Jack Smith Tells Senate Judiciary Committee: 'I Stand By' Trump Indictments

Former special counsel Jack Smith told the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, 29 September 2026, that he “stands by” his decision to bring criminal charges against Donald Trump, in his first appearance before the Senate since leading two federal investigations of the president. The hearing, titled “Oversight of Jack Smith’s Abuse of Authority and the Targeting of Republicans and Related Matters,” ran for hours and split almost entirely along party lines, with Republican senators accusing Smith of running a politically motivated operation and Democratic senators defending the investigations as impartial. Here is what was said, by whom, and what remains disputed.

What did Jack Smith actually say?

Smith told the committee he does not regret bringing charges against Trump and would do so again under the same facts. In his opening statement, he said, “I stand by my decisions as special counsel, including my decision to bring charges against President Trump,” adding that his team made those decisions “without regard to President Trump’s political association, activities, beliefs, or candidacy.” He also said that if asked to prosecute a former president on the same facts today, he “would do so regardless of whether that President was a Republican or a Democrat.” Smith said he would not be “silenced” by what he described as continued threats of prosecution against him and former colleagues.

What do Republicans on the committee allege?

Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said in his opening statement that Smith’s operation was “a partisan weapon that broke the rules, lied to the court and engaged in bad faith throughout.” Grassley’s office released documents during the hearing that it said showed Smith’s team had obtained journalists’ communications with government sources during the January 6 investigation and had subpoenaed thousands of financial records tied to small-dollar donors to Trump between 2019 and 2023. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) told Smith directly, “You have done an enormous damage, and I believe your conduct represents the most egregious abuse of power in the history of the Department of Justice.” These are characterizations made by Republican senators, not findings established in this hearing — Smith disputed them directly, telling the committee that grand juries in two separate federal districts had independently reached the same conclusions his office did.

How did Democrats on the committee respond?

Ranking Member Dick Durbin (D-Illinois) argued in his opening statement that Republicans were ignoring evidence that Trump tried to overturn the 2020 election, pointing to Trump’s recorded call urging Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” enough votes to reverse his loss in the state. Durbin said his Republican colleagues were relying on “baseless conspiracy theories” about Smith rather than engaging with the underlying conduct the investigations examined. As with the Republican characterizations, this is Durbin’s framing of the record, not an independent finding from the hearing itself.

What happened in the Schmitt exchange over a basketball game?

Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Missouri) suggested Smith had lied under oath about attending an NBA game in Atlanta, but the exchange fell apart when Schmitt appeared to confuse two different basketball teams. Schmitt asked Smith whether he had attended a Golden State Warriors–Atlanta Hawks game on 3 February 2024 — the day after Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis publicly disclosed a relationship with a prosecutor on her staff — implying a connection between Smith and Willis. Smith denied attending that game and said he recalled instead going to a University of Maryland women’s basketball game around that time to watch Caitlin Clark, who then played for the University of Iowa Hawkeyes — a different team from the Atlanta Hawks that Schmitt had cited. Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minnesota) responded that “people should have their facts straight before they accuse someone” of wrongdoing “and not get the teams wrong.”

What did Sen. Kennedy say to Smith?

Sen. John Kennedy (R-Louisiana) told Smith, “You make me want to throw up in my mouth,” after Smith described his conduct as nonpartisan. The exchange, shown on video clips of the hearing, came after Kennedy pressed Smith on his team’s use of subpoenas for phone records belonging to Republican members of Congress. Durbin responded by telling Kennedy the hearing carried constitutional significance and that Smith, like any witness, should be allowed to finish his answers.

Who said what

What is the background on Smith’s investigations of Trump?

Smith led two separate federal criminal cases against Trump — one over efforts to overturn the 2020 election and the January 6 Capitol riot, and one over the handling of classified documents after he left office — both of which the Justice Department dismissed after Trump won the 2024 election, under long-standing department policy against prosecuting a sitting president. Most of the prosecutors and agents who worked on Smith’s team have since left the department or been terminated. Smith testified before the House Judiciary Committee in January 2026 following a closed-door deposition in December 2025; the 29 September 2026 Senate hearing was his first public Senate appearance. A separate July 2026 referral of Smith to the Justice Department by House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan, over unrelated allegations, had not produced any charging decision as of this hearing.

Whether Smith’s conduct amounted to abuse of power, as Republican senators argued, or was a proper and impartial exercise of prosecutorial judgment, as Smith and Democratic senators maintained, remains a live political dispute rather than a settled question — and the hearing, contentious as it was, did not resolve it either way.