Jack Smith subpoenaed to testify about investigations into Donald Trump
Chair Jim Jordan of the House Judiciary Committee is behind this.
[This was the best Grok could render Jack Smith]
Those Senators who had their phone records subpoenaed by Jack Smith, and put into the legislation that ended the shutdown a provision that allowed them to sue for $500,000 for every instance, passed their grievances along to the House, and now Jim Jordan is acting on them.
Six weeks ago, the Committee was talking about subpoenaing Jack Smith behind closed doors, and Smith said he wanted to do it out in public in a televised hearing. It's scheduled to be a closed-door hearing on December 17th.
The difference is that in a closed-door hearing, one member can question for an hour at a time, whereas in a public hearing, they're limited to 5 minutes at a time. There are 44 members of the Committee: 25 Republicans, and 19 Democrats. The questioning could last for days.
Jack wanted a public hearing because he knew it would completely backfire on the Republican led Judiciary Committee. Behind closed doors, we may or may not get a transcript. The Republicans will leak anything that Jack did in his investigation that can be spun into being overreach. But that's not the case as evidenced by a comment from Rep. Jamie Raskin.
Rep Raskin said, “Special Counsel Smith's careful investigative steps stand in contrast to a separate subpoena issued for 2.5 years of Chairman Jordan's personal phone records that was recently produced at the Committee and appears manifestly overbroad.” Smith's requests “were narrowly tailored to obtain phone records for the days surrounding January 6.”
Raskin also said in a statement, “Chairman Jordan has denied Special Counsel Jack Smith's offer to speak publicly to the whole Congress and the whole country about his investigations into Donald Trump, instead demanding he comply with a subpoena for a closed-door, private session, so Republicans can spin, distort, and cherry-pick his remarks through press leaks. What are our colleagues so afraid of, so that they won't let the American people hear directly from the Special Counsel?”
Jack Smith's investigations were about Trump leading the January 6th insurrection, and Donald Trump's retention of classified documents. Both were open and shut cases. We know what he did on January 6th, and we saw the piles of documents in boxes in various locations around Mar-a-Lago. We know nothing about Trump's other properties, which could also have had classified documents located there. I always thought that search warrants should have been served for every one of his properties, like Trump Tower and his golf clubs which had storage available.
There was a two-volume set created by Jack Smith's team about the January 6th insurrection and the classified documents. The January 6th part was released in January. The second part, the classified documents case, has yet to be released. Trump and his legal team are trying to keep the second volume secret, as groups seeking transparency have filed motions to have it released. Merrick Garland said in January that the second volume would not be released because there was still an ongoing case against Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliviera. But those cases were dismissed, so there is no reason for the volume not to be released, except for the fact that Donald Trump doesn't want it to be, and he's in control of the Department of Justice.
The Committee wants unspecified categories of records in its hands by December 12th. The format of a closed-door session will allow Jack Smith the opportunity to divulge a lot more information, but if the American public doesn't get to hear it, or read it, of what use is it? It's just another way for Donald Trump to hassle another person on his enemies list.