Anti-Trump Republican Humiliates Fellow GOP Senators At Jack Smith Hearing — Jan 6,US Midterms

[0:00] on behalf of the chair i recognize myself um mr smith thank you for being here [0:08] the one thing that i just want to observe where i may be a bit of a odd duck in this committee is [0:15] i've got very few skills but a good memory is one of them and i think it's fascinating how people [0:22] want to pick up the mantle of vindictive prosecution or whatever else when their [0:26] guy's not in office but i was just going back through ai as we were when you were after you [0:32] finished your opening statement saying give me three examples where there was general consensus [0:40] that there was a vindictive prosecution going on dating back to obama one every single one of them [0:45] we had whether it was lois lerner and what the irs was doing or crossfire hurricane uh the judicial [0:54] our prosecutorial misconduct is something that's always going on so i find it interesting that [0:58] people think they're the only party who is right and righteous on this okay that's a general statement [1:04] don't expect you to to speak to it but more recently um i thought that 8647 was probably not a solid basis [1:12] for making a former fbi director who disappointed me profoundly um um on this committee probably not the [1:21] right way to spend our time or the perp walk so just so you know i had to get that out there [1:26] i think we all need to be mindful of how we behave and how we're perceived and mr smith there were [1:32] people who felt like there was a political motivation to what you were doing but i also think if you look [1:39] at some of the facts the facts are what they are and it's going to be interesting to see if at some point [1:44] in the future we can get down to who precisely was responsible for forcing every member of the u.s [1:50] senate to be in this room while thugs destroyed this building and injured over 100 police officers [1:57] i hope to hell someday we can find somebody who was accountable for that and hopefully we can cool the [2:05] political temperatures to get to that fact-based assessment but mr smith if you were to look back [2:12] uh at uh the two investigations we focused most of our time at um let's assume you you feel very [2:21] strongly that that there was criminal intent there was sufficient evidence to move forward with the [2:25] prosecution are there any things that if you did it differently um looking back you may have you may [2:32] have taken a different tact or or or tried to build even in your job you still have to build public [2:39] support for what you're doing because the default always is here whoever doesn't have the white [2:44] house is a vindictive prosecution can you think of any examples of where you wish you'd [2:48] managed the process differently or or engage different people to try and rise above that [2:54] um the allegations that you've heard today about political motivation behind the prosecutions [2:59] yes and and thank you for that question speak real loud i'm sorry yeah take that curl out there [3:04] we go there you go okay um yes um one of the things that i was taught as a prosecutor through my career [3:12] is you only do your talking in the courtroom and uh that you don't talk on the courthouse steps [3:18] one of the things that i learned from this experience is that if you stick to that and that alone [3:25] people can unfairly malign your team and unfairly malign you and your case in a way and you really can't [3:32] respond because you don't want to interfere with someone's right to a fair trial and you don't want [3:38] to get down in the gutter and start calling people names uh but at the same time there are things being [3:43] put out daily that are patently untrue and you know they're untrue i'm not advocating that prosecutors [3:50] in the future uh start going on the internet every day responding to comments uh but i do think that the [3:58] school of prosecution i came from where you only speak in the courtroom i do agree that uh prosecutors [4:04] in the future need to learn to be able to communicate to the outside world because i believe [4:10] strongly we did our investigation the right way but i limited myself uh in who i talked to about that i [4:17] talked about uh i think i did two announcements that were under four minutes in the time i was special [4:22] counsel uh i think going forward uh to engender public trust in these cases i think that's a [4:30] real thing we need to think about going forward in the future yeah you know you happen to have uh [4:36] gotten into this uh job when we have the the amplifier and the sustainer of social media uh i don't think [4:43] they're you know frankly people have always been criticizing prosecutors for cases you just didn't have [4:47] that persistent inbox of things that were said about you but for what i think you need to look past [4:53] that you got to win in the courtroom not in public opinion and i think we need people to set the [4:58] example to stop worrying about i mean my god uh i get it every day that's why i don't look at social media [5:04] but i think you've undermined some of the credibility by going out there and kind of being a [5:09] spokesperson dealing with the politics of the prosecution where i think your observation that most of that [5:16] talking should go in the courtroom is one that i hope people will internalize um the uh that the can [5:23] you give me an idea the uh of the the just the sheer volume of the documentation that uh that was a [5:34] you're talking to somebody who doesn't even bring a pen into a skiff i write nothing down i don't even [5:40] take notes um and i never leave it with a piece of paper that was handed to me whether they say i can or [5:45] not that removes any doubt about whether or not i'm in possession of classified documents can you [5:50] give me some sense of the scale again of what you believe you found at moro argo uh i don't think i [5:57] can due to judge cannon's order uh that's in the volume two of the report that's correct okay and what [6:03] is the substance of that report over time at what point will that report become known uh i don't know [6:11] but i don't have any role in that i drafted a report pursuant to the special counsel regulations [6:17] saying i needed to draft a report for the attorney general the attorney general makes the decision [6:22] whether that's public or not i've had no role in that well part of you know part of what i'm i'm [6:26] trying to figure out i'm sorry to interrupt you but the um yeah i do believe that we've over classified [6:32] a lot of documents so maybe some of these people that are getting into trouble is that they got [6:37] documents that should have never been classified but it is very important to me to know about the [6:46] the magnitude of some of these documents that were outside of a skip outside of a classified setting [6:52] that's very very concerning to me and whether you're a democrat or republican i think you should [6:56] be held accountable for it any of my colleagues that did it they should be held accountable for there's no [7:00] excuse um so we're not really going to know about that until maybe some point in the future why is [7:08] that odd why should i find that odd why can't we know about the substance of some of those documents now [7:15] uh well you can't know about it from me because i want to follow judge cannon's order no i'm just [7:20] talking about to the general public i mean why i i assume it could be could that evidence that's [7:25] collected actually be resumed as the subsequent investigation at some point or is it [7:30] off the table based on the way it was acquired i'm just trying to i'm not an attorney so i don't ask [7:35] questions i know the answer to i legitimately trying to understand what that information is what [7:40] status it's in now whether or not it's relevant to future prosecutions i'm just trying to be mindful [7:48] of judge cannon's order i think the only thing i can share with you is that uh we dismissed the case [7:54] and we dismissed it without prejudice i haven't given thought to what would happen after that you [7:58] dismiss that based on the uh based on the reality that president won reelection that's correct that's [8:04] correct both what about the other two dismissals the other two cases that were not uh related to the [8:10] president that were dismissed after the president was sworn in you had nothing to do with that right [8:15] the dismissal of the other that that's correct the dismissal of those cases was done um after january of [8:21] 2025 the policy that required me to dismiss the case against president trump did not require me to [8:29] dismiss those cases and but it was a decision made by the doj correct uh last thing i want to leave [8:35] you i think you would be and i know you've taken some notes uh because i i need to parse through uh [8:43] some of what was said today i think there are some very important points that were made today that may [8:48] be in conflict um are you know i you know from either either side i think you owe it to yourself and to [8:55] this committee to commit to in writing addressing these and submit it to the committee can i get your [9:01] commitment to do that i'm thinking particularly about some of the exchange with uh uh with uh senator [9:07] schmidt uh but any of these things that kind of left out there an allegation that i'm not sure was [9:14] completely proven i think you owe it to yourself in this committee to provide us with a fulsome response [9:19] can i get your commitment to do that yes thank you on behalf of the chair senator whitehouse