BREAKING: Jack Smith subpoenaed by House Judiciary over Trump cases, deposition Dec 17

The subpoena stated, "the Committee on the Judiciary is continuing to conduct oversight of the operations of the Office of Special Counsel you led—specifically, your team’s prosecution of President Donald J Trump and his co-defendants. Due to your service as Special Counsel, the Committee believes that you possess information that is vital to its oversight of this matter."

The subpoena ordered Smith to appear for a deposition on December 17 at 10 am, and requested documents to be returned by December 12.

Smith oversaw the Mar-a-Lago documents and January 6 cases against Trump under the Biden administration. The Mar-a-Lago documents case alleged that Trump had mishandled classified documents after his first presidential term. Trump had been charged in June 2023 with 37 federal charges, including 31 counts of willful retention of national defense information, one count of conspiracy to obstruct justice, one count of withholding a document or record, one count of corruptly concealing a document or record, one count of concealing a document in a federal investigation, one count of scheme to conceal, and one count of false statements and representations.

The charges came after Trump’s Palm Beach estate was raided by the FBI in August 2022 in search of documents they claimed were classified. Questions had been raised in the case after Smith’s legal team admitted that evidence in the case had been tampered with. Prosecutors wrote at the time, "There are some boxes where the order of items within that box is not the same as in the associated scans. The Government acknowledges that this is inconsistent with what Government counsel previously understood and represented to the Court." In July 2024, Judge Aileen Cannon threw out the case, ruling that Smith had been unconstitutionally appointed as special counsel.

In August 2023, Trump was indicted on four federal counts in connection to the events of January 6, 2021, including conspiracy to defraud the government, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding, and conspiracy against rights. In late 2024, Smith filed a motion to drop all charges in the January 6 case against Trump.

Smith wrote in his motion, "As a result of the election held on November 5, 2024, the defendant, Donald J. Trump, will be inaugurated as President on January 20, 2025. It has long been the position of the Department of Justice that the United States Constitution forbids the federal indictment and subsequent criminal prosecution of a sitting President. He added, "But the Department and the country have never faced the circumstance here, where a federal indictment against a private citizen has been returned by a grand jury and a criminal prosecution is already underway when the defendant is elected President."

Smith wrote that "after careful consideration, the Department has determined that" the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel’s "prior opinions concerning the Constitution’s prohibition on federal indictment and prosecution of a sitting President apply to this situation and that as a result this prosecution must be dismissed before the defendant is inaugurated."