Jack Smith Faces Senate Over Trump Cases

The story so far

As of September 29, 2026

Former Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith sat for a combative Senate Judiciary Committee hearing and said he would bring the same two federal cases against Donald Trump again on the same facts. He told senators he would not be silenced by threats of prosecution and that grand juries in two districts had approved the charges. Republicans framed his work as political and abusive. Both federal cases ended without a trial after Trump’s 2024 election win, and Smith later left his post.

The hearing centered less on Trump’s conduct than on Smith’s methods. Republicans pressed him about sweeping subpoenas and data demands used in the Jan. 6 investigation, including phone-use records for lawmakers and broad collections tied to Trump White House devices. Committee materials and GOP statements cited numbers that showed the reach of those steps, including 87 Trump White House phones and communications touching 44 members of Congress, as well as phone-use data for eight Republican senators over Jan. 4–7, 2021. Smith defended the tactics as consistent with Justice Department rules and said he stands by prior testimony about what his team did and did not obtain.

What is at stake now is whether prosecutors can investigate powerful elected officials and a former president without facing retaliation from the government they once investigated. Smith warned that jailing threats from the president and vilification of line investigators endanger the basic expectation that cases rise or fall on evidence, not on who is being investigated. Republicans aim to establish that his subpoenas and records collection crossed lines, including protections that shield lawmakers’ official work, and they are using this forum to build a record for potential action against him.

The facts that explain the present fight are simple: there were indictments approved by grand juries, the cases were halted before verdicts after Trump returned to office, and Congress has become the arena where those unresolved questions are relitigated. Even viral moments, such as a senator’s failed attempt to catch Smith in a lie about attending an Atlanta Hawks game that turned out to be a Caitlin Clark Iowa Hawkeyes game in Maryland, point to the same dynamic. The legal questions that will matter going forward are not about who won a court case, but about the boundaries of investigative power when the subjects are members of Congress and a former president.