Transcript of MS NOW's special report on the Jack Smith testimony: Prime Time recap Part 2

Welcome back to our special primetime recap of today's historic hearing with Jack Smith, the special counsel who brought two indictments against Donald Trump and who says he was prepared to prove Trump's guilt on dozens of felony counts beyond a reasonable doubt.

As you know, there was a lot to this hearing during today. Republicans came loaded for bear. They left without any bearskins. But there was a really interesting moment in today's proceedings. One I certainly did not anticipate when Democratic congressman Hank Johnson, very colorful congressman who always comes at things from a different direction, I think, than all of his colleagues. He's always got a very original take on things. He asked Jack Smith whether the cases he brought against Trump, cases which were dismissed once Trump was elected President, he asked whether those cases could ever come back.

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. And those indictments have been dismissed. Can they be rebrought or resurrected after Trump leaves office? They were dismissed without prejudice. So they can be refiled, and he can be prosecuted after he leaves office. Is that correct? I'm not going to speak to that. I can only speak to what we did, which was dismissed the case without prejudice.

Dismissed without prejudice. This is all he would say. Jack Smith, we're very reticent today before the House Judiciary Committee when he's asked whether the indictments he brought against Trump might someday be brought back, whether those trials effectively could go against Trump. In just a moment, we're going to be joined live by the top Democrat on that committee, Jamie Raskin. We're going to see if Congressman Raskin might be any less reticent on that point. I will say it's no small thing that the Democrats have Congressman Raskin as their leader on the Judiciary Committee. That's the committee that oversees DOJ. It makes it possibly the most important oversight body in Congress right now, given that Trump has turned DOJ into his own personal machine for attacking his enemies pardoning his allies. There really is pretty much no one better suited and better prepared for a hearing with Jack Smith than a congressman like Jamie Raskin. Congressman Raskin was the lead impeachment manager during Trump's second impeachment trial, the one where he was charged with incitement of insurrection for his role in the January sixth attack. That prosecution that Raskin led got 57 senators to vote for Trump's conviction, including seven Republicans.

That's the largest bipartisan impeachment conviction vote in the history of the United States. Congressman Raskin also served as part of the January sixth investigation in Congress. Before any of that, before he was in Congress, Jamie Raskin was a constitutional law professor for more than in five years. In fact, there was a great moment in today's hearing where Congressman Raskin scolded one of his Republican colleagues, Kevin Kiley, for a particular line of questioning he pursued. In scolding him, he pointed out that Kevin Kiley used to be his student and therefore should certainly have known better. Having a constitutional law professor in a hearing like today's turns out to be a really useful thing when you're talking about the criminal indictment of a United States President.

They've been saying that there's some first amendment defense that Donald Trump would have had to the crimes you indicted him for. Is there a valid first amendment defense defense to defrauding the public? Is there a valid first amendment defense to disrupting a federal proceeding? Is there a valid first amendment defense to violating the voting rights of the people and cheating the public out of a fair election? The First Amendment is something we took seriously in our investigation, but the First Amendment does not protect speech that facilitates a crime. Speech that is to facilitate a crime, a fraud crime in particular, is not protected under the First Amendment. The Supreme Court precedent on that is clear. The case law is perfectly clear on this. All frauds are perpetrated by speech, right? Yes. All conspiracies are perpetrated by speech. So just because your criminal conduct is brigaded with speech doesn't somehow mean you've got a First Amendment defense against trying to overthrow the government.

Joining us now exclusively is Congressman Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee. Congressman, I know it has been a long and busy day. Thank you so much for being with us tonight.

It is my pleasure, Rachel. I'd rather be nowhere else than with you guys.

That's very you to say. First of all, I'd like two top-line results from you or two top-line takeaways from you. Number one, why did this happen today? Why do you think your Republican colleagues wanted to do this? And how do you think Jack Smith did?

One, there are different theories about why they ended up doing it after trying to blockade a public hearing for so long. One possibility is that they're just trying to fill the airway with anything other than Epstein files. So that's one theory that's out there. The other is that it looks inevitable that the 11th Circuit is going to reverse Judge Eileen Canon's utterly bizarre and ridiculous and paranormal judicial order, thwarting the ability of the public to get a hold of Jack Smith's second volume relating to the stolen and hoarded documents case. They wanted to do it before that happened, so he couldn't talk about it. That relates to the motion that I brought up at the very end of the hearing. Basically, what I said to Chairman Jordan was, Look, we just had 50% of the hearing. We just heard about the admittedly central and important issue of Donald Trump trying to overthrow the 2020 election. But also Jack Smith was working on the stealing of all these classified documents and hiding them in the ballroom and in the bathroom and then obstructing justice to not turn them over and so on. He wasn't able to testify about any of that stuff because of the gag order imposed by Judge Canon.

So once that gag order is lifted, I said, We need to have a second part two of the hearing. He hemmed and hawn and said, Well, we'd have to wait to see what happens and so on. At that point, I invoked a rule that the Judicial Committee has, which is called the Minority Rule, which is that if there's only one witness called by the majority and the minority doesn't get a witness, we get to have a hearing of our own. We'd like to have another hearing. It happens to be with the same witness, Jack Smith, so we can have the second half of the hearing that we didn't exercise proper oversight over because of the ridiculous canon order.

I will say, live in the moment, as congressman Jordan was trying to gavel the hearing to a close, and you jumped in with that explanation, essentially making that case in very plain English that you, as the Democrats on the committee, planned to bring him back, Jim Jordan seemed quite surprised. It really felt like you pulled a rabbit out of a hat. We then got the letter from you formalizing your explanation, pursuing to Rule 11, Clause 2J1 of the Rules of the House, we the undersigned majority of the minority, to notify you of our intent to call Jack Smith, the testifying continuation of this full committee hearing. The way that I hear you explaining it now, the way that I understand it from your letter is that congressman Jordan, as surprised as he may have been to have heard this from you today, he doesn't have a choice. You guys now get to bring Jack Smith back, again, when volume 2 is unsealed, and you can talk to him about that case.

Yeah. Well, not only did we have a majority of the Democratic minority, we had every member of the Democratic minority together on it. I should use that as an opportunity, Rachel, just to commend my extraordinary members on the House Judiciary Democratic side who were there for four or five hours today and were absolutely zeroed in and focused on everything going on and did a magnificent job of rebutting all of the Republican Trivia and Nonsense while giving Jack Smith the platform to tell America about what he had found.

Congresswoman, it's Jen Saki. First of all, it was very enjoyable to watch you there today. It seemed like you've been ready. You had your weebies this morning. So thank you for everything you did today. I wanted to ask you about that Hank Johnson, Congressman Hank Johnson, moment that Rachel just played, because I think for a lot of people watching, when Jack Smith essentially didn't want to give any more information or answer the question further, it It may have made people watching at home think, Wait a second. Is it possible that when Donald Trump leaves office, that charges could be brought again or there could be another round of accountability? Can you just refresh our memories on that and tell people, all of us and people watching at home, what is or isn't possible?

All right. Well, remember, Jen, nothing is more important to the Republicans than the absolute untouchability, immunity, and impunity of Donald Trump. Okay, that's number one. When we move just to impeach him and try and convict him and remove him from office and disqualify him from office, and indeed, it was a '57 to '43 vote, the most sweeping bipartisan vote to impeach and to try and convict a president in American history. A lot of the Republicans were saying, Well, if there were really crimes there, try him. Let the Department of Justice do it. If there were really crimes. Then, of course, when he escaped by the skin of his teeth, being impeached and tried, removed, disqualified, and a special counsel was appointed, then they threw everything into trying to wrap him in doctrines of presidential immunity. Of course, the Roberts Court pulled out of a hat completely the idea that the president cannot be prosecuted for felony crimes he commits if they are somehow under the auspices of the core functions of the presidency. I mean, just a completely magical doctrine like the stork brought it out of nowhere. So Hank Johnson asked an excellent question, which is all right.

It was dismissed without prejudice, which means it could still be alive in the future. Of course, you've got to deal with all the statute of limitations questions. But then you also have to deal with all of these radical, novel, Supreme Court immunity doctrines that have been generated. So nothing's impossible here. But look, I I think that Americans understand the core thing right now is for the forces of democracy and freedom to stay together, to get us through this nightmare, and to make sure that American democracy survives. That's the critical thing We can let the prosecutors deal with the prosecutor questions in the future. Let's focus on defending and preserving and strengthening our democracy.

Congressman Maskin as Nicole Wallace, in that spirit, Eric, if Democrats are in control of the House, which seems like something even Donald Trump is greeting himself for, would you invite Jack Smith back a year from now and ask him to detail the evidence he gathered and how Donald Trump sought to overturn the 2020 election ahead of the 2028 presidential election?

Well, as we were saying before, Nicole, we need to get him to come back to testify on volume 2 of his report because that will also demonstrate an extraordinary sequence of obstructive events where Donald Trump did everything in his power to literally physically hide evidence, to steal classified documents, and then to use them in utterly improper ways in the well trafficked Mara Laga hotel with all of these international visitors and Russians running around and everything. We got to get to the bottom of that. We're not waiting until the 2026 or 2028 elections. We want to do that one now. Hey, Congressman, Ari here. The Republicans on the panel also tried to get Jack Smith to give a report card to the prior Congressional Jan 6 probe, which was a little odd. And one of their points seemed to be, well, some of the witnesses used second-hand information, things that not only they saw, but things they heard from other people, their colleagues. Cassie Hutchinson was named, for example. I just wanted to ask you, what does it say about the Republican members of your committee that during that entire investigation, they backed up the White House position that they weren't going to cooperate, that firsthand witnesses weren't going to cooperate even to a criminal degree.

Navarro and Banon famously going to prison rather than talking to the committee. Now they're saying out loud they don't want second-hand witnesses. Their plan seems to be no witnesses. What does that tell us about their view of what would happen if witnesses actually told the truth about how Trump tried to steal the election? Yeah, it was an imbisyllic line of inquiry. First of all, Cassidy Hutchinson worked for Donald Trump. She was a Trump witness. She was the top assistant to Mark Meadow, something that they never mentioned in going after her. Of course, one of the amazing things here is the way that they're very willing to cast overboard anybody who doesn't demonstrate a thousand % loyalty to the criminal in chief. But in any event, of course, in a congressional investigation, we don't have a rule against hearsay. People can quote other people. The Republicans do it all the time. They did it today. And that's just not one of the rules we use. So that is a court rule. And so I think Jack Smith was pretty clear about that. Of course, they would follow the hearsay rules. But nobody needed Cassidy Hutchinson's testimony about the fact that Donald Trump wanted to march in like Mussolini with the mob he incited to commit violence against Congress and his own vice President, because Donald Trump himself said it.

As recently as 2024, he said, I wanted to go down there. He said it in this speech on the ellipses, and I'll be there with you. He said, You got to go and fight and fight like hell. If you don't, you won't have a country anymore. He also said, And I'll be there with you. That whole thing was just nonsense. It strikes me that they were basically basically treating this like the Rocky Horror Picture Show. They were throwing rice, they were throwing toast, they were throwing tomatoes. None of it made any sense. They have no coherent rational alternative to what was found by the January sixth Select Committee, which they insisted on calling a partisan committee today when it was a bipartisan committee. And by the way, we originally had an agreement with the Republicans for an outside 9/11 style commission, not with members of Congress, but other people appointed outside with five Republican appointees, five Democratic appointees, equal funding, equal staff, equal subpoena power. Donald Trump blew it up because he didn't want any investigation at all. And that's when Kevin McCarthy tried to put people who participated in the events of January sixth, like Chairman Jordan, on the committee.

And Pelosi said, We're not going to have that. We'll put other Republicans on it. And so that's what happened, and that's how that ended up being perhaps one of the greatest committees in the whole history of the US Congress, which produced a report which they have not laid a glove on.

Congressmen's Chris Hayes, just quickly on the vote that Rachel mentioned earlier when you had to leave to go vote, the House rejecting the almost comically corrupt actions by the Senate to give a few of their members a shot at half a million dollars or maybe more because their phone records were lawfully subpoenaed. That was unanimous. What What happens now on that vote? I mean, is there going to be pressure on the Senate? It is so embarrassing. There's such unanimity in the House. Do you see that going anywhere?

Well, we'll see. I mean, they are a notoriously corrupt group, and they all want their million dollars, and they've said it publicly. They want a million dollars for each violation. What's comical about the situation is that these are people who have insisted that there be no reform of these practices. In other words, they've got no problem with prosecutors and investigators having access to the phone records, the toll records of everybody in the country except for them. When it happens to them, they want a million dollars a piece. The Democrats have actually been moving, and in fairness to Chairman Jordan, with the support of some Republicans over the last several congresses to try to reform that generally. It is the Republicans in the Senate who have killed it every single time. They are not civil libertarians. They're people who want a million dollar payout and think that they should be above the law, just like Donald Trump, their hero.

Congressman Raskin, it's Rachel again. I just wanted to ask you one last question because I feel like you are a keen and unreserved observer of your colleagues in a way that not every member of Congress is. But I feel like sometimes I get my best insights into what's going on in the Republican conference because you're willing to be very blunt about it. So I have a blunt question. Do you feel like you understand right now what your Republican colleagues take is on January sixth? Because I feel like today, sometimes they were saying, Oh, January sixth was not that big of a deal. Why are you making such a big deal of it? Other times they were saying it was a terrible, horrible thing, but it was Nancy Pelosi's fault. You and your Democratic colleagues introduced statements into the record today from your Republican colleagues from the immediate aftermath of January sixth that were totally at odds with their language language today, referring to it as very serious and indeed criminal and something that should be responded to by the criminal justice system. I just feel like they're everywhere on January sixth right now. Do you have a handle on what Republicans in Congress think about it now?

Well, that's perceptive. I think there are many rooms in the mansion of Trump apologists. I mean, the lowest common denominator is all of them will perform triple back summer salts to end up defending Donald Trump. But some of them, like Representative Nels today, actually directly addressed the police officers in the room and said, Don't worry about it. It wasn't Donald Trump. This is a guy who didn't even thank them for their service But he said, It wasn't Donald Trump. It was the Capitol Police themselves at fault. I mean, that occupies a realm with the 9/11 inside job people. Then you've got Representative Fry guy who was talking about how this was all unfair to Donald Trump, what Jack Smith did, because there was too much evidence against Trump, and giving him only five and a half months to prepare for trial was impossible because there was so much to get ready for. Well, this brought to mind Mark Twain's statement, which is, If you just tell the truth, you never have anything to remember. Why does it take five and a half months to tell everybody what you were doing on January sixth when The President's whereabouts are known at every time.

Another one that really blew my mind, Rachel, was a Representative Van Drew from New Jersey. It was absurd. He was saying, Donald Trump really wanted to send in the National Guard, but Nancy Pelosi wouldn't allow him to. I introduced just the website of the DC National Guard saying, The DC National Guard is the only National Guard in America that reports directly and exclusively and only to the President of the United States. It's solely within his power. You're telling me that the guy who wants to just go ahead and send military into Venezuela or Panama or Greenland couldn't send the National Guard in when they're under his direct control because Nancy Pelosi wouldn't allow him to? No, of course, in the real world, Pelosi was begging him, calling on him to send in the National Guard, along with Democrats and Republicans across the board. But each one of these Republicans now occupies a different realm of conspiracy theory. It's just the most extraordinary thing to witness.

I mean, in defense of congressman Drew of New Jersey, he did concede on the record today, I'm a simple guy. And so I felt like, Oh, okay. You know what I mean? If you're going to set the table that way, basically anybody could be put in the place, Matt.

Well, that's something he says that I agree with, although I think it's an understatement.

Congressman Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee. Sir, this has been a big day, and I know it was a lot of preparation to get ready for today, too. Thank you so much for staying up late and being here with us. We really appreciate it.

My pleasure.

All right. Jen, I have to ask you because you just sat down with us. Let me get your reaction to what congressman Raskin there, but I also just wanted to get your take on what you saw today.

First of all, as he was talking, it was making me think about the fact that they have known this hearing was coming for some time. The way that these Republicans prepared was to put together essentially process arguments, some of which were offensive, some which were incorrect, some of which were hard to follow, all of the above, about a day that is the most documented day in modern history that happens in our nation's capital, and one that we all watched with our own eyes. It made me think just about this split screen because we're all covering many stories right now, of course, including this hearing today, but just about Minneapolis. Then today, JD Vance was in Minneapolis, the vice President of the United States, telling the people of Minneapolis that they didn't see what they saw with their eyes two weeks ago. So as much as things have changed in some ways over the last five years, you still have this tremendous gaslighting of the American people and telling them they are not seeing the abuses that are actually happening before their own eyes.

And J. D. Vance, who's only in Minneapolis today because the last guy who had that job was literally left for dead, right? I mean, he's only there. There's never any nod to the fact that he's Donald Trump's second vice President, who is only there because Trump left the first one for dead on January sixth.

Yeah. And of course, tonight, the Eve of what is expected to be, effectively, a general strike tomorrow in Minneapolis, with clergy converging on Minneapolis from all over the country and businesses, schools, public accommodation, everything essentially in Minneapolis, expected to come to a halt tomorrow as the entire city walks out, participates in a demonstration at 2: 00 PM, but also just walks out and refuses to participate in public life or any commerce in order to tell ICE to get out of that city. Tomorrow is going to be a dramatic day in Minneapolis. All right, we still got much more to come tonight. Several police officers who were at the Capitol on January sixth were in attendance at today's hearing. One of them had some choice words and one very choice hand gesture for one of the Republican congressmen on the panel today. That's next. Stay with us. Lots to come.

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. This next song is dedicated to a guy who wears orange makeup, has his pants and his diapers. It's called First Class Loser. He's a jerk. He's a good thing that we despide.

But you can't just tune them out because he's too loud to ignore.

When he shows up at your house, get you the lights of your floor.

It's the first class. The Inimitable... Sorry.

You got another line in the- The Inimitable Boston Punk Band, The Dropkick Murfies in All Their Glory.

Do you want to know why the Dropkick Murphies are relevant to our primetime recap of the Jack Smith hearing tonight? I'll tell you. The Dropkick Murphies have been emphatically railing at Donald Trump throughout his second term. They are as unrestrained in their criticism of the President as they are glorious in it. That may be the necessary context you need to understand why Michael Fanon, the former DC police officer who defended our nation's capital on January sixth, showed up to today's hearing in an excellent Dropkick Murphy's T-shirt, which says on the back of it, Fighting Nazis since 1996. That turned out to be a bit of foreshadowing for what would happen when the hearing went into a brief recess and a kerfuffle broke out in the audience. It seemed to start when a notorious mega troll provocateur guy seemed to be trying to provoke Officer Fanon.

. Come get a look at me. No. No. No. No. We will be in order. Mr. Chairman, will you- No shame. No shame. No shame. No shame. No shame.

Training these people that way.

This guy is threatened by family members of the audience. Rap my children. Members of the audience will please sit down and remove themselves from the committee room. Rape my children, you sick bastard. Rape my children. Thank you, Officer Fanon.

You can hear Officer Fanon there accusing the man of threatening his family and threatening to, quote, rape his children as fellow officers held him back. You also might have heard some of the Democratic members of Congress there, including Becker Ballant from Vermont, intervene and say shame to the man who was arguing and provoking Officer Fanon. That man is an acolyte of Trump's former National Security Advisor, Mike Flynn. He has helped push Trump's election conspiracies and lead up to January sixth. When the hearing finally resumed, Republican congressman Troy Nels decided he thought it would be a good idea to address directly and invoke the January sixth officers who were sitting in the room while he was defending the President who had sent the mob after them that day. Once again, Officer Fanon was having none of it, and he let everybody in the room know using words that he coughed and also some expressive hand gestures. Lastly, I would like to quickly address the police officers on January sixth.

Mr. Dunn, Mr. Fanon, Mr. Gones, Mr. Hodges.

I'm a member of the new Select Committee to actually examine, actually examine what happened that day.

I can tell you, gentlemen, that the fault does not lie with Donald Trump. It lies with Yogananda Pitman and the US Capitol Leadership Team. We know They had the intelligence, and there was going to be a high propensity for violence that day. Claim my time. Yeah. It will be in order. The time belongs to the gentleman from Texas.

The President's Day.. Last thing, your hand gestures, Mr. Sunon.

No, no, no. You need medication. The time of gentleman is expired. The audience will be in order. The committee will be in order.

No matter how much Republicans try to rewrite the history of January sixth, they cannot ignore the fact that some of the police officers who risked their lives that day are right there in front of them, living, breathing people who will keep showing up to things like this, despite the fact that they apparently have no idea how to contend with that when it happens. Our Stephanie Rule, has joined us. Steph.

Just like Epstein, victims aren't going away. We're now a month and four days past the Epstein deadline, and we're seeing the administration do every single thing possible, create distractions, But just like the January sixth officers, they were extraordinarily brave then, they're brave now. You can say the same thing for those Epstein victims. They're not going away.

I think there's been a lot of effort to understand why Republicans are such cowards, why Republicans who have been pro-NATO and anti-Putin are suddenly pro-Putin and anti-NATO because they're afraid of Donald Trump. There is no need to understand why a survivor of Epstein's heinous child sex trafficking or someone who protected... The person who ran the fastest on January 6, at least in the evidence that was produced by the select committee, was Republican Josh Hawley. He ran like a freaking Olympian sprinter. They weren't less afraid than the Democrats. They were at least as afraid, and in the case of Hawley, ran faster than any Democrat at least captured on video. So the idea that they weren't also looking to Michael Fanone and Harry Dunn to save their asses, to save their lives that day, is what the offense is. And unlike Mitch McDonald and Kevin McCarthy and the Republican cowards who are willing to pretend that they were anti-NATO and pro-Putin because they're afraid of losing something, I guess those jobs are so great, these guys have nothing to lose. Fanon, as he said there, he lives at constant fear that something happened to his mother who's had feces left on her lawn.

There are constant death threats against his kids. He gets pizzas delivered regularly, which is the we know where you live threat. They do it to judges as well. They are dealing with physical and mental and emotional trauma that they'll deal with forever. The idea that they won't go away, it's bigger than that. They're not the cowards that the Republicans are because they've already been through the crucible of what Trump has done to them, what he's taken from them.

To the thing that you were saying, Jen, about the gaslighting, you didn't see what you thought you saw. It's so important for them to be sitting in that hearing room because the entire project here is to completely create some alternate- To erase them. Reality, to erase them, to erase the reality of what happened, that it didn't happen. That it didn't happen, as I think Jamie Raskin called it, the most documented crime in world history. For them to sit there, even when they're just sitting there and listening is a rebuke to that. Again, we live in this world. We're like, This is all happening in this hearing room.

We all saw it.

We all know. Donald Trump gets up and it's like, I won Minnesota three times. He's talking about the rigged election. The insistence on the lie has to be met with the equal and opposite force on the other side of the insistence on the truth. It is exhausting. You see what it takes out of those men. You see what it takes out of the Epstein victims. But in both cases, the persistence of the truth has has to endure. You have to marshal it every day, day in, day out, because there is an effort on the other side to destroy it that is equally indefatigable.

Chris, we saw it yesterday.

Yesterday in the President's remarks in Davos, he referred to Iceland twice as Greenland. Four times. Four times, excuse me. When he was asked about it, Caroline Levet came out full force, No, I've got the printed script here. You have it wrong. It doesn't matter what it said in the printed script. It didn't matter. He said it wrong. People who are his supporters, what I I almost said what I love, but no. All of these people in the business community who are too afraid to say anything, I called so many of them in the last 24 hours because so many of them were sitting in that room, and they're just avoiding responding and avoiding responding, which is why, whether you're a reporter, whether you're an Epstein victim, whether you're Michael Fanon, there is an assault on the truth. We're watching it day in and day out, and you're seeing the President use the Department of Justice as his weapon to silence the people on the other side to say, I'm too afraid of what I could face from a legal perspective. I'm going to back down. But people aren't.

It's not just messaging, it's not just discourse, it's not just media. It's not even those things. It's people being willing to physically show up to embody the truth.

I said it backwards. He called Iceland, Greenland. No, he called Greenland, Iceland.

Yes, he was trying to talk about Greenland, and he kept saying Iceland. No, you didn't misspeak. You didn't misspeak.

No, it's not.

It was just a big piece of ice. It doesn't matter what it's called. He wants it to say Trump on it. Excuse me.

More of our special recap to come. Quick break. We'll be right back.

Are you glad you accepted Attorney General Garland's request to be a special prosecutor, even though you've been dragged over political barbed wire and your family has been subjected to death threats? I don't regret it.

Welcome back to our primetime recap of Jack Smith's historic testimony on Capitol Hill today. For anybody wondering why House Republicans wanted to do this, why they wanted to allow Jack Smith to explain the strength of his evidence, why they wanted to relitigate live for the American people for hours, the very strong, very damning criminal indictments of the sitting Republican President. Well, Democratic congressman Ted Lou offered a potent theory about that today.

How scared are Republicans of talking about the Epstein files? They are so scared that they literally are calling Jack Smith, the distinguished federal prosecutor who secured multiple indictments against Donald Trump with multiple felony counts. Republicans would rather talk about the criminality of Donald Trump in trying to steal an election and trying to stop the peaceful transfer of power, and the criminality of Donald Trump in stealing classified documents of obstruction justice than about Donald Trump's associations with Jeffrey Epstein and his pedophilia ring. I demand this committee, this chairman and Republicans, to call a immediate hearing asking why the Department of Justice is refusing to release 99% of the Epstein files and why the DOJ is violating law right now.

Republicans would rather talk about the criminality of Donald Trump than about Trump's associations with Jeffrey Epstein and his pedophilia ring. When When congressman Lou said that today, I felt like you could feel all over the country people going, Yeah. Yes, exactly. Congressman Ted Lou calling out his Republican colleagues on the panel for being so desperate to talk about anything other than convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and his long-standing deep ties with Donald Trump, that they were willing to literally hold a televised live public congressional hearing today all about Trump's alleged crimes and the evidence that supports the idea that maybe the word alleged shouldn't be there. Under Donald Trump, the Justice Department has now blown past a congressionally mandated deadline of December 19th to release all investigative files related to Epstein. Only a small fraction of the records have been made public so far. Steph, you were just talking about this. You just brought this up. I feel like there is a reasonable analysis that everything Trump is doing is about distracting from the Epstein files. I also feel like it doesn't matter if it's a It's everything he's doing is bad. The Greenland stuff is bad.

The Minneapolis stuff is bad. The suing everybody stuff is bad. The destruction of the Justice Department stuff is bad. Usaid is bad. It's all bad, even if it is just a distraction. That said, there was nothing about this hearing that was any good for them at all, unless they were under the mistaken impression that they were going to somehow ruin Jack Smith by doing this.

Which they weren't going to do. But they can also continue to distract from the Epstein files. Lauren Bobert, who was pressured by the White House to not want them to be released. She actually stood up to the President. She signed it. She told Politico in the past week, She's done pushing for the Epstein files. She said, I did what I did. It's out of my hand. I've done all I can. It's out of my hand.

They've released 1% of the files, so I consider myself done.

An overwhelming majority of Congress, both sides of the house, approved, signed it, excuse me, voted for it. The President signed it into law. And yes, we're over a month and haven't gotten it. None of us here, the broader media, isn't going to stop demanding it Even if you're not interested in the Epstein files, if we're suddenly disregarding Allah, what does that make us?

Go ahead. I was just going to say, I have pitched approximately a million stories in my life, two million if I combine with Nicole. I read this headline today in Politico, Top Federal Prosecutors, Basically, Were crushed by Epstein files workload. If you read the story, it's all about how hard they're working to review these files. I'm just going to call BS on this. This is a story that was pitched by somebody within the Trump administration to further punt it down the road. So yes, people are going to keep... They're going to keep fighting for it. They're going to keep calling for it. But I think the world we're living in right now is that they are going to find ways to change the expectations of the public. And that's, I mean, whether it's Greenland or Iceland or crazy hearings or whatever it may be, and even stories like this that are trying to thwart our ability to get access to this stuff.

Am I insane or did Todd Blanch write a letter that was released to the public in spring of last year in which he said, We have comprehensively reviewed all the files and found there's nothing more to see here, which then precipitated the scandal that led us to the point that we're in now where apparently everyone has to review the files because they didn't reveal them the first time because he was obviously lying the first time. The other thing about it, too, is this is on the same day, this thing on the FTE files is the same day that we got the announcement that TikTok has officially sold to an American a majority owner, a law that was passed and signed Allah, a real law, bipartisan majority, signed by the last president that was just completely ignored for a year. Completely ignored. It was on the books and completely ignored. The truest thing Jack Smith said today is that the rule of law is not self-executing. Because here we sit. The Epstein files are not yet released despite the fact there's a law. Tiktok sat there without being shut down despite the fact there was a law.

Donald Trump very clearly acted criminally, in my humble opinion, and in the of Jack Smith, and he goes around. And so it's like, again, to come back to that eternal vigilance point we made, that's really the only answer, is that the rule of law is not self-executing, democracy is not self-executing. All it takes is consistent and constant organized effort on the other side, or what you get is lawlessness.

Well, I think the other thing that Jack Smith reveals is that the rule of law is already dead. And of course, they're not following the law. Donald Trump signed the law knowing he wouldn't follow the law that he signed. And the part about this story that I think is pretty opaque to all of us is that after we all covered it as a heinous child sex trafficking story in the first Trump administration, it festered and simmered and spread in a grassroots manner, not in the mainstream media, not on the left, not on the center, on the far right of American politics. And so he can do whatever he wants. He can defy the law. He can lie. He can smear the survivor drivers. They've believed it for so long that it all accrues to his political detriment. When he goes out and tells him he's going to make things affordable, some of them will believe him because they're part of the cult, they're part of the tribe. But anyone who spent 10 years thinking that if they elected him again, he released the Epstein files, is gone. The power of this issue, politically, really won't be tested until the midterms and the presidential.

But I think it is a known unknown to all of us how powerful the issue is because it was elevated by the... Cash Cash Patel went on Joe Rogan's podcast and talked about all the gigabytes of evidence. Cash Patel is the person who testified to the massive amount of evidence he possessed, and Cash Patel is now the guy covering it up. Yeah.

Pam Bondi says she has the client list on her desk. On her desk. All right. Right up next. What might be my favorite moment of the whole day, because I'm eight years old and because I have petty interests, the moment when it all just went super harmlessly but hilariously wrong for one seemingly sleepy congressman from Wisconsin. We'll close up our recap with that right ahead. Stay with us. All right, we are going to try to be very disciplined. We're going to try to not spend too much time on the moment in the hearing today when Wisconsin Republican congressman, Glenn Rothman, got all tangled up in his own words and accidentally made a very emphatic case that Jack Smith was absolutely I'm completely right. Accidentally. Which prompted congressman Jamie Raskin to pipe up cheerfully and shout out, We agree.

A gentleman from Wisconsin is recognized.

Yeah. First of all, just a couple of comments. There are probably 10 people on this committee who have more conversations with 10, 15 people on this committee who have more conversations with Donald Trump than myself.

But anybody who says that Donald Trump thought he won that election, that is just plain not true.

No way.

Unless he's the best actor in the history of this building.

We agree.

That Donald Trump.

I think he- Believe- Order. That Donald Trump not believe. Donald Trump did not believe he lost that election.

Just plain not true. No way. No way that Donald Trump thought he won that election. Donald Trump knew he Wait a second. That came out weird. He definitely knew he... Did he know he lost? I know he knew because he won. I mean, he lost, and we knew that he... No way, right? What was I saying? I'm going to be very, very disciplined and not spend more time on that at all. Congressman Glenn Groffman, if you listen very closely right now, you can actually still hear him banging his head onto a table in Wisconsin over and over and over again, trying to make sure that did not happen in his memory.

You can come on my show tonight and clear it up.

There you go. You got our number? All right, that's going to do it for our special recap of Jack Smith's testimony on Capitol.