Jack Smith’s closed-door testimony released by House Republicans after Judiciary Committee deposition

The House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday released a full transcript and video of former special counsel Jack Smith’s closed-door deposition before the Republican-led panel earlier this month.

The release consists of a 255-page transcript and more than eight hours of video. Smith sought to testify publicly, but his request was denied by Republicans on the Judiciary Committee.

In the deposition, a confident, candid and straight-to-the-point Smith described in great detail why he believed he had enough evidence to not only try but convict President Donald Trump of conspiracy to obstruct the certification of the electoral votes on Jan. 6, 2021, along with the other criminal charges against him in Washington, D.C., and Florida.

During his opening statement, Smith told lawmakers that his team found “proof beyond a reasonable doubt” that Trump engaged in a “criminal scheme” to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Smith also testified that Trump “repeatedly tried to obstruct justice” in the classified documents case, as previously reported by NBC News.

On the election interference case, Smith said Trump was “by a large measure the most culpable and most responsible person in this conspiracy,” and that there was strong evidence that Trump was spreading “claims that were so outlandish and so just fantastical” and continuing “to push those sort of claims after they’d been disabused.”

The Judiciary Committee, led by Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, a top Trump ally, is investigating Smith and his former office over the federal indictments of the president after his first term.

One of the indictments alleged that Trump improperly stored classified documents after he left office, while the second alleged that he interfered in the 2020 presidential election by spreading false claims about voter fraud.

Both cases have since been dismissed. Trump pleaded not guilty and denied any wrongdoing.

Since returning to office, Trump has repeatedly called for Smith to be prosecuted.

Smith said during his testimony that he would not be surprised if he himself was indicted by the Justice Department.

At one point, Smith was asked whether Trump’s false statements about the 2020 election were protected by the First Amendment.

“Absolutely not,” he answered.

“There is no historical analog for what President Trump did in this case. As we said in the indictment, he was free to say that he thought he won the election,” Smith said. “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 knowing — knowingly false statements about election fraud to target a lawful government function.”

Smith told lawmakers multiple times that he could prove Trump knew the claims he was making about election fraud were false.

“When he was told that a fraud claim wasn’t true, he didn’t stop making it,” Smith said.

“These would be false claims about dead voters. It would be false claims about underage voters. It would be false claims about illegal alien voters. The false claims were generally, as a general matter, about urban centers where he had lost the vote in a particular state that was otherwise close by a lot,” he added. “And, again, these were claims that were rebutted by people around him who knew that they were false and in many cases told him they were false.”

Smith also addressed Trump’s attacks on him and other career civil servants in the Justice Department.

“I am both saddened and angered that President Trump has sought revenge against career prosecutors, FBI agents, and support staff simply for doing their jobs and for having worked on those cases,” he said. “These dedicated public servants are the best of us, and they have been wrongly vilified and improperly dismissed from their jobs.”

He also told committee members: “I made it clear from the day that I began at the Special Counsel’s Office this was going to be a nonpartisan investigation, this was not — that politics would play no role in it. I think everybody in my office agreed to that.”

To that effect, Smith described an incident of an FBI agent being dismissed from the case because they had disclosed emails that involved them arguing with family members about the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol.

“Once I saw that or heard about that, I decided he could no longer work on this investigation,” Smith said.