Jack Smith asserts that January 6 Capitol riot was principally the fault of Donald Trump
Hugo Lowell
Jack Smith said earlier that he opted not to charge Trump with insurrection, but he is asserting clearly that the January 6 Capitol riot was principally the fault of the president.
“Our assessment of the evidence is that he is the person most responsible for what happened on January 6,” Smith said. “He caused what happened. It was foreseeable to him, and then when it happened, he tried to exploit it in furtherance of the conspiracy.”
Key events
Rachel Leingang
Reporting from Minneapolis
JD Vance is in Minneapolis this afternoon, flanked by federal agents, to defend immigration enforcement operations in the state.
He spoke with agents and local business leaders ahead of talking to the press, he said.
The purpose of his visit is an attempt to “tone down the temperature a little bit, reduce the chaos, but still allow us as a federal government to enforce the American immigration laws,” he said. He claimed that immigration agents are doing a great job and that “frankly, a lot of the media is lying about the job that they do every single day” though there are “occasionally” instances where all agents may not be doing everything correctly.
Smith says he doesn’t understand why Trump pardoned Capitol rioters
Notably, Jack Smith said that he didn’t understand why Donald Trump pardoned more than 1,500 Capitol rioters when he returned to office last year. “I don’t get it, I never will,” he added.
“The people who assaulted police officers, were convicted after trial, my view, and I think in the view of the judges who sentenced them to prison, are dangerous to their communities,” Smith said. “Some of these people have already committed crimes against their communities again, and I think all of us reasonable know that there’s going to be more crimes committed by these people in the future.”
‘I will not be intimidated’ Smith says in response to questions about Trump’s social media insults
Congresswoman Becca Balint, a Democrat, pushed Smith to explain whether it’s uncommon for a special counsel’s report to remain unreleased.
A reminder that judge Aileen Cannon ordered Volume II of Smith’s report, on his investigation into Trump’s retention of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, to remain sealed. Smith said he was limited about what he could mention about the report given the court’s order.
The former special counsel also responded to Blint’s question about how Trump’s incessant insults against him.
“The statements are meant to intimidate me. I will not be intimidated,” Smith said. “I think these statements are also made as a warning to others what will happen if they stand up and I am, as I say, not going to be intimidated.”
Smith is now explaining how Trump “told his supporters to come to Washington DC” on 6 January 2021.
“He was on notice that they were angry, and he told that crowd, ‘we can’t let this happen’,” Smith said.
“There is a videotape of when he’s making these sort of statements, and he’s saying that they ‘need to fight’ if they want to save their country,” Smith recalled. “There are, in fact, people in the crowd chanting ‘fight for Trump,’ that all happened during the Ellipse speech before people headed towards the Capitol and the Capitol was attacked.”
Republican representative Brad Knott, of North Carolina, asked Smith why Trump was the only person charged in the investigation into his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
Smith said he was in the process of considering charging others involved, but this was negated when Trump was elected president again and the case was closed. He said:
At the time of the conclusion of our work, my lawyers had determined, had believed, that we did have proof to charge other people. I was in the process of making that determination when our work was concluded.
But you are correct that the only person charged in this case was Donald Trump, who, in my estimation, was the person most culpable for the crimes charged.
Jayapal then asked Smith how he would describe “the toll on our democracy if we do not hold a president accountable for attempting to steal an election”.
Smith replied:
My belief is that if we do not hold the most powerful people in our society to the same standards of the rule of law, it can be catastrophic, because if they don’t have to follow the law it’s very easy to understand why people think they don’t have to follow the law as well. So I think the law should be applied equally to everyone.
And asked about the toll for future elections and presidents who try to steal an election, Smith said:
I believe that if we don’t hold people to account when they commit crimes in this context, it can endanger our election process, it can endanger election workers, and ultimately, our democracy.
The attack on this Capitol on January 6 was … an attack on the structure of our democracy.
Smith says that Trump ’caused what happened on January 6′
Democratic representative Pramila Jayapal, of Washington, said that her Republican colleagues were trying to “rewrite history” by claiming that “somehow Trump’s words and actions did not legally rise to the level of criminal activity, that he did not directly cause violence at the Capitol”.
She said she wanted to set the record straight. Responding to her questions about what his investigation found, Jack Smith gave the following answers:
Did your investigation find that Donald Trump attempted to manufacture fraudulent slates of presidential electors in seven states that he lost? Yes.
Did he pressure state officials to ignore true vote counts in those states? Yes.
Did he spread lies and conspiracy to his followers to make them believe that the election had been illegally rigged against him? Yes.
Did he pressure DOJ officials to stop the certification of the election? He did.
Did he pressure his own vice-president, Mike Pence, to stop the certification, against the oath of office he had sworn to the constitution? He did.
And when all of this didn’t work, did he – Donald Trump – motivate and inspire an angry mob to the US Capitol to stop the certification. Our proof showed that he caused what happened on January 6, that it was foreseeable and that he exploited that violence.
Did Donald Trump know that his allegations of election fraud were lies when he spread them? Our proof was that he did and we intended to prove that at trial.
He even privately admitted that he lost the election, correct? Yes.
As Jack Smith continues to testify, Donald Trump has taken to Truth Social claiming that he “is being DECIMATED before Congress”.
The US president repeated his attack on Smith as a “deranged animal” and said he hoped that attorney general Pam Bondi “is looking at what he’s done, including some of the crooked and corrupt witnesses that he was attempting to use in his case against me”.
“The whole thing was a Democrat SCAM — A big price should be paid by them for what they have put our Country through!” Trump went on.
A reminder that Trump has frequently called on Bondi and the DOJ to investigate individuals he perceives to be his political adversaries, and the department has brought cases against several of them.
Sam Levine
Two people were arrested on Thursday morning in connection with a controversial protest at a Minnesota church on Sunday, Pam Bondi posted on social media.
The two people, who the attorney general identified as Nekima Levy Armstrong and Chauntyll Louisa Allen, were taken into custody on Thursday. Charging papers were not immediately available and the justice department did not immediately return a request for comment.
“Listen loud and clear: WE DO NOT TOLERATE ATTACKS ON PLACES OF WORSHIP,” Bondi said in a post on X.
The White House and Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, celebrated Armstrong’s arrest on social media and posted a picture of her being detained. Armstrong was being charged under a statute that makes it a crime to conspire to block someone from exercising their civil rights.
The disruption at Cities church in St Paul took place after demonstrators alleged that one of the pastors, David Easterwood, was the acting field director of the St Paul ICE office. The upset at a religious institution has caused widespread outrage among conservatives and the Trump administration has pledged to bring charges.
Jack Smith asserts that January 6 Capitol riot was principally the fault of Donald Trump
Hugo Lowell
Jack Smith said earlier that he opted not to charge Trump with insurrection, but he is asserting clearly that the January 6 Capitol riot was principally the fault of the president.
“Our assessment of the evidence is that he is the person most responsible for what happened on January 6,” Smith said. “He caused what happened. It was foreseeable to him, and then when it happened, he tried to exploit it in furtherance of the conspiracy.”
Hugo Lowell
Republicans on the judiciary committee have been very focused on Jack Smith’s toll records of phone calls between Trump, the White House and members of Congress who supported the president’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
As we noted earlier, toll records don’t contain the content of the conversations, but Republicans are framing Smith’s move to obtain the records – and get a gag order to prevent targeted lawmakers from being notified – as spying.
Smith has rebutted that several times, including in previous closed door testimony where he said that he was examining lawmakers because Trump was trying to enlist them in efforts to disrupt the 6 January 2021 certification.
Still, Smith has not directly addressed the technical point that obtaining toll records of members of Congress risked violating the speech or debate clause in the constitution, namely that obtaining a gag order meant there was no way for lawmakers to challenge him in court.
A quick note that throughout this hearing, ranking member Jamie Raskin has chided House Republicans on the committee for not letting Jack Smith answer their questions.
Representative Brandon Gill snapped back, insisting that this was not Raskin’s time, after the top Democrat told him that he was not giving Smith a chance to reply.
Congressman Darrell Issa, a Republican from California, finished his heated questioning of Jack Smith saying that “I yield back in disgust of this witness”.
The representative blasted Smith for going after “political enemies”.
“Maybe they’re not your political enemies,” Issa said. “But they sure as hell were Joe Biden’s political enemies, weren’t they? They were Harris’s political enemies. They were the enemies of the president.”
Smith defends obtaining ‘toll data’ on lawmakers phones
While answering questions from lawmakers earlier, Jack Smith defended gathering “toll data” from lawmakers’ personal mobile phones as part of his fake-elector investigation, known as “Arctic Frost”.
A reminder that as part of the probe, the FBI subpoenaed phone records of several Republican members of Congress. Notably this did not include the content of any correspondence, but the metadata of the calls.
“We wanted to conduct a thorough investigation of the matters that was assigned to me, including attempts to interfere with the lawful transfer of power,” Smith said. “It was relevant to get toll records to understand the scope of that conspiracy, who they were seeking to coerce, who they were seeking to influence, who was seeking to help them.”
The former special counsel also said that it is “common practice” to obtain non-content toll records in complex investigation.
Vance slams Minneapolis protests: ‘It’s cowardly bullshit’
While speaking in Toledo, Ohio, vice-president JD Vance slammed the ongoing demonstrations against federal immigration agents in Minneapolis (where he’s due to visit later today).
“If you want to turn down the chaos in Minneapolis, stop fighting immigration enforcement and accept that we have to have a border in this country. It’s not that hard,” he said during his Thursday remarks at a shipping facility.
He went on to say that people should show their disapproval at the ballot box, not by going “to the street and assaulting federal law enforcement.”
“It’s cowardly bullshit,” he added.
