Overview
- The committee published a 255-page transcript and roughly eight hours of video from Smith’s Dec. 17 closed-door deposition, with some redactions.
- Smith told lawmakers the decision to charge President Trump was his, based on actions detailed in indictments returned by grand juries in two districts.
- He said his investigations developed proof beyond a reasonable doubt that Trump conspired to overturn the 2020 election and willfully retained highly classified documents while seeking to obstruct justice.
- Republicans challenged the probes as political and questioned metadata subpoenas for lawmakers’ phone records, which Smith defended as lawful and not content-based.
- A court order from Judge Aileen Cannon and grand-jury secrecy rules restricted Smith from discussing nonpublic aspects of the classified-documents case.