Transcript of MS NOW's special report on the Jack Smith testimony: Prime Time recap Part 1

Would you please rise and raise your right-hand.

Jack Smith testifies to Congress.

Thank you for the opportunity to discuss my work as special counsel.

The man who indicted Donald Trump in the documents case.

Highly sensitive national security information was held in a ballroom and a bathroom.

The man who charged Trump for leading a criminal conspiracy to overturn an election.

Our investigation revealed that Donald Trump was the person who caused January sixth.

The President seeking revenge during the hearing.

Do you believe that President Trump's Department of Justice will find some way to indict you?

I believe that they will do everything in their power to do that because they've been ordered to.

Republicans go on the attack.

You, like the President's men for Richard Nixon, went after your political enemies.

And the special counsel makes his case.

You are correct that the only person charged in this case was Donald Trump, who was the person most culpable for the crimes charged.

Tonight, Rachel Maddo, Chris Hayes, Jen Saki, Lawrence Lawrence O'Donnell, Stephanie Rule, Ari Melber, Andrew Weissman, and an exclusive interview with a ranking Democrat, Jamie Raskin.

For us, it's all about the rule of law. Ms Now's special report on the Jack Smith testimony begins now.

Good evening, and thank you so much for being with us tonight. I'm Rachael Maddo here at the MSNOW mothership in New York, along with some of my very favorite people in the world. Lawrence O'Donnell is Chris Hayes is here, Ari Melbour is here, and you wouldn't know it from the cold open.

It's like my childhood.

But Nicole O'Hill is here. Even though you didn't, you inexplicably did not get mentioned in the cold open. I'm very sorry. I feel, yeah.

Well, I'm happy to be here. I am here. It's not a hologram. It's me.

You get to be here double, triple time. You get extra passes to be here whenever you want because you were randomly left out of that. All right. We are going to be joined in the course of this special coverage tonight by additional colleagues, Jen Saki, Stephanie Rule, more. The gang's all here, especially Nicole. But the reason we are all here tonight together is for a special primetime recap of the historic hearing that took place in Washington today with Jack Smith, the special counsel who brought 44 felony charges against the man who is now the sitting President of the United States. As special counsel, Jack Smith operated independently within the US Department of Justice, he and his team of prosecutors and FBI agents investigated Donald Trump. They investigated his efforts to overthrow the US government to try to get the results of the election he lost thrown out so he could stay in power anyway. They then investigated his handling of classified information after he left office. But of course, in the American mind, the culmination of Donald Trump's efforts that were investigated by Jack Smith were these images, the violent attack by Trump supporters on the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021.

Under Jack Smith's leadership, a grand jury brought four felony charges against Trump in the case to overthrow the US government and stay in power after he lost re-election. A second federal grand jury brought an additional 40 felony charges against him in the classified documents case for taking huge amounts of highly classified material with him after he left office, an alleged violation of, among other things, the Espionage Act. Just spelling this all out, saying these words right now, it never stops being astonishing that the person facing those kinds of felony charges was nevertheless elevated by the Republican Party to become their nominee for President of the United States, Espionage Act and all. But he was their nominee, and he won the general election, and the federal felony criminal criminal charges that Jack Smith and his team brought against Donald Trump were never heard in court. Today, for the first time, Jack Smith testified in an open hearing in Congress about his work, about the evidence his team developed against the man who is now the sitting President. As Smith remarked several times today, there is no analog for this in US history. Nothing like this has ever happened before.

And this historic hearing today didn't disappoint. That said, it did happen starting at 10: 00 AM Eastern. It happened right in the middle of the workday or in the middle of the school day. So even though this was a big, important deal, you may very well have missed it. There's no shame in that. Whether or not you were able to catch some or all of it live, though, we wanted to do this primetime recap, basically as our public service to you. So whether or not you were able to watch any of it, you will not have missed a thing. All right. Today's hearing starts started with Jack Smith making clear the stakes of the crimes that he investigated, the stakes of that investigation being shut down, and the stakes of the punishment that Trump and his Republican loyalists have since pursued against Jack Smith and against everyone in law enforcement who has tried to hold the line against Trump's crimes.

After nearly 30 years of public service, including in international settings, I have seen how the rule of law can erode. My fear is that we have seen the rule of law function in our country for so long that many of us have come to take it for granted. The rule of law is not self-executing. It depends on our collective commitment to apply it. It requires dedicated service on behalf of others, especially when that service is difficult comes with costs. Our willingness to pay those costs is what tests and defines our commitment to the rule of law and to this wonderful country.

Our willingness to pay those costs, especially when that service is difficult and comes with costs. That was as much a theme today as any other, both in terms of the conduct of Jack Smith's investigation and the repercussions since. Since all of it has been very much dominated by the willingness, the eagerness of this president and his supporters to do harm, to even do violence to anyone who opposes Donald Trump or tries to stop him from committing what Jack Smith clearly, again and again and again today, described as crimes. Mr. Smith, if your case had gone to trial, would the evidence from Georgia have helped prove that President Trump knowingly engaged in a criminal scheme to overturn the 2020 election.

Yes. After an investigation following the facts and the law, we believed we had proof beyond a reasonable doubt to prove those charges. Rather than accept his defeat in the 2020 election, President Trump engaged in a criminal scheme to overturn the results and prevent the lawful transfer of power. Our investigation developed proof beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump engaged in criminal activity. We followed the facts and we followed the law. Where that led us was to an indictment of an unprecedented criminal scheme to block the peaceful transfer of power. 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.

It was the Republicans who agreed to this hearing. They agreed that this should be in public and on television. It's possible they're only watching the right-wing pro-Trump news, and so they haven't heard much about what Jack Smith actually did in his investigation. They may not know much about who he actually is and how he speaks. I don't know why Republicans agreed to do this today, but I'm guessing they did not expect that Jack Smith would just spell it out like this so clearly, spell it out, the evidence he found and the conclusions that he drew about the president's criminal behavior. Did 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 conspiracies 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 Pentz, to stop the certification against the oath of office that he had sworn to the Constitution?

He did.

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 sixth, 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.

Our evidence said he did. We intended to prove it at trial. There was plenty of explanation today about how they would have proved it at trial, including an unexpected invocation of Martians. Thanks to a remark from Republican Senator Lindsay Graham, quoted here. In terms of the grand jury testimony that's now been released, the fact that Donald Trump, according to Senator Graham, would believe that Martians stole the election. What does that tell you about Trump's state of mind?

That statement is consistent with what we found in our investigation in that our investigation revealed that Donald Trump was not looking for honest answers about whether there was fraud in the election. He was looking for ways to stay in power. When people told him things that conflicted with him staying in power, he rejected them, or he chose not even to contact people like that who would know if the election was done properly in the state. On the other hand, when individuals would say things that would allow him to stay in power, no matter how fantastical, he would latch onto those. That pattern, over time, we felt was powerful evidence that he, in fact, knew that the fraud claims he was making were false.

He intended to stay in power even though he knew that the claims he was making were false. And he was willing to obstruct justice and intimidate witnesses to do it, which Special Counsel Jack Smith was able to explain, even to this, somewhat bewildered Virginia Republican congressman, a man named Ben Klein.

Did you have any evidence that President Trump's statements about the cases against him intimidated witnesses or prevented them from coming forward?

I had evidence that he said, If you come after me, I'm coming after you. He suggested a witness should be put to death. The courts found that those statements not only deter witnesses who've come forward, they deter witnesses who have yet to come forward.

But you weren't able to identify a single witness who didn't come forward because they were intimidated by President Trump.

We had extremely thorough evidence that his statements were having an effect on the proceedings that is not permitted in any court of law in the United States.

That is not permitted in any court of law in the United States, which puts It's a very fine point on the fact of how lucky it is for Donald Trump that these cases never made it into a court of law for a trial. In this primetime recap of tonight's hearing, we are going to go through some of the conspiracy theories that Republican members of Congress raised in the room, including a wild one that may be the key to making this all go away, is that maybe Jack Smith wasn't sworn in, right? When he took his oath of office, he's left-handed, so maybe it was the... That'll do it. We'll talk about tonight about Republicans perhaps inadvertently cutting the knees out from their own criticism of Jack Smith getting phone records about the alleged co-conspirators in the case, calling members of Congress. In their actions today, they undercut that allegation. They undercut that allegation they were simultaneously making in the hearing. We're going to talk about Republican congressman Troy Nels baiting and sniping at the police officers who are in the room today, causing a disruption in the room, causing some choice swearing. We're going to get to all of that tonight, congressman Jamie Raskin is going to be joining us live here tonight.

He pulled a rabbit out of a hat at the very, very end of the hearing. As Jim Jordan was trying to gavel the hearing to a close, Jamie Raskin jumped in and sprung something on everyone. It apparently means that we may hear from Jack Smith again. That was much to the surprise of the Republicans today when they learned that live and in the moment from Jamie Raskin, as we all did watching it on TV. We're going to talk with Congressman Raskin about that coming up. But I will just finish with this, and then we're going to hear from everybody. To my mind, if you only took away one thing from the hearing today, it was this next exchange between Jack Smith and a Vermont congresswoman named Becker Ballant. It was an exchange about basically what it means to be Jack Smith right now in 2026, to have done the investigation that he did, to have found what he found, to have served your country by sticking to your guns, even when that meant the leader of the United States government and his party and his supporters would try to destroy you for it.

Trump has said that you, Mr. Smith should be investigated and put in prison. He called you a disgrace to humanity, a radical left Marxist, a criminal. In fact, Trump has used the words deranged Jack Smith 185 times on Truth Social. How do you think that these statements have impacted you, your staff, and your investigation?

With respect to me, I think the reports, I'm sorry, the statements are meant to intimidate me. I will not be intimidated. I think these statements are also made as a warning to others, what will happen if they stand up. As I said, I'm not going to be intimidated. We did our work pursuant to Department policy. We followed the facts and we followed the law, and that process resulted in proof beyond a reasonable doubt that he committed serious crimes. I'm not going to pretend that didn't happen because he's threatening me.

Mr. Smith, do you believe that President Trump's Department of Justice will find some way to indict you?

I believe that they will do everything in their power to do that because they've ordered to by the President.

Jack Smith, I will not be intimidated. I'm not going to pretend those serious crimes didn't happen just because he's threatening me. As I said before, I will not be intimidated. Nicole Wallace, what did you take from this hearing today?

Well, what I took from my own reaction was that this was so extraordinary. But before Trump destroyed the Department of Justice, there were hundreds of Jack Smiths inside the Department of Justice. He was the arch type of the person who chose that life instead of being a partner at Paul Weiss and having multiple houses and occasionally playing private. I mean, this is what DOJ was made of. What I thought about was how successful Trump's been in moving the Overton window, but I watched this with a lump in my throat, thinking about nostalgically about what the Department was. The other thing I thought of was he's the most senior Justice Department official to defend what we shorthand is rank and file. But the people that have been purged from the Justice Department were the best of the best. The most senior prosecutors, the most senior FBI agents who have been pillared reputationally, threatened legally, faced death threats, by and large, if they've been named and outed and smeared in the right-wing press. And they have hollowed out the Department of Justice. Merrick Garland hasn't defended those people. Lisa Monaco hasn't defended those people. Joe Biden hasn't defended those people.

Today, Jack Smith, right after that clip you played, described the real danger and the threats and efforts to intimidate him to his team. And he really defended the integrity of the work they did. I think some of what sinks in when you watch this is that we're all here today because this is extraordinary. We all know that this doesn't happen inside the Justice Department. No one says what he said today to the public in that Congress, to Pam Bondi or Todd Blanch or Emile Okay. If they did, if Danielle Sassun or Liz Oyer or any of those people did, they've been asked to leave. That's right.

Which is the dark and terrible side of the Justice Department professional ethic that says if you are asked to do something unprofessional or wrong, you resign. We have seen people resigning like a whole forest of them falling all at once. And what it means is that the Justice Department, as you say, doesn't have those folks anymore.

That's right. And what is so, I think, painful about this is not that just Jack Smith's work that he did on behalf of not a President, not a party, but on behalf of the country. He worked for the country. He was a taxpayer-funded prosecutor who came out of a different post to do this extraordinary job at a point in time when there was literally nothing to be gained. And as he stated at the end, he faces threats and harm, and he's all but certain he will be indicted. They will attempt to prosecute him because Donald Trump wants them to. That not only did he not succeed in bringing a case he knew he could prove beyond a reasonable doubt to a jury, but he will be punished for it. Yeah.

Chris? Yeah, I like Nicole, also felt like I was watching this human embodiment of all that's been lost and all that is crucial and central to really the entire functioning of American democracy, like this a person who's a serious, smart, capable person devoted to public service, who doing their work without fear or favor, which they really want to destroy. I mean, they're quite explicit about that. They want to turn it into the US government into basically Tammany Hall with nukes. They want a complete machine that's also the global superpower where everyone has a job because you gave Donald Trump some money or you know him. This is the ultimate rebuke to them.

What you do with your job is serve the machine. Yeah, I forget.

Tamanee Hall also tried to do some good things. Yes, it's true.

I guess they're great. You're right, actually. You are actually correct.

That Tammany Hall is actually superior.

We're in Lauren's defense, Tammany Hall.

No, that is actually an important and good point.

There was some like pothole filling, and I actually did do it.

The second thing, the other very lukewarm take I have is like, boy, it really... I mean, he was guilty as hell, and it was a real mistake we elected him again. The final thing I thought was just watching it, the optics, take a step back, is like, someone used this term that we're in the midst of a cliquetatorship. This sense that everything they're doing, the Trump administration, is spectacle, the spectacle of menace. That when an ICE officer actually shoots and kills an American citizen in a car, he has to move the cell phone from his hand to the other hand so he could keep recording as he shoots her because the generation of content is so important. Today, we got reporting that when Charlie Kirk was killed, Cash Patel inside the FBI, the first thing he was concerned about was what he could tweet and coordinating with Dan Bongino about what he could tweet, that he wanted to tweet pictures from Winsor Castle with his girlfriend that actually would expose MI5 agents. It's all in New York Times magazine today. This obsession with spectacle. Here's Jack Smith as the ultimate opposite of that. A sober, solemn, serious person facing down this carnivalve absurdity that has now become, again, and that's always been part of politics, hearings, as you will attest.

They're always theatrical. Theatrical is part of politics. I have no problem with that. I talk for a living. But what is totally absent is any sense of seriousness on world compass right now. The government we have, and here's this person who just feels like this archeological we'll find from another era.

Totally. Yeah. I mean, the esthetic of it, his aestheticism, his stoicism, is itself part of the message. All right.

Jack Smith's headline today was Donald Trump Belongs in Prison. That he had the evidence that the case was moving forward, that he could prove it beyond a reasonable doubt. Even Republicans seem to acknowledge that he is a strong and aggressive prosecutor, which is what prosecutors are supposed to be. Donald Trump belongs in prison. That's really something for the country to still see and hear from this person. Second, to echo others, Jack Smith is a sober guy in a drunk bar at 1 AM. Exactly. He stands out more that way. Our job is to try to make sense of this, and you just presented some of those key highlights. People can take it in. People can go online later tonight, tomorrow, watch more. What I saw there on the scale of public servants was an especially sober, fair person. If someone was watching and they're super political and they wanted to see him spar and rebut every type of Republican question that was a little leading or a little over here, he didn't do that. Why didn't he do that? Because that's not who he is. But they need to discredit him because even with the case closed, he still comes off very credible.

Yes. More of the case is going to come out if volume 2 of his report is unsealed by the court. A lot of people argue that part of the reason this whole hearing might have happened today was to try to muddy him up before before the country gets a whole new dose of information based on the evidence that he gathered.

Well, for me, whenever I'm watching congressional hearings, I mourn for the day when they actually used to work. So one thing that was on display was the decline and fall of the congressional hearing. We used to have hearings like this in which both sides were actually trying to find the truth. The Watergate hearings were the example of this. There was a certain slight amount of Republican defensiveness for Richard Nixon through the beginning of the Watergate hearings. But as the evidence mounted, members responded to the evidence. And what you saw today was this utterly nonsensical display that there's no amount of evidence that could ever be proof to any Republican on that committee of anything. And this is where Donald Trump is not to blame for Donald Trump. There could be no Donald Trump without those people. Those are the people, the Republicans in Congress. They are the people who gave this country Donald Trump. They are the people who decided, We're not just going to tolerate him. We are going to try to become him. What you saw today were Donald Trump's best students, students in Trumpian lying. They just think they can go into a committee hearing and lie and lie and lie.

During our lifetimes, that was absolutely impossible. If you got caught in a hearing in the center of the house saying something that could be proved to be untrue during the hearing, which was hard before the internet. But if that could happen, that would be the end of that person on that committee. The chair would go to the speaker and say, We got to get him off of this. We can't be here for this. Here we are. The enabling party of Donald Trump was on display today.

I couldn't help but think that back in the day, if you were a kid who played hooky from school to watch a congressional hearing, you could pretty much assume that that kid someday was going to become a congressional staff or a run for Congress. It was that nerddom. Any kid watching this today is definitely never going to run for Congress. This is like whatever the opposite of an advertisement is. On this point, there's a famous Moynihan quote of you're entitled to your own opinion, but not your own facts.

He would say that in a Senate hearing, approximately once a year, because he would be pushed to the point of saying that exactly once a year. That's how much we accepted the same facts and then argued off of the same facts in those days.

All right, we got much more to get to tonight during our special coverage, our special recap of Special Counsel, Jack Smith's public testimony, including our exclusive interview with the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, congressman Jamie Raskin. Stay right with us. Don't go anywhere.

Our assessment of the evidence is that He is the person most responsible for what happened on January sixth. He caused what happened. It was foreseeable to him. Then when it happened, he tried to exploit it in furtherance of the conspiracy.

When he wrapped up his work last year, Special Counsel Jack Smith filed a report on each of the two big cases he had brought against Donald Trump. Volume One was the election case about the allegations that Trump tried to overturn the 2020 election. That report, volume one, it's 174 pages. If you include the introductory letter, it's terrific reading, very well written. I recommend it. Then there's volume 2, which I cannot show you. Volume 2 isn't the election case. It's the other case that Smith investigated. It's the one that covers Trump hoarding classified material in Mar-a-Lago. Classified material he not have taken with him when he left office. I can't show you volume 2 because volume 2 has not been released to the public. It remains under seal by court order. There was, in fact, some speculation that one of the reasons Republicans might have agreed to this hearing today is because they hope to draw Jack Smith into some trouble by maybe provoking him to violate that court order, to talk about that case and that report, or maybe they just wanted to muddy Jack Smith up so that the country and the public thinks poorly of him before, I think inevitably, the court rules that that report must be released, and we get to see a whole new trench of evidence against Donald Trump.

Anyway, it ended up being quite interesting today when it wasn't necessarily Republicans who really harped on the issue of volume 2 in that other case, Democrats brought it up instead, including in this moment with, once again, Congresswoman Becker Ballant of Vermont.

I understand I understand that the district Judge, Aaleen Canon, the Trump appointee who oversaw the case in Florida, issued a gag order that prevents you from discussing any parts of the classified documents investigation that is not already public. I understand that, including your findings that you laid out in volume 2 of that report. Am I correct that the reason your report is not available in full to the public is because of this gag order?

I wrote a report. The attorney general, it was submitted to him. I understand, generally, that there's been litigation about whether this report would be public or not. I have not been a party to that litigation. I just know that there is an order, and I know the Department of Justice, the current Department of Justice has interpreted that in order in a way that I cannot speak about anything that could possibly be in that report in its findings.

When Judge Canon issued that gag order, she said, It pending cases against Trump's co-defendants. Is that correct?

I'm sorry.

When Judge Canon issued the gag order, she cited pending cases against Trump's co-defendants. Is that correct?

That's my recollection.

Are those cases still pending?

No, they're not.

No, they're not. So there is no reason, from where I sit, for this important information to be not made public.

If the justification for not making that report public is, they're still pending cases against Trump's co-defendants, well, now there's no pending cases against Trump's co-defendants, so why not release that report? Joining us now is former FBI General Counsel and MSNOW legal analyst, Andrew Weissman. Andrew, it's nice to see you. Thanks for being with us.

Nice to be here.

What was your reaction overall to the hearing today?

I was thinking about it from an international perspective, given that the Prime Minister of Canada, just the other day said, We can't fool ourselves anymore. We can't pretend that this is normal. There has been a rupture in the international order, and that international law has been violated, and the United States is the aggressor, and we have to deal with that reality. Now we have Jack Smith testifying publicly for the first time about on and on about domestic law being violated in all sorts of ways. It's hard not to put the two together and see this real rupture in the rule of law, both here and how we act abroad. We're seeing it play out, whether we're talking about Venezuela or Greenland or domestically, where we think that the military might be called out to invade a blue state of the United States of America. And so, yes, there's a part of nostalgia when you see what is happening. But I also feel like Mark Carnegie, the Prime Minister of Canada, really was correct in saying we have to deal with this new reality, both here, domestically and abroad.

I hear the melancholy in your voice as you explain that. I know that not just the rule of law, but the Justice Department in particular, is a big part of your life and big part of your understanding about the right way to live in this world and to do right by what this country stands for. Andrew, all my colleagues want to ask you other questions about this, too. I have one just quick one that I want to ask you, and it's a political one. I think that Republicans, a lot of people expected that Republicans thought they might be able to trip up Jack Smith today. They might be able to get him to violate the court order sealing all the information about the classified documents case. They might be able to get him on a statements trap. They might be able to get him to inadvertently disclose grand jury information. Some other thing that they could get him in trouble for. They could come up with some excuse for giving a referral to the Justice Department, get him prosecuted. Did they lay any glove on him on any issue like that today?

Well, Rachel, that concern is one that is well taken, given what has happened with respect to Jerome Powell, what happened with James it's comey, the idea that they're going to try and come up with any discrepancy where you don't say exactly the right thing and say, Oh, it's an intentional lie. I can understand that concern. I don't think they did lay a glove on him. It doesn't mean that there won't be repercussions for the same reason that we have seen the same happen with respect to the Fed chair and the former FBI director. I think one thing to note that is important in terms of behind the scenes here is that sitting behind Jack Smith were two senior lawyers from Covington and Burling. They're to be commended because there are not a lot of law firms now that are willing to do that and willing to take the heat and to stand up for the rule of law. That is remarkable, and it needs to be called out and called out when people do stand up. But that crumbling The ruling of the rule of law is not something that is happening really behind the scenes here.

It's very hard, as many people know, to find counsel who are willing to stand up. As Jack Smith said in his opening, as you quoted, Rachel, the rule of law is not self-executing, and it is law firms like Covington that deserve credit for making sure that Jack Smith is extremely extremely well-prepared so that there aren't any slip-ups that people could take advantage of.

Here, here.

Andrew, it's Chris. I professionally keep apprised of various MAGA right-wing theories stories. They made a big deal about the phone records of US senators, and we'll talk about that a little later. The oath of office thing, I had not really gotten a lot of. I was a little like, What's the deal here that he ever really the special counsel or something? Is there any... Sometimes, Trump will say a thing, and it turns out when you get to the end of it, there's some little kernel of maybe a thing. But do you have anything on that, on the oath of office thing, what they're on about?

I do not, But it obviously is made up theory. Just remember, we've had presidents of the United States have to take the oath of office twice because not all of the exact words were said. One thing that has been publicly reported by Carol Lennig is, the only speculation I have is it is worth remembering that when Jack Smith started, when he was technically first the special counsel, he was overseas because he was working on the International Criminal It may be that in connection with taking the oath remotely, that there was some snafu or they thought that he needed to repeat it, what he eventually got here in the United States. But that's just speculation on my part. That's not going to change the facts. To me, there was so much nibbling around the edges here where it's like, let's talk about the phone records. Let's talk about when you took the oath of office, let's talk about how much money you spent. All of that has nothing to do with false claims about fraud in the election. It has nothing to do about the serious crimes and attack on the Capitol. It has nothing to do with the President pardoning people who attacked the Capitol.

I mean, all of those really went completely unrebutted. You spent so much time with the Republican side on really trying to distract from core key factual information.

Yeah, it's almost like somebody found out that there was a misspelling on your birth certificate, say, or whatever. That would be, You don't exist. That's great. Former FBI General Counsel, Andrew Weissman. We really appreciate you being here tonight, Andrew, and always. Thank you. You're welcome. All right. Coming into the hearing today, Jack Smith had every reason to expect that Republicans on the committee would try to trip him up, try to muddy him up, certainly, and make his day as miserable as possible. In nearly five hours of testimony, it's not at all clear that Republicans did score any of the points they were hoping for. A little bit of a look at how Jack Smith responded to some of their best efforts to try to get him just after the break.

One thing I want to be clear about today, the case that I investigated in the case we had, it was built to be tried in a courtroom, not in the media. Our case was built to withstand the crucible of litigation, and our assessment was that we had proof beyond a reasonable doubt that would do that.

We were collecting months worth of phone data on the Republican speaker of the House, the leader of the opposition, Right after he got sworn in as speaker all around the time of a major vote, that sounds like a flagrant violation of the speech or debate clause to me, and I think most people agree with me. Speaker McCarthy had no recourse, did he? Because you issued a nondisclosure order, ensuring that neither he nor any of the American people knew about these subpoenas. Is that right?

The noncontent toll record subpoenas, we did secure nondisclosure orders for those subpoenas.

You did. Let me ask you, Mr. Smith, at the time you secured those nondisclosure orders, was Speaker McCarthy a flight risk?

The nondisclosure order was based on concerns about- Was Speaker McCarthy a flight risk?

He was not. He was not. Then why did your nondisclosure order refer to him as a flight risk? It says right here, The court finds reasonable grounds to believe that such disclosure will result in flight from prosecution.

Sir, when securing a nondisclosure order, the risks don't have to be associated with the- You think that the speaker of the house is a flight risk?

Are you finished answering the question? No, this is not your time. This is my time. You think the speaker of the House is a flight risk? You think he's going to hop on a plane and leave the country?

California Republican Brandon Gill thought that he had him. Not only did Jack Smith scoop up the House speaker's phone records, he did it in secret with a nondisclosure order. But there's ridiculous reason that Kevin McCarthy was a flight risk. Oh, come on. This is my time. Don't interrupt me. This has to be done in a very specific way. I said, California, Texas congressman. There's a very good reason why Texas congressman, Brandon Gale did not want to let Jack Smith finish that answer. Because what Jack Smith was starting to say there, what in fact he had spelled out in his deposition before this same committee last month, is that he never Never claimed House Speaker Kevin McCarthy was a flight risk. Rather, the boilerplate statutory language that Smith's team gave to a judge to sign, that includes four different reasons why a judge might agree to a non disclosure order about somebody having their phone record subpoenaed. One of those four reasons is that the person might pose a flight risk. But there are three other reasons, including stuff like maybe disclosing the subpoena could cause somebody to destroy or tamper with evidence evidence, or it could cause a potential witness to be intimidated.

The flight risk thing has nothing to do with Kevin McCarthy, nothing to do with this matter at all. It is a total canard. But if you can interrupt him at just the right time. This is my time. Then maybe he can't explain that. So mission accomplished. Lawrence, when you're talking about the dignity of congressional testimony, I thought of this moment.

Well, the other thing about flight risk is that if you disclose to Kevin McCarthy that this is happening, someone else might flee. There could be someone else who picks up that information who's not Kevin McCarthy, goes, Oh, if they're that close to him, then I should get out of here. There's that point. But this phone records thing was just this repeated, pointless nonsense where they all kept saying, and they're all shocked, they're completely shocked, that it's only Republicans. The only phone records you want are Donald Trump and the White House calling Republicans in the House and the Senate on January sixth when he's trying to get them to turn over the election. It's only Republicans. You know how many people were convicted of crimes in Watergate?

Forty. All Republicans. All Republicans.

Weirdly, no Democrats. Here's the thing, there wasn't a single Republican who complained about that. There wasn't one Republican senator who said, How dare they convict only Richard Nixon's Republicans for committing crimes with and for Richard Nixon.

Yeah, seriously. Arria, I also have to put this to you. In the middle of this hearing today, the first break they took was to go take votes in the House. One of the things they voted on was whether or not senators who had their phone records subpoenaed by Jack Smith should be able to get a half million dollars each from the Justice Department. And the vote was unanimous that senators should not be able to get money from the Justice Department for having their phone records subpoenaed Jack Smith, somewhat undercutting their own Jeremiah on this point.

This line of questioning was not believable. To believe it, you'd have to think that the congressmen and Jim Jordan and everyone are more concerned that a judge oversaw the government coming in and picking up some phone records, they're more angry about that than a bunch of violent, later convicted thugs came into Congress to kill them and to hang Mike Pence and to do everything else. It doesn't compute, but it does have a real, Hey, it's all about me vibe. The public will make up their own mind. But the idea that with democracy under attack and what Trump's getting away with and whether he's lining his pockets with crypto that's legal and whether we want a functioning Justice Department or not, and All you're saying is, Oh, my God, there was one tangential way this reflects on me. I really felt like Jim Jordan, especially the opening, and then they moved on to other things. But when Jim Jordan kept going on and on about his phone, to me, it was very much he was the Blake Lively of Congress today. It's like, Things are happening in the real world. You're friends with Taylor Swift. But eventually, if you follow that story, and I forgive anyone who's busier with more important stories, Taylor Swift said, You know Blake Lively?

It's not all about you. I'm Taylor Swift. With Jim Jordan, it's like, with everything that happened and you got cops who are sitting in the audience who were attacked by the thugs that Donald Trump freed from jail to say, No, it's okay, you're violent because apparently, they don't care about cops' lives. And you're talking about your own phone record.

I I mean, the other thing is these conspiracy theories are the micro of the micro. New York Times polling came out today that has Trump underwater on every single issue, more unpopular than it's the most scary part of COVID. And so they're not even speaking about an issue that reanimates the people they've lost. Seventy-one % of all Americans think the country is out of control. It's approvals down mid-30s. So they're not even talking about an issue that like, juices that 30. They're talking about an issue that's like, 2% of the 10%. Even the lot of people on newsbecks don't know what this is.

I would just say another brilliant political stroke by Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, to schedule a vote during this hearing that directly undercuts the case they're making about something they're supposedly so mad about at that hearing. Mike Johnson scores again. All right, much more of our primetime recap of Jack Smith's testimony today ahead, including our exclusive interview with Congressman Jamie Raskin. Stay with us.