Jack Smith FIRES BACK At Republicans On Trump Crime Investigation, Durbin DEFENDS Smith On Floor

I approved those records, and those records were materially relevant to our investigation. Why were they relevant? For a number of reasons. First, with respect to the toll records regarding the evening of January 6th, those records corroborated evidence that we had that the president, President Donald Trump and his co-conspirators were seeking to exploit the violence on January 6th in furtherance of their criminal scheme. They were taking the fact that law enforcement officers had been brutally assaulted at this institution and using that to seek to delay the proceedings further in violation of the law. It was an important part of our investigation. We had interviewed co-conspirators who talked about the calls that were made to members of Congress? There is, I think, appropriate concern by members of this committee and members of Congress as to your activities related to their telephone conversations, text messages, and records. Please explain to us what involvement you had with any information from members of Congress. First, with respect to toll records. Toll records are non-content, um, records. They show who a call was to, who a call was from, and the length of that call. Uh, my office did secure, uh, toll records, uh, from third parties, third party, uh, telephone companies in the course of our investigation, uh, that were records for members of Congress. Before we did that, uh, we consulted with the public integrity section regarding whether those, uh, toll records subpoenas were appropriate. Uh, I approved those records and those records were materially relevant to our investigation. Why were they relevant? Uh, for a number of reasons. First, um, with respect to the toll records regarding the evening of January 6th, uh, those records corroborated evidence that we had that the President, President Donald Trump and his co-conspirators were seeking to exploit the violence on January 6th in furtherance of their criminal scheme. They were taking the fact that law enforcement officers had been brutally assaulted at this institution and using that to seek to delay the proceedings further in violation of the law. It was an important part of our investigation. We had interviewed co-conspirators who talked about the calls that were made to members of Congress. We had recordings of voicemails that showed that these voicemails are public, where the co-conspirators were again providing false information to try to delay the proceedings. It was an important part of our investigation, and it was centrally relevant to the issue of criminal intent to seek to further delay the proceedings in violation of the law given what had happened that afternoon at January 6 in my view added to the powerful evidence we had of Donald Trump's guilt and the participation of his co-conspirators in his criminal scheme at his behest so we have the Capitol under siege we have the Vice President removed from presiding over the Senate by the Secret Service we have members of the Senate and House and both political parties who were told to leave the building because of the danger. I want to ask, is it fair to surmise from what you have said that the President was in contact with some members of Congress during this period of time? Yes, that is correct. Both members of Congress, we gained evidence reaching out to the White House asking, please help us, please stop what's happening, please have your supporters stop attacking the Capitol. And then also, again, after the attack had occurred, telling his co-conspirators, there's a message, I believe it's between Mark Meadows and one of the co-conspirators, that the president wants you to call these senators. And that record should be in the material that you all have, co-conspirators, including Rudy Giuliani, then sought to make those calls. We also had evidence that the president himself was trying to reach out to individual senators. Now, this has been characterized by some as a wiretap. Did you initiate any wiretaps relative to members of Congress of either party? No. The records that we're talking about are non-content records, the toll records, are non-content records that we sought to corroborate evidence we had and also to assist us in questioning witnesses about these events, among other things. So what did the records disclose to you if they didn't disclose the content and conversation? Well, they were relevant for a number of reasons. First, they corroborated other records we already had. Some of those records were helpful, but they had gaps in them in terms of when certain calls happened. There was also the issue of when we interviewed one of these co-conspirators who was involved in making these calls, it was unclear from that interview how many phones were in fact being used to make those calls. And so getting these records would help us figure out how many phones in fact were being used to make these calls and to see who else, if anyone, was involved in that. It is possible, and certainly, as I understand, legal for a member of Congress to have more than one phone. The official business of the Senate may require one phone number. There may be a personal phone number for you and your family. There may even be a political phone number, which you could resort to if you were involved in political activity. Did you make any distinction in terms of the phone messages which you were investigating? of these three possibilities? My recollection is being focused on the phones of the co-conspirators. And so when you say co-conspirators, do you mean members of Congress? No, no. I'm thinking specifically of Rudy Giuliani. One of the things that we learned in this interview of another co-conspirator is that he had multiple phones. And so the question was, if we had records, Did we have all the records of the phones that were making calls to try to exploit the violence? But in terms of the phones themselves of the members of Congress, where did you find those phone numbers? As I sit here, I do not recall. What I recall my role in this aspect of the investigation was I was asked by my staff to approve toll records, subpoenas for these sort of records. after discussing the matter with my staff. I told them I wanted to make sure the public integrity section approved of that process. That process happened, and they did. With respect to how agents figured out or thought they'd figured out which phones belonged to which senators, I don't have an answer to that. Assume for a moment that one of the phone conversations was between the President of the United States and a member of the Congress. Does the White House maintain any records of calls made by the president or on his behalf? My understanding is the White House does, but my recollection, and I think the terminology is the White House switchboard, my recollection is that we had discovered at various points in time those records were incomplete or we didn't have all the records. And so that was another important point to corroborate, for example, evidence of an email where someone says the president is trying to reach out to these people, but then to find the actual records of the actual call. Mr. Smith, my colleagues have spent an extensive amount of time discussing Timothy Thibault, who retired from the FBI in August of 2022. According to our information, you were appointed special counsel three months after his retirement in November of 2022. Was Timothy Tebow a part of your special counsel team? No. Did you ever meet him during your work as special counsel? No, not that I recall. Did Timothy Tebow or the work that he had done, whatever it was, influence any of your decision making as special counsel? No. We made our decisions based on the facts and based on the law, based on the investigation that my team conducted. So I would say to those who are following the hearing, after hearing all these references to Timothy Thibault, he was gone. He was gone from the FBI by the time Mr. Smith was appointed, and he never met him, and he was not part of his team. Some of these conspiracy theories just keep mushrooming, despite the evidence to the contrary.