House Republicans are sending a clear message. The GOP really doesn’t want former special adviser Jack Smith will one day have the opportunity to speak to the American people about his testimony against Donald Trump in files 1/6 and classified documents.
Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee, led by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), rejected Smith’s request for a public hearing.
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Instead, Republicans want Smith to testify behind closed doors, without cameras.
Jamie Raskin, a member of the House Judiciary Committee, responded to Jordan’s attempt to hide Smith by saying:
President Jordan has refused Special Counsel Jack Smith’s offer to speak publicly to the entire Congress and the entire country about his investigations into Donald Trump, instead demanding that he comply with a subpoena for a private, closed-door session simply so that Republicans can hijack, distort, and cherry-pick his remarks through press leaks. What are our colleagues so afraid of that they won’t let the American people hear directly from the Special Advisor?
In recent months, congressional Republicans and the Trump administration have launched a coordinated campaign to smear Special Counsel Smith and his team for conducting their professional criminal investigation into months-long efforts by Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani and their allies to keep Trump in power and overturn the results of the 2020 election, which Trump lost to Joe Biden by more than seven million votes, 306-232 in the Electoral College.
More recently, they falsely claimed that the special counsel had “spied on” certain senators and “tapped” their phones. In fact, he issued legal subpoenas for three days of their phone records around the Jan. 6 attack — not the content of their calls, but the call recording, the kind of information found on a monthly phone bill.
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