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Republicans’ Criminal Referral of Jack Smith Exposed as Total Nonsense
House Republicans are trying to file criminal charges against former special counsel Jack Smith.Representative Jim Jordan, chair of the House Judiciary Committee, sent a criminal referral for Smith to the Department of Justice Wednesday, urging the department to investigate Smith for making false statements to Congress during congressional testimony in December.At issue is a line of questioning in which Smith was asked whether he sought a search warrant for the content of text messages from members of Congress, to which Smith replied that he did not. Last week, Senator Chuck Grassley posted on X that he had “received records [from] DOJ confirming Jack Smith’s investigative team reviewed the contents of text msgs sent by 44 MEMBERS OF CONGRESS.”But Grassley’s post and the questions Smith was asked were two different categories of documents, as legal experts such as Lawfare’s Anna Bower and Politico’s Kyle Cheney pointed out on X. Smith requested information from Congress on toll records, which concerned the time and date of text messages, not their content.There was a separate instance in which Smith’s team gathered text messages from the National Archives from White House phones. Some of those records included exchanges with members of Congress. But Republicans never asked about that.“[T]here’s zero ambiguity here,” Bower said. “Nothing in the Grassley docs raises any real question of perjury.”House Democrats quickly responded to Jordan’s letter Wednesday. Representative Jamie Raskin called Jordan’s letter a “baseless and vindictive criminal referral” that “deliberately distorts and misstates the facts, including what questions the Republicans actually asked at Mr. Smith’s interview.”Smith’s lawyers have also responded to Jordan’s letter with one of their own, saying his accusations are based on a “spurious claim.”“The referral is made not because Mr. Smith made a false statement, which the letter concedes, but because he did not proactively disclose information that was not responsive to a question asked,” Smith’s lawyers wrote. “During his testimony, Mr. Smith provided truthful, responsive answers and candidly discussed his work.”
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'Laughably weak': GOP's criminal referral against Jack Smith dismissed as 'meaningless'
The House Judiciary Committee is referring former Special Counsel Jack Smith for criminal prosecution, but analysts are dismissing it.On Wednesday, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) alleged that Smith "knowingly made false statements" and referred him to the Department of Justice for prosecution. Jordan, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, alleged in a letter to Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche that "strong evidence" appears to show Smith lied during a December 17 testimony.Smith is the prosecutor who brought two now-dismissed criminal cases against Trump relating to 2020 election interference and the retention of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago. The December 17 testimony mentioned in Jordan's letter refers to a closed-door House Judiciary deposition where Smith defended prosecuting Trump.Despite Jordan's strongly worded criminal referral against Smith, legal analysts, journalists, and Democratic lawmakers are dismissing it.Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, slammed Jordan's criminal referral in a public statement. Raskin was particularly upset with Jordan for faulting Smith for not volunteering National Archives and Records Administration presidential information that Republicans never asked about."The Republicans fault Mr. Smith for not reading the minds of congressional investigators and for not volunteering information they didn't ask for," Raskin wrote. "This is absurd. Mr. Smith may be telegenic but he is not telepathic."The House Judiciary Committee Democrats' X account similarly blasted the referral as "laughably weak" and "vindictive" in a post.CNN political analyst Xochitl Hinojosa noted, "Trump called for Jack Smith's prosecution, so DOJ spent 20 months trying to find ANYTHING on Jack and failed," she wrote in a post on X. "Now we're seeing a desperate attempt to try to prosecute this longtime career prosecutor for following the facts and the law."Around the time news of the referral came out, Politico legal reporter Kyle Cheney simply reposted what he wrote in 2025: "Periodic reminder that criminal referrals from Congress, other than for contempt, are substantively meaningless."
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