Jack Smith stuns Senate as Trump ally gets caught in private

David Pakman (0:00)

Today, former special counsel Jack Smith goes under oath and he makes an extraordinary statement about the evidence that his investigation developed against Trump while a Republican senator thinks he's got Smith in perjury.

But it turns out to be a mix up about women's basketball. Leaked audio catches Trump loyalist Ken Paxton admitting that Trump's big midterm convention damaged him severely. And Trump is now officially renaming artificial intelligence to super intelligence, all because he doesn't understand what the word artificial means. We have all of it. A strange AI press conference, a push for AI to regulate itself. And we will speak to Hilary Shae, who you all loved the last time she was on. We've got a show today. If they let us do it, we will record it and we will publish it. You have my word.

Special prosecutor Jack Smith went under oath before the Senate Judiciary Committee and said something about Donald Trump that couldn't possibly be any more serious. Remember, this is the former special counsel who actually led the federal investigations to Donald Trump and listened to what he had to say. Beyond a reasonable doubt, they had proof that Trump engaged in serious crimes against our nation. This is insanely serious.

Jack Smith (1:39)

Our investigation developed proof beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump engaged in serious crimes against our nation. If asked whether to prosecute a former president today based on the same facts, I would do so regardless of whether that president was a Republican or a Democrat.

The charges against President Trump were the result of the evidence. Grand juries and two separate districts reached this conclusion based on his actions as alleged in the indictments they returned. Rather than accept his defeat in the 2020 presidential election, President Trump engaged in a criminal scheme to overturn the results and prevent the lawful transfer of power. After leaving office in January of 2021, President Trump illegally kept classified documents at his Marilago Social Club and repeatedly tried to obstruct justice to conceal his continued retention of those documents.

David Pakman (2:45)

These are extraordinary statements, which I understand we've been sort of desensitized to because it's been eleven and a half years of this insanity. But these are these are extraordinary things to hear being said under oath about a president of the United States. Now we should be precise about what's being said by Smith.

The assessment of Jack Smith of the evidence is not a jury verdict. We're not claiming that it is Trump pleaded guilty of Trump pleaded guilty. Trump pleaded not guilty in both federal cases and neither case went to trial. And the prosecutions ultimately ended after Donald Trump won the twenty twenty four election and went back to being president of the United States.

But Smith saying, if you gave me the same evidence today, I would make the same decision. He told senators if he were asked whether to prosecute a former president based on the same facts, he would do it if it were a Republican and he would do it if it were a Democrat. Now Smith was originally appointed in twenty twenty two and he brought those two federal cases against Donald Trump. One involved Trump's attempts to overturn the twenty twenty election. The other involved classified documents that Trump retained. These are the so called bathroom documents, the toilet documents that Trump was potentially keeping in his toilet and that then he also was engaged in efforts to obstruct recovering those documents. What Jack Smith is saying is that after all of this, he's put back under oath and he says my position hasn't changed. And in his final report on these cases, he said the admissible evidence would have been enough to get a conviction at trial had Trump not won the twenty twenty four election. When we said during the twenty four campaign, this is Trump running to stay out of prison. Now it was metaphorical because I don't think Trump was ever going to see a day in prison, but put that aside. It was indeed in the sense that Jack Smith said this only went away because Trump won.

And now Republicans are essentially putting the investigator on trial and they're saying, oh, Smith was politically biased and he overreached from a prosecutorial standpoint and he unfairly swept Republican lawmakers into the investigation. And that leads to this incredible exchange involving the late Senator Lindsey Graham and his sister. I know it's it's it's so incestuous and nepotistic. Senator Darlene Graham is the sister of the late Senator Lindsey Graham. She's now the senator representing South Carolina. And there is this incredible moment where Darlene tries to confront Smith. Oh, you were getting phone records from my brother and all of this stuff. Do you really think that my brother would have destroyed evidence? And Smith's answer completely upends the question where he goes, oh, you know what? We weren't investigating Lindsey.