A key Republican lawmaker says he believes that special counsel Jack Smith may have made false statements to Congress while testifying about his investigation of President Donald Trump and that the Justice Department should consider prosecuting him. Lawyers for Smith deny the allegation and say he testified truthfully.
Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, referred Smith to the Justice Department for possible prosecution related to closed-door testimony about whether he had obtained records of lawmakers while investigating Trump’s efforts to overturn his 2020 presidential election loss.
The referral, sent Wednesday, centers on a December 2025 exchange in which Smith was asked about subpoenas that prosecutors had issued for the toll records of some Republican lawmakers as part of the investigation. Toll records show the time, date, length of call and phone numbers involved but do not reveal the content of the communication.
“Did the toll records that you requested from the senators, did they include the content of the phone calls?” Smith was asked.
“No,” he said. He again answered no when asked whether the toll records he had requested included the content of text messages.
Jordan, in his referral, says that answer was misleading in light of newly released records from Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa showing that Smith had obtained the contents of 44 lawmakers’ text messages in a separate subpoena to the National Archives and Records Administration that sought the communications of various Trump advisers and aides.
“The responses provided by Mr. Smith gave the impression that neither Mr. Smith nor his team had access to the content of Members’ privileged text messages. We now know this to be false,” Jordan wrote.
