NBC News reports:

Former special counsel Jack Smith told a congressional committee Wednesday that his team found “proof beyond a reasonable doubt” that President Donald Trump engaged in a “criminal scheme” to overturn the results of the 2020 election, according to parts of his opening statement obtained by NBC News.

Trump also “repeatedly tried to obstruct justice” to keep secret his retention of classified documents found during an FBI search of his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, Smith told members of the House Judiciary Committee at a closed-door hearing.

Smith said his team turned up “powerful evidence that showed Trump willfully retained highly classified documents after he left office in Jan. 2021, storing them at his social club, including in a bathroom and a ballroom where events and gatherings took place.”

House Oversight Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, subpoenaed Smith to testify as part of Republican efforts to investigate the special counsel’s office. Smith’s investigations led to two indictments of Trump: in the classified documents case and in the 2020 election interference case. Trump-appointed U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon dismissed the classified documents case in July 2024, and a separate judge agreed to drop the 2020 case in November 2024 after Trump won re-election.

Trump has repeatedly called for Smith to be prosecuted.

Facing a renewed wave of Republican attacks on his investigations into Trump, Smith was expected to try to use the hearing to correct what his team has described as mischaracterizations about the special counsel investigation.

Smith had wanted to testify in a public setting, but House Republicans refused to accommodate his request.

After the hearing Wednesday, House Judiciary Committee ranking member Jamie Raskin, D-Md., joked that Jordan “made an excellent decision in not allowing Jack Smith to testify publicly, because had he done so, it would have been absolutely devastating to the president and all the president’s men involved in the insurrectionary activities of Jan. 6.”

Lanny Breuer, Smith’s attorney, told reporters Wednesday that his client “is showing tremendous courage in light of the remarkable and unprecedented retribution campaign against him by this administration and this White House.”

Pushing back against criticism of his team’s decision to obtain and analyze the phone call records of nine congressional Republicans, Smith told members of the committee that those records “were lawfully subpoenaed and were relevant to complete a comprehensive” investigation.

“January 6 was an attack on the structure of our democracy in which over 100 heroic law enforcement officers were assaulted. Over 160 individuals later pled guilty to assaulting police officers that day,” Smith said. “Exploiting that violence, President Trump and his associates tried to call Members of Congress in furtherance of their criminal scheme, urging them to further delay certification of the 2020 election.”

“I didn’t choose those Members,” Smith added, “President Trump did.” [Continue reading…]