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Frequent special counsel Jack Smith on Thursday defended his decision to accurate two criminal indictments against President Trump and asserted his crew had gathered ample proof to convict.

Smith gave his first public testimony about his work Thursday, showing earlier than the Dwelling Judiciary Committee. Republican participants of the panel attacked Smith’s recede to bag phone data of lawmakers who had been in contact with Trump allies across the time of the Capitol riot in 2021. And they also cast the historical investigations of Trump as politically motivated.

“It was always about politics and to get President Trump. They were willing to do almost anything,” acknowledged Fetch. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, the panel’s chairman.

“I am not a politician, and I have no partisan loyalties,” Smith spoke back. “My office didn’t spy on anyone.”

Neither of Smith’s cases reached a jury earlier than Trump received the 2024 election and returned to the White Dwelling final three hundred and sixty five days.

In a videotaped deposition, Smith acknowledged the president had only himself to blame, for charges he tried to overturn the will of voters in 2020.

“The evidence here made clear that President Trump was by a large measure the most culpable and most responsible person in this conspiracy,” Smith acknowledged within the deposition, which congressional Republicans launched on New Year’s Eve. “These crimes were committed for his benefit.”

Smith acknowledged the violent attack on the U.S. Capitol, which injured 140 guidelines enforcement officers, haven’t got came about, except for for Trump. He acknowledged he might per chance per chance now not realize the president’s mass pardon of participants of the Capitol mob on Trump’s first day in its effect of labor and predicted many of them would commit recent crimes within the years ahead.

“No one should be above the law in our country, and the law required that he be held to account,” Smith told lawmakers Thursday. “So that is what I did.”

He has been alive to to protect the work of prosecutors and FBI agents who labored on the investigations of the president. Most of those folks were fired after Trump returned to power.

Asked about regrets or errors, Smith acknowledged if anything, he would have expressed extra appreciation for participants of his crew, who “sacrificed” so mighty within the course of their government carrier.

Trump suggests Justice Department need to probe Smith

At some level of the hearing, Trump posted on Truth Social that Smith used to be being “decimated” by Republican questions.

“Jack Smith is a deranged animal, who shouldn’t be allowed to practice Law,” Trump wrote. “Hopefully the Attorney General is looking at what he’s done, including some of the crooked and corrupt witnesses that he was attempting to use in his case against me.”

Smith declined a risk to acknowledge straight to the president’s phrases from the gape table, however he acknowledged he entirely expected the Trump Justice Department to uncover a formulation to punish him. The Justice Department has already moved to bring criminal charges against two of the president’s perceived foes.

“I will not be intimidated,” Smith acknowledged.

Trump has promised at assorted times to delivery a criminal investigation into Smith or even throw him out of the nation.

One dwelling where Smith tread in moderation is the investigation into labeled documents that the FBI snarl in a ballroom, a lavatory and an effect of labor at Trump’s Florida resort. A 2d quantity of Smith’s final document that concerns that episode has been blocked from delivery by Mediate Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee who oversaw the case, however media organizations and nonprofit teams have pushed to delivery it.

Trump’s inner most lawyer made a contemporary plea this week to retain those findings secret. The president argues that Smith’s document contains big jury and privileged offers that might per chance per chance hurt Trump’s constitutional and privacy rights if launched.