If this doesn’t outrage you, I don’t know what will.

Jack Smith walked into a closed-door House Judiciary Committee hearing this week and said something that should have been front-page news everywhere. “Our investigation developed proof beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump engaged in a criminal scheme to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and to prevent the lawful transfer of power.”

Proof beyond a reasonable doubt. That’s the standard you need to convict someone in a criminal trial.

He also said his team had “powerful evidence” showing Trump willfully retained classified documents and “repeatedly tried to obstruct justice” to keep them hidden. Again, this isn’t speculation or partisan spin. This is the conclusion of a federal prosecutor who spent two years building criminal cases with grand jury indictments in two separate districts.

Here’s what happened next: NOTHING!

House Republicans made sure Smith testified behind closed doors, not publicly. Smith requested a public hearing, but Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan refused. They didn’t want the American public to hear this directly. They wanted to control the narrative, cherry-pick quotes, and spin his testimony as politically motivated witch-hunting.

The timing tells you everything. When Trump “won” re-election in November 2024, the Justice Department dropped the election case and abandoned its appeal of the dismissed classified documents prosecution. Not because the evidence disappeared. Not because Smith’s investigation was flawed. But because the DOJ has a policy against prosecuting sitting presidents.

Trump’s now calling for Smith to be prosecuted.

Think about that.

The person who most likely committed crimes severe enough to warrant federal indictments is demanding the prosecutor who investigated him face criminal charges. And he has the power to potentially make that happen.

Smith stood his ground in the hearing. “If asked whether to prosecute a former president based on the same facts today, I would do so regardless of whether the president was a Republican or a Democrat.” He made clear his decisions were made “without regard to President Trump’s political association, activities, beliefs, or candidacy in the 2024 presidential election.”

You may recall that Republicans were particularly angry about phone records Smith’s team obtained from nine GOP lawmakers who were involved in Trump’s effort to block the electoral vote count on January 6. Smith explained the obvious: “I didn’t choose those Members; President Trump did.” Trump and his associates called those members of Congress “in furtherance of their criminal scheme, urging them to further delay certification of the 2020 election.”

Touché…

But here’s the part that should haunt you. Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin said Jordan “made an excellent decision in not allowing Jack Smith to testify publicly, because had he done so, it would have been absolutely devastating to the president.” He’s saying the quiet part out loud. Republicans knew Smith’s testimony would be damaging, so they buried it.

The American public will never get to hear, in Smith’s own words and in a public forum, the evidence his investigation uncovered. They’ll never get to watch him explain, on camera and under oath, why a federal prosecutor concluded there was proof beyond a reasonable doubt of criminal conduct by a president.
Instead, we get fragments of his opening statement leaked to reporters. We get partisan spin from both sides. We get a president who committed acts serious enough to warrant federal indictments walking free while threatening to prosecute the man who investigated him.

And we get something even worse.

Trump pardoned nearly 1,600 January 6 defendants on his first day back in office. All of them. More than 600 had been convicted of assaulting or obstructing police officers. About 170 used deadly weapons. They beat cops with flagpoles, sprayed them with bear spray and pepper spray, attacked them with metal barricades, tasers, axes, baseball bats, and makeshift spears. Over 140 officers were injured. Five died.

Trump pardoned the guy who got 20 years for being one of the most violent rioters that day. He pardoned the Oath Keepers leader convicted of seditious conspiracy, who’s now calling for the prosecution of the Capitol police who testified against him.

He pardoned the man who plunged a stun gun into Officer Michael Fanone’s neck. He pardoned someone who smashed a Capitol window with a tomahawk and threw a sharpened wooden pole like a javelin at police. He pardoned people with prior convictions for rape, domestic violence, child pornography, and drunk driving that killed people.

But, the guy with proof beyond a reasonable doubt that the president committed crimes? Trump wants him prosecuted.

The people who pled guilty to assaulting police officers during a violent attack on the Capitol to keep that same president in power? Trump calls them patriots and sets them free.

That’s not a legal technicality. That’s not about timing or policy. That’s the system working exactly as designed when the person who orchestrates the crime gets to decide who faces consequences for it.