Jim Jordan tried to bury the Jack Smith deposition in a News Years Eve document (and video) dump.
Perhaps that’s because the funniest answer Smith gave (after already explaining why he had obtained subpoenas for the phone records of members of Congress, which was, in part, because Boris Ephsteyn and Rudy Giuliani were using two phones that day) was that Jim Jordan’s toll records were important because Jordan called the White House on January 6 because he was scared.
Q The toll record subpoena for the chairman of the committee.
A Well, I can tell you that, for example, there were — there was contact on, for example, January 6. But, again, another example for you is Mark Meadows, when he interviewed, when we interviewed him, he referenced the fact that that afternoon Chairman Jordan had been in contact with the White House. And, like Congressman McCarthy’s contact with the White House, it was relevant because, again, Meadows stated this, that these were supporters. These were credible people that the President relied on.
And what I recall was Meadows stating that “I’ve never seen Jim Jordan scared of anything,” and the fact that we were in this different situation now where people were scared really made it clear that what was going on at the Capitol could not be mistaken for anything other than what it was.
And it goes back to that sort of information from someone who is a credible source to the President, proving that that actually happened and that there’s actually a record of that call and exactly when it happened and what actions happened after that or didn’t happen after that, extremely probative to our case.
Meanwhile, after Republicans complained about Smith’s gag order on Trump,
Q Did you- — you sought gag orders in both the Florida case and the D.C. case.
Is that correct?
A We sought an order in the D.C. case under a rule — I think it’s 57.2 — and we did that because Donald Trump was making statements that were endangering witnesses, intimidating witnesses, endangering members of my staff, endangering court staff.
As you might remember, in the — right around when the indictment was released, he issued a tweet saying: “If you come after me, I’ll come after you.” He called — in a tweet he called General Mark Milley a traitor and mentioned that what he’d done in olden times people would be put to death. As a result of the things he was saying, the judge in this case was put — received vile death threats.
And with respect to D.C., both the district court and the court of appeals, a panel of judges, found that his actions were, in fact, causing what we said they caused. They were causing witnesses to be intimidated and endangering people.
And I believe it was the court of appeals also found that in addition to intimidating or chilling witnesses who existed, it would chill witnesses who had not yet come forward because they were afraid that they would be next.
So, yes, we did file that and I make no apologies for that.
Q Which witnesses do you think he would have intimidated? I mean, are there any specific witnesses that you could identify for the court?
A We did a filing. I don’t recall the specifics in that filing right now. But as I said, one of the issues from my perspective was not only the witnesses who he had specifically called out and caused threats to be issued, this phenomena that was found by both courts, it was the result of that is that a rational witness who maybe had not come forward would be completely afraid to because they would see that they would be next.
And I think the courts — both courts agreed with that.
Here’s how Smith answered Jasmine Crockett’s question about threats to Smith specifically.
Ms. Crockett. And, just to kind of finish up on this point, you, yourself — I’m not sure if this was discussed by the majority, but have you, yourself, been intimidated as a result of the actions that you took in this case.
The Witness. I’m not going to be intimidated.
Ms. Crockett. Have you been threatened.
The Witness. Yes.
Much later, Smith declined to get into the threats against him because they would endanger his (and he did not specify, but implied, his family’s) safety.
Q Do you feel like you have a target on your back?
A I believe that President Trump wants to seek retribution against me because of 15 my role as special counsel.
Q Would you be surprised if President Trump directs the DOJ to indict you?
A No.
Q Are you concerned about the safety of people who associate with you, like your former colleagues and your attorneys here today?
A I would prefer, if it’s all right, not to talk about my safety, because I think doing so could, in fact, endanger my safety and those of people around me.
Q Understood.
Though Smith did later confirm that Trump tried to retaliate against Covington & Burling because they represented him.
Regarding Smith’s investigation, one of the more interesting insights was his explanation of why he did not try to interview Steve Bannon, Peter Navarro, or Roger Stone.
Ms. Lofgren. Can I ask — we attempted in the January 6th Committee to question 12 Peter Navarro as well as Steve Bannon, and they were both prosecuted and spent time in jail. Roger Stone appeared but took the Fifth.
Were you able to provide — to get information from any of those three individuals 15 and in the case of Mr. Stone provide use immunity so that he would have to testify?
The Witness. We did not.
Ms. Lofgren. Why not?
The Witness. We pursued the investigative routes that we thought were the most fruitful. We pursued those that we thought were necessary to get a complete understanding of the scope of the conspiracy. And given the highly uncooperative nature of the individuals you talked about, I didn’t think it would be fruitful to try to question them.
And the sort of information that they could provide us, in my view, wasn’t worth immunizing them for their possible conduct.
In addition to Ephsteyn, he also interviewed Rudy. Smith repeatedly said that prosecutors would have welcomed if Trump called any of his co-conspirators as witnesses.
Q Were you planning on calling John Eastman as a witness?
A I do not believe we would have, but we would have welcomed if the defense called him.
Q Okay. It gets tricky, though, for the defense to call him because the people like Eastman and Clark and, you know, Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, I mean, you know, they were shrouded by the special counsel as, you know, co-conspirators one through six.
And so they all feared that they were going to be prosecuted if they said anything. Isn’t that fair?
A Well, they were co-conspirators. I can’t get into what was in their mind or not. can tell you some of the co-conspirators met with us in proffers and did interviews with us.
And so the idea that someone like Rudy Giuliani, who sat with a proffer with us, he was available as a witness, and we would have welcomed President Trump calling him as a witness.
Boris Epshteyn sat for an interview with us. We would have welcomed calling him as a witness.
Kenneth Chesebro. We would have welcomed it.
They probably had material lies all had made to either prosecutors or courts.
That comment led immediately to Republicans (who surely were trying to obtain evidence to support criminal charges against Smith) to ask why he hadn’t worked his way up through co-conspirators.
Q Why didn’t you charge any of those?
A I’m sorry?
Q Why didn’t you charge any of those, those co-conspirators?
A As we stated in the final report, we analyzed the evidence against different co-conspirators. We — my staff determined that we did have evidence to charge people at a certain point in time. 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.
Q Right. You’re a — you’ve had a 30-year career as a prosecutor. You prosecuted gang members, right?
A Yes.
Q You prosecuted organized crime members, right?
A Not as much.
Q But surely one of the fundamental principles of prosecutorial work is you work from the bottom up and you try to get as many fact witnesses to work with you. And a lot of times those fact witnesses have criminal liability.
And a lot of times those lower fact witnesses, the smaller fish, almost always they’re — they’re either prosecuted or they are given an immunity because they fear they’re going to be prosecuted. But here you didn’t — you know, you kept laser focused only on President Trump.
A Two points.
One, as I said, we were considering prosecutions of these people, and I think — I don’t want to say what the ultimate conclusion of that would have been, but that was something that was being considered.
The second thing I think to understand contextually is this was a case where the issue was how to present it in a concise way.
We had so many witnesses, again, 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.
That led to Smith explaining why he focused on Trump: because none of the crime would have happened without him. It was all done for his benefit.
A All of that is false, and I’ll say a few things.
The first is the evidence here made clear that President Trump was by a large measure the most culpable and most responsible person in this conspiracy. 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.
Aside from the two phones revelation or a detail about texts between Bannon and Ephsteyn in which Bannon told Ephsteyn that Trump was “still on fire,” there were almost no new disclosures.
Indeed, staffers from both parties were painfully unaware of all the public filings that could have supported some questioning there, including about Kash Patel’s testimony.
Meanwhile, staffers of both parties wanted to know why Trump stole the classified documents, which Smith declined to answer this way when responding to Democrats,
Q Okay. Can you draw any conclusions about his motive for refusing to return these documents?
A Unless you can point me to a filing, a public filing on that issue, I don’t want to run any risk of running afoul of the injunction. And so without a public filing on that issue, I don’t think I can answer that.
Q Just one last question. Did you come across in the course of your investigation any evidence about why President Trump took those documents in the first place?
A Again, I don’t think that’s in the indictment here, and unless you have a public filing, that given the current state of the injunction, I don’t think that’s a question I can answer.
And he responded this way when Republicans tried to offer up a stupid excuse for Trump.
Q Uh-huh. Do you know if he was intending to save those materials for his 12 Presidential library?
A You mean the classified documents?
Q The items in the boxes, all of them.
A Well, if he — if his defense were that he was intending to take classified documents that he had no authority to take and he did it intentionally because he wanted to start a Presidential library and keep these documents in the locations that we talked about today, that’s a crime.
Q No, but my question was, all the items in the boxes, the shirts and the, you know, mementos, were they being saved for a Presidential library, to the extent you were able to develop that in the course of your investigation?
A You know, I mean, there were newspaper clippings in there, there were, I think, you know, different sorts of things that I wouldn’t — wouldn’t, to me, seem like the sort of things that would be in a Presidential library. I — to be honest, I’ve never been to a Presidential library, so — but if I were starting one, I don’t think that’s the sort of things I would put in it.
Q Okay. But you didn’t develop any evidence during the course of your investigation that the materials were intended to be saved for a Presidential library?
A I don’t recall that.
Notably, Smith was uncertain whether the report discloses whether they got all the stolen documents back.
Q Do you think that the FBI was able to retrieve all the classified documents that 20 President Trump improperly retained after he lost the 2020 election?
A I’m struggling because I can’t recall if that is in the final report. And because I’m not sure of whether it’s in there, I don’t think I should answer that question.
In any case, Aileen Cannon is officially withholding information that both Democrats and Republicans want to know; perhaps that can be used to force her to release the report.
