Former Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith on Thursday defended his investigations of Donald Trump at a congressional hearing in which he insisted that he had acted without regard to politics and had no second thoughts about the criminal charges he brought.

Smith testified behind closed doors last month but returned to the House Judiciary Committee for a public hearing, his first since leaving the job last year. The hearing split along partisan lines as Republican lawmakers sought to undermine the former Justice Department official as Democrats hoped to elicit new and damaging testimony about Trump’s conduct.

“It was always about politics,” said Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, the Republican chairman of the House Judiciary Committee.

“Maybe for them,” retorted Rep. Jamie Raskin, the panel’s top Democrat, during his on opening statement. “But for us, it’s all about the rule of law.”

Smith told lawmakers that he stood behind his decision as special counsel to bring charges against Trump in separate cases that accused the Republican of conspiring to overturn the 2020 presidential election after he lost to Democrat Joe Biden and hoarding classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, after he left the White House. He said that, as special counsel, he had “followed Justice Department policies, observed legal requirements and took actions based on the fact and the law.”

“Our investigation developed proof beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump engaged in criminal activity,” Smith said. “If asked whether to prosecute a former president based on the same facts today, I would do so regardless of whether that president was a Republican or a Democrat.”

“No one should be above the law in our country, and the law required that he be held to account. So that is what I did,” he said.

The hearing unfolded against the backdrop of an ongoing Trump administration retribution campaign targeting the investigators who scrutinized the Republican president. The Justice Department has fired lawyers and other employees who worked with Smith, and an independent watchdog agency responsible for enforcing a law against partisan political activity by federal employees said last summer that it had opened an investigation into him.

“In my opinion, these people are the best of public servants, our country owes them a debt of gratitude, and we are all less safe because many of these experienced and dedicated law enforcement professionals have been fired,” Smith said of the terminated members of his team.

Smith was appointed in 2022 by Biden’s Justice Department to oversee investigations into Trump, who has denied any wrongdoing. Both investigations produced indictments against Trump, but the cases were abandoned by Smith and his team after Trump won back the White House because of longstanding Justice Department legal opinions that say sitting presidents cannot be indicted.

Smith was summoned to the hearing by Jordan, who on Thursday advanced a talking point frequently advanced by Trump that the investigation was driven by a desire to derail Trump’s candidacy.

“We should never forget what took place, what they did to the guy we the people elected twice,” Jordan said.

Smith vigorously rejected those suggestions and said the evidence placed Trump’s actions squarely at the heart of a criminal conspiracy to undo the 2020 election.

“The evidence here made clear that President Trump was by a large measure the most culpable and most responsible person in this conspiracy,” Smith said. “These crimes were committed for his benefit. The attack that happened at the Capitol, part of this case, does not happen without him. The other co-conspirators were doing this for his benefit.”

From the start, Republicans sought to portray Smith as an overly aggressive hard-charging prosecutor who had to be “reined in” by higher-ups and the courts as he pursued Trump during his campaign.

Rep. Kevin Kiley, a Republican from California, portrayed Smith as an overly aggressive prosecutor who did not show the same “humility and restraint” shown by other past special counsels. Kiley accused Smith of seeking “maximum litigation advantage at every turn” and “repeatedly circumventing constitutional limitations to the point that you had to be reined in again and again throughout the process.”

He and other Republicans pressed Smith on the decision to seek and review phone records of more than a half-dozen Republican lawmakers who were in contact with Trump on the afternoon of Jan. 6, 2021, as his supporters stormed the Capitol in a bid to halt the certification of his 2020 election loss. The records revealed the length and time of the calls but not the content of the communications.

Smith explained that collecting the phone records was a “common practice” and said he sought the data because he wanted to understand the “scope of the conspiracy” to overturn the election.

It was unlikely that Smith would share new information Thursday about his classified documents investigation. A report his team prepared on its findings remains sealed by order of a Trump-appointed judge in Florida, Aileen Cannon, and Trump’s lawyers this week asked the court to permanently block its release.

(AP)