Jack Smith: Trump ‘caused’ Jan. 6 riot

What happened

The Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol “does not happen without” President Donald Trump, former special counsel Jack Smith told the House Judiciary Committee in closed-door testimony last month, according to a transcript and video released Wednesday.

The Dec. 17 deposition on the two defunct criminal cases against Trump was “conducted privately despite Smith’s request to testify publicly,” The Associated Press said. The panel’s Republicans released the transcript “on New Year’s Eve — while most of Washington was tuned out for the holiday,” Politico said. 

Who said what

Smith mounted a “robust” and “granular defense” of his investigations while “repeatedly restating his view that Trump was guilty of a historic crime” and a jury would have convicted him for it, Politico said. Smith was obliged to drop the cases after Trump won reelection, and some of his “most substantive testimony centered on his never-implemented trial strategy: using Republicans who believed in Trump to make the case against him.” The Jan. 6 case was “built on, frankly, Republicans who put their allegiance to the country before the party,” Smith told the lawmakers. 

The evidence “made clear” that Trump was “by a large measure the most culpable and most responsible person” in the Capitol riot, Smith said. Trump “caused” the violence, “exploited it” and “refused to stop it,” and his private admissions that he lost the election he was trying to overturn were “corroborative of the larger case.”

What next?

Smith said he had “no doubt that the president wants to seek retribution against me,” and he would not be surprised if Trump directed the Justice Department to indict him “because of my role as special counsel.”