Republicans tried their best to bury former special counsel Jack Smith's testimony against President Donald Trump — but House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) accidentally gave Smith the perfect format to speak openly and incriminatingly against Trump, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) told MS NOW's Nicolle Wallace on Tuesday.
This comes amid the fifth anniversary of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, which was the basis of one of Smith's criminal cases against Trump until the president was re-elected and ensured the case would end.
"We know they know the truth because they released the Jack Smith testimony on New Year's Eve," said Wallace. "I mean, you're right, there are so many tales that they know that the truth and the facts are no good for them. I wonder what you make of Jack Smith's presentation of the facts as he gathered them. In some ways parallel to your investigation, in some ways going beyond with a couple of witnesses that refused to cooperate with the congressional probe, but giving testimony that made clear he believed in his telling that he was ready to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Donald Trump committed crimes on January 6th."
"Yeah, well, I left that closed-door deposition of Jack Smith, and I said that Chairman Jordan's decision to do it behind closed doors was the best decision he ever made in his life, because it was absolutely devastating for Donald Trump and for those who still want to try to pretend as if he wasn't guilty of these things, he was clearly guilty of these things," said Raskin.
"And what's gotten him off, of course, is not, you know, any kind of innocence," Raskin continued. "What's allowed him to escape, you know, Houdini-like, is the Roberts court and the fact that he's been able to manipulate the levers of power to keep himself going. I mean, if he put, you know, a fraction of that energy into trying to actually do something for the American people, we might be in a different position in America today."
"But the economy, the society are basically in ruins because of the guy," he added. "But he has been able to stay afloat, even as it's overwhelmingly clear that he engaged in an attempt to defraud the United States, disrupt this federal proceeding, and massively violate the voting rights of all Americans by stealing an election. He wasn't trying to stop election fraud. He was trying to commit election fraud for several months."
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