House Republicans release transcript and video of Jack Smith’s closed-door testimony before Judiciary Committee

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/jack-smith-closed-door-testimony-released-house-republicans-judiciary-rcna251732

28 Comments

  1. Pristine-Bad-8731 on

    That is a very ballsy thing for them to do. They’re pushing back against Trumpian bullshit and bullying. This is a god sign.

  2. And for the record, not once did Jack Smith invoke the 5th amendment unlike certain others related to his investigations

  3. “The time and speed of our work reflects the strength of the evidence and our confidence that we would have secured convictions at trial” —Jack Smith

    Easy to forget a year later, the reason Trump ran was to avoid conviction. 

    The stakes could not have been higher—for many terrible world leaders with expansionists dreams that a liberal democratic America would have stood in the way of—but none more so than for Trump himself. 

    He absolutely *had* to win and there were plenty of foreign and domestic actors with endless money who were more than happy to ensure it happened. 

  4. euphplayer1993 on

    What’s the point of releasing it before the jc? My guess is to say “fuck you, there’s nothing you can do about it” to the American people.

  5. At a time when the average person won’t know this happened so they can still lie about what happened.

  6. Sure, on New Year’s Eve, when everyone will stop what they are doing to go and watch or read.

    Plus, the major TV networks are focused on NYE around the world or sports.

  7. Page 195:

    Following up on that a little bit, if individuals are fired or lose their job simply for taking part of an investigation into someone who is an authority figure or in a high position of government, how does that impact our democracy?

    Well, if you take the position that you cannot work in the Federal Government unless you have a political allegiance to the President, I think there are many harms to that. Our country tried that in the past. It’s called the patronage system, and what we learned in our history — and this would be if it’s a Democrat or Republican. It would not matter. But what we learned is that those systems are rife with not only corruption, but with incompetence, because the people who have these jobs, they didn’t get them because of merit, because they dedicated their career to learning national security law, to learning how to properly investigate a case.

    They got their jobs because they’re loyal to a particular person. That’s not fair, but it also makes for people who really don’t know how to do the work. So I think that’s a danger to the country. It saddens and angers me in the short-term, but I think there are great costs to us long-term if that’s the direction we’re going.

  8. Please include as much of the article as possible in your post: “The House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday released a full transcript and video of former special counsel Jack Smith’s closed-door deposition before the Republican-led panel earlier this month.

    The release consists of a 255-page transcript and more than eight hours of video. Smith sought to testify publicly, but his request was denied by Republicans on the Judiciary Committee.

    In the deposition, a confident, candid and straight-to-the-point Smith described in great detail why he believed he had enough evidence to not only try but convict President Donald Trump of conspiracy to obstruct the certification of the electoral votes on Jan. 6, 2021, along with the other criminal charges against him in Washington, D.C., and Florida.”

    During his opening statement, Smith told lawmakers that his team found “proof beyond a reasonable doubt” that Trump engaged in a “criminal scheme” to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Smith also testified that Trump “repeatedly tried to obstruct justice” in the classified documents case, as previously reported by NBC News.”

  9. Public-Land-8064 on

    He complied with a Congressional subpoena, unlike the chair of the committee he appeared before.

  10. I’m too mad right now to listen. Dumpy pants gets away with everything and for what? Why are these people being protected. Enough is enough, when does it ever end with their crimes and no punishment. Yeah it’s rhetorical.

  11. AllPugsGo2Heaven on

    They likely did it in combination between Massie (R) and Rankin (D) tbh. Massie has nothing to lose since he already ruffled Trump. Since trump screwed over Boebert and MtG, Massie is doing an equivalent flex for vetoing bipartisan legislation. Nice to see the coequal branch of government actually exercising power.

    All this to say that Trump is in the Epstein files and should be removed from office. He is categorically unfit.

    Edit: grammar

  12. Republicans always have ulterior motive. Whats the motive for releasing the transcript of closed/door testimony?

  13. I would love to see how the Republicans would act if this was a Democrat being charged with the crimes Trump was. I guarantee they would be responding quite differently, and why the party is just a bunch of hypocrites now.

  14. kamikazecockatoo on

    After the next election, Gavin Newsom should appoint Jack Smith as his AG. He won’t fuck around like Merrick Garland did.

  15. I’ll definitely listen to this on my overnight shift. I wonder what Trump is thinking about the release of this video. Seething possibly?

  16. I think I know why domestic terrorist Jim Jordan denied Smith’s request for a public hearing.

  17. Interesting to release it on New Year’s Eve
    Smith is a solid guy, I’m 3.5 hrs in and haven’t seen him once give a personal opinion about anything or take the bait on anything
    Just the facts