Jack Smith deposition gives insight into failed effort to hold Trump accountable

By Ben Olson
Reader Staff

While the nation popped champagne corks and checked out for the long holiday weekend on Dec. 31, 2025, House Republicans quietly released the transcript of special counsel Jack Smith’s Dec. 17 closed-door deposition before the House Judiciary Committee.

The daylong grilling saw a stalwart Smith defending his investigation into President Donald Trump for his efforts to subvert the 2020 election, his role in the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol insurrection, as well as the mishandling of government records.

A grand jury indicted Trump on 37 felony counts on June 8, 2023 on charges of willful retention of national security material, obstruction of justice, and conspiracy relating to his removal of presidential materials and documents from the White House after his first-term presidency ended. Thirty-one of the felony counts fell under the Espionage Act.

A couple months later, another grand jury issued a four-count indictment of Trump for his conduct following the 2020 presidential election through the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol attack.

Trump pleaded not guilty to all charges in both indictments and trials were scheduled; but, in yet another example of Trump’s ability to evade prosecution, the trials were never held. 

A year later, U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon dismissed the classified documents case against Trump, claiming that Smith was unlawfully appointed. After Trump won the 2024 presidential election and because Department of Justice policy is to decline prosecuting sitting presidents of the United States, Smith announced he was dropping all charges and resigned on Jan. 10, 2025.

Like many of Trump’s scandals, the whole thing went away and became another of the so-called “witch hunts” against him.

The 255-page transcript of Smith’s deposition makes it clear that this was probably the last chance to hold Trump criminally responsible for his actions. Thanks to his 2024 election win, Trump narrowly escaped prosecution that may have seen him sentenced to actual prison time.

The House Judiciary Committee questioned Smith on Dec. 17 not to learn more about Trump’s illegal actions, of course, but rather to investigate former-President Joe Biden’s so-called “weaponization” of the DOJ as part of Trump’s revenge-seeking tour after starting his second term. 

The panel rebuffed Smith’s request to testify in public, then released the transcript and video of the testimony on New Year’s Eve in a not-so-transparent effort to bury the words and actions of Trump that brought the nation to the brink of disaster.

While reading through the transcript of the eight-hour hearing, it became clear that Trump’s habit of calling the special prosecutor “deranged Jack Smith” couldn’t be further from the truth. Instead, Smith’s testimony was controlled and deliberate — a slow, confident voice of reason that attempted to speak truth to power and was ultimately shut down. 

A veteran public-corruption prosecutor who has gone up against politicians of both parties, Smith’s integrity was repeatedly challenged by the panel, whose members claimed his actions were merely to keep Trump “off the campaign trail.”

“President Trump was by a large measure the most culpable and most responsible person in this conspiracy,” Smith said “These crimes were committed for his benefit. The attack that happened at the Capitol, part of this case, does not happen without him. The other co-conspirators were doing this for his benefit. So in terms of why we would pursue a case against him, I entirely disagree with any characterization that our work was in any way meant to hamper him in the presidential election. I would never take orders from a political leader to hamper another person in an election. That’s not who I am.”

Again and again, Republican lawmakers attempted to frame Smith as a special prosecutor who “took his orders from Biden” — a claim that Smith vehemently denied, claiming under oath that he never took instructions or orders from Biden or Attorney General Merrick Garland.

Smith claimed the evidence against Trump was too copious to ignore: “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. 

“Our investigation developed proof beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump engaged in a criminal scheme to overturn the results of the 2020 election and to prevent the lawful transfer of power,” Smith said. “Our investigation also developed powerful evidence that showed that President Trump willfully retained highly classified documents after he left office in January 2021, storing them at his social club, including in a ballroom and a bathroom. He then repeatedly tried to obstruct justice to conceal his continued retention of those documents.”

Smith made it clear there was no precedent for this case.

“There is no historical analog for what President Trump did in this case,” he said. “As we said in the indictment, he was free to say that he thought he won the election. He was even free to say falsely that he won the election. But what he was not free to do was violate federal law and use … knowingly false statements about election fraud to target a lawful government function. That he was not allowed to do. And that differentiates this case from any past history.”

Smith pointed out that the case wasn’t built on Trump’s critics, but rather, his supporters. 

“Our case was built on, frankly, Republicans who put their allegiance to the country before the party,” he said. “There was a pattern in our case where any time any information came in that would mean he could no longer be president he would reject it. And any theory, no matter how far-fetched, no matter how not based in law, that would indicate that he could, he latched onto that. … We had so many witnesses who were allies of President Trump available to us to testify. This was not a case where we needed more witnesses, it was a case where we needed to be able to present the case in a streamlined way because there was so much evidence.”

Smith made no bones about laying the blame for the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol at Trump’s feet.

“Our view of the evidence was that he caused it and that he exploited it and that it was foreseeable to him,” Smith said.

The Trump administration’s entire premise that Biden “weaponized” the Justice Department is a surreal assertion when it appears that is exactly what Trump has done with his own DOJ. It was Trump who ordered the failed indictments of New York Attorney General Letitia James and former-FBI Director James Comey, then fired prosecutors who refused to comply with his instructions. 

In the up-is-down, 2+2=5 world that exists today under Trump, it’s maddening to hear his baseless allegations against people doing what he, himself, does without compunction.

Smith’s deposition was released literally in the final hours of the year, scuttled like an old battleship and sent to the bottom of the sea. It serves as a sort of closing argument that Smith never got — a perfect example of a failed nation writ large, and a failed criminal justice system that is ill-equipped to handle what happens when we hand over unilateral power to a person like Trump.

Smith’s testimony is an anachronistic yawp from the times before, given under oath instead of on social media, trafficking in facts, not fiction. It’s a reminder of a time not so long ago when truth, law and order actually meant something. Smith’s work was not based on politics or revenge, but rather in parsing through the facts and reaching an outcome that serves justice, not a political party or ideology.

The fact that Trump has called Smith a “criminal” who should be “investigated and put in prison,” is something the former special prosecutor is well aware of.

“I am eyes wide open that this president will seek retribution against me if he can,” Smith said. “I came here. I was asked to come here. … 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.”

Read the 255-page transcript of Jack Smith’s deposition at:

 bit.ly/JackSmithDeposition.