stop Joe Biden’s Electoral College
certification in January 2021 — as a trial witness but said he would
have welcomed Trump calling Eastman to the stand as a defense witness.

Smith noted he interviewed Epshteyn, Giuliani and other alleged
co-conspirators in the course of the investigation.

Lawmakers failed to knock Smith off his game

The former special counsel repeatedly leaned into the defense of his
probe and expressed confidence that a jury would have convicted Trump
if the case went to trial.

He refused to take Democrats’ bait to attack Republicans for
refusing, so far, to give him a public hearing. And he avoided
straying into discussions that might have forced him to reveal
subjects still protected by grand jury secrecy or a federal judge’s
order that barred him from disclosing details of his second
investigation into President Trump’s hoarding of classified
documents at Mar-a-Lago after leaving office in 2021.

“Did you have the opportunity to interview Mr. Pence as part of your
investigation?” a staffer asked Smith at one point.

“I think the answer to that question might involve [grand jury
information], and so I’m not going to answer that,” Smith said.

When Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.) pressed Smith about the structure of
his classified documents report, Smith again demurred.

“I don’t think I should even talk about that. I don’t want to
have any — any implication that I gave some sort of insight about
how that report is constructed,’ he said.

Smith repeatedly reminded lawmakers that he’s open to sharing the
results of his classified documents investigation, but was restricted
by the ruling from a federal judge in Florida who maintained Smith’s
report must stay under seal. The day of Smith’s deposition, the
Department of Justice also sent an email to Smith’s team emphasizing
the court order prevented him from sharing nonpublic information with
Congress.

At one point, a staffer questioning Smith suggested it would be far
more difficult to retrieve materials from Mar-a-Lago compared to
elsewhere.

“I mean, a person can’t just walk into Mar-a-Lago and try to
abscond with these materials, right?” the person, whose identity was
redacted, asked.

“I would very much like to answer that question, but I cannot answer
that question due to the final report,” Smith responded.

Smith forcefully rejected any hint of political bias

Republicans and Democrats repeatedly teed it up for him: Did politics
influence Smith’s decision to become special counsel or the way he
handled his investigation? Did the White House ever lean on him or
senior Justice Department officials like former Attorney General
Merrick Garland and his deputy Lisa Monaco?

Each time Smith was unequivocal: Not for a moment.

Smith maintained he never communicated with Biden or White House staff
before or during his investigation. He also said the timing of
Trump’s announcement for president, his crowded calendar of criminal
cases leading up to the 2024 election and the sensitivity of certain
allegations were nonfactors in his decisions. He emphasized that he
regularly consulted with Justice Department officials to ensure he
abided by its guidelines.

“We certainly were not in any way intending to affect the outcome of
the election. And to make sure we complied with the policy, we met
with Public Integrity to make sure we were doing that,” Smith said.

Multiple people also asked Smith if he would be surprised if Trump
directs his Department of Justice to target him. The former special
counsel responded no.

“I have no doubt that the president wants to seek retribution
against me,” Smith said.

Lawmakers also pressed Smith about the executive order against his
legal representation, Covington & Burling, in which Trump suspended
security clearances for firm employees who had worked with Smith. It
was one of several major law firms hit with penalties in the beginning
of the second Trump administration.

“I think it’s to chill people from having an association with
me,” Smith said.

During the deposition, Smith’s attorney Peter Koski said his firm
was proud to represent Smith.

Smith didn’t pursue ‘uncooperative’ witnesses

Though there were few new details in Smith’s testimony, he disclosed
that he didn’t pursue interviews with three figures close to Trump:
Steve Bannon, Roger Stone and Peter Navarro. The reason, he said, was
they were relatively uncooperative with congressional investigators
and were unnecessary for his team to discern the details of Trump’s
bid to subvert the 2020 election.

“Given the highly uncooperative nature of the individuals you talked
about, I didn’t think it would be fruitful to try to question
them,” Smith said. “And the sort of information that they could
provide us, in my view, wasn’t worth immunizing them for their
possible conduct.”

But Smith also described a text exchange between Bannon and Epshteyn
on the evening of Jan. 6 in which Bannon described Trump as “still
on fire” — an exchange he said was evidence that Trump did not see
the riot as the end of his effort to prevent his defeat in the
election.

Smith defends pursuit of lawmakers’ phone records

Republicans and Democrats pressed Smith extensively about his pursuit
of the phone records of Republican lawmakers who Trump and his allies
contacted during the days and weeks before Jan. 6, 2021.

Smith said he wanted former Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s records because
he knew McCarthy spoke to the White House as violence unfolded that
day. He also said the records they pursued were limited and intended
to shore up the case if it went to trial — and all were obtained in
accordance with DOJ policies governing the handling of investigations
that touch on congressional records.

Smith also emphasized he was not special counsel when Justice
Department investigators obtained a two-year batch of House Judiciary
Committee Chair Jim Jordan’s phone records.

The former special counsel displayed detailed knowledge about the way
the Constitution’s Speech or Debate clause protects legislative
activity from federal investigators and said he sought to comply with
those limits. He noted that his office litigated Speech or Debate
issues related to Pence and Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.) during the course
of the probe.

“My office and I personally take the protections of the Speech or
Debate Clause seriously,” he said. “They’re an important part of
separation of powers.”

House GOP revel in Smith comments on Cassidy Hutchinson

In the aftermath of the transcript’s release, the Judiciary
Republicans pointed to Smith’s comments about Cassidy Hutchinson,
the former White House aide who in 2022 testified against Trump
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in a dramatic hearing before the Democratic-led Jan. 6 committee.

Hutchinson famously said another Trump aide told her that a furious
Trump lunged for the wheel after learning the vehicle he was in was
headed for the White House instead of the Capitol after his incendiary
Jan. 6 speech. Trump has long denied the incident.

Smith told congressional investigators his office spoke to at least
one officer who was in the SUV for Trump’s return to the White House
that day.

“[M]y recollection with Ms. Hutchinson, at least one of the issues
was a number of the things that she gave evidence on were secondhand
hearsay, were things that she had heard from other people and, as a
result, that testimony may or may not be admissible, and it certainly
wouldn’t be as powerful as firsthand testimony,” Smith said.

“The partisan January 6th Committee’s ENTIRE case was just
destroyed by… Jack Smith,” the Judiciary GOP posted on X
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witness completely unreliable!”

The Jan. 6 committee grilled Hutchinson in part because Mark Meadows,
her direct boss, declined to sit for an interview. Though
Hutchinson’s story was among the most explosive aspects of its
public hearings, the case the committee made — that Trump
systematically attempted to sow doubt about the 2020 election results
and lean on state and federal officials to subvert it — was the
product of hundreds of interviews, many from Trump’s closest aides
and allies.

_Kyle Cheney_ [[link removed]]_ is a
senior legal affairs reporter for Politico. __Hailey Fuchs_
[[link removed]]_ is a Congressional
reporter for POLITICO, with a focus on the __judiciary_
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__oversight_
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and __ethics committees_
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__Jordain Carney_ [[link removed]]_ is
a Congress reporter at POLITICO with a focus on the Senate and the
chamber’s leadership._

_POLITICO_ [[link removed]]_ is the global
authority on the intersection of politics, policy, and power. It is
the most robust news operation and information service in the world
specializing in politics and policy, which informs the most
influential audience in the world with insight, edge, and authority.
Founded in 2007, POLITICO has grown to a team of more than 1,100
working across North America and Europe. In October 2021, POLITICO was
acquired by, and is a subsidiary of, __Axel Springer SE_
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* Jack Smith
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* Donald Trump
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* Insurrection
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* Jan 6
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