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| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
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Important Board Announced
00:04:34
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| As part of this historic record of major peace initiatives, today we're announcing more details regarding the Board of Peace, so important. | ||
| This board has the chance to be one of the most consequential bodies ever created, and it's my enormous honor to serve as its chairman. | ||
| I was very honored when they asked me to do it. | ||
| We had an idea to do it, and then they came and they said, You be the chairman. | ||
| But I take it very seriously. | ||
| We have a great group of people and incredible young people that are leading it from within. | ||
| It's running beautifully, started already. | ||
| And every country, just about every country, wants to be a part of it. | ||
| And we just sent out the letters a couple of days ago, and these are just the countries that are here. | ||
| They happen to be in Davos. | ||
| So we said, would be honored if you wanted to join us up in the stage. | ||
| And it's really great. | ||
| They're friends of mine. | ||
|
unidentified
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I think. | |
| Let me see. | ||
| Yeah, every one of them is a friend of mine. | ||
| A couple, let's see, a couple I like. | ||
| A couple I don't like. | ||
| No, I like actually this group. | ||
| I like every single one of them. | ||
| Can you believe it? | ||
|
unidentified
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Usually I have about two or three that I can't stand. | |
| Usually I have two or three that I don't like. | ||
| I don't find them up here. | ||
|
unidentified
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I like every one of these people. | |
| No, they're great people. | ||
| They're great leaders. | ||
| And the Board of Peace is composed of leaders, the top leaders in the world, actually. | ||
| Last October, we released a plan for the permanent end to the conflict in Gaza. | ||
| And I'm pleased to say that our vision was unanimously adopted by the United Nations Security Council late last year. | ||
| Under phase one of this plan, we have painstakingly maintained that Gaza and we're going to have it very strongly, and that's what we have. | ||
| Maintained the Gaza ceasefire, delivered record levels of humanitarian aid. | ||
| We've given aid. | ||
| You know, you used to hear all the people were starving and it was terrible. | ||
| Now we have, you don't hear that anymore. | ||
| We've delivered record levels of humanitarian aid. | ||
| I want to thank the United States, but I want to thank some of the countries, some of the countries that are sitting right up here, because they've sent great aid, great aid also in the form of money, where we go out and purchase food. | ||
| And you don't hear those stories anymore with people starving. | ||
| And secured the release of all 20. | ||
| You know, we secured the release of all 20 living hostages. | ||
| Now I want to thank Steve Witkoff and Jared and everybody for doing working so hard. | ||
| They worked so hard, but there were 20 remaining living hostages. | ||
| Now we got hundreds out, but the last 20, I said, boy, that's going to be a tough one. | ||
| I said that a year before. | ||
| And it was a tough one, but we got them. | ||
| Got all 20, every one of them. | ||
| And we had also about 28 that were dead, but the parents wanted them just as though they were living, just as much. | ||
| Some cases, it almost seemed more. | ||
| It was amazing, actually, the love. | ||
| But their boy had been killed. | ||
| In just about all cases, young men. | ||
|
unidentified
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Their baby, their boy, had been killed and they wanted the body of the boy. | |
| And it looked like it couldn't be done. | ||
| And with the exception of one, and we're close on the track of that. | ||
| We've got them all, every single one of them, which is amazing. | ||
| It's a rough job. | ||
| That was a rough job. | ||
| And I've been very clear that Hamas must return that last remaining deceased hostage as well. | ||
| And that will be the full commitment. | ||
| And then we get on to other things. | ||
| And we're committed to ensuring Gaza is demilitarized, properly governed, and beautifully rebuilt. | ||
| It's going to be a great plan, and that's where the Board of Peace really started. | ||
| And I think we can spread out to other things as we succeed with Gaza. | ||
| We're going to be very successful in Gaza. | ||
| It's going to be a great thing to watch. | ||
| And now to bring the Board of Peace into full force, I ask Sheikh Issa of Bahrain and Foreign Minister Burita of Morocco to join me in signing and ratifying the Board of Peace Charter. | ||
|
Congratulations President Trump!
00:10:47
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| Thank you very much, everybody. | ||
| Appreciate it. | ||
| Thank you. Thank you. | ||
| Congratulations, President Trump. | ||
| The Charter is now in full force, and the Board of Peace is now an official international organization. | ||
| Anyone who has seen a mafia movie understands that this is not actually a promise not to use force. | ||
| It is instead using force as an implied threat. | ||
| No one should breathe a sigh of relief, just as you might not take much consolation from a thug promising not to break your knees as he demanded $20 while holding a hammer. | ||
| There is the danger of threatening violence and force, Robert. | ||
| There's also the danger of a president who puts those threats on the table and then pretends to take them away. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| And by the way, I agree that this is not over as far as Trump's desire to get Greenland and the possibility of using force. | ||
| You know, there were several times before the Venezuela attack when Trump denied that he had any intention of using military force in Venezuela, and he came back to it. | ||
| He has been focused on Greenland since the first term, and he's clearly quite determined. | ||
| But most importantly, I think we need to step back and say, yes, we may have dodged this particular bullet at this moment, but let's face the fact that we were confronted with a situation in which our NATO allies were beginning to deploy troops to prevent an American act of territorial aggression against a NATO ally. | ||
| Anybody who thinks that we're going to go back to normal with NATO after an experience like that, on top of the tariffs that he's levied against our allies and threatened to levy if he didn't get his way, in some cases because the Swiss president rubbed him the wrong way, so he slapped 39% tariffs. | ||
| You cannot be an ally of the United States if the United States is going to behave this way. | ||
| And so the end result of Trump's policies is that the United States is not going to have allies anymore, either in Asia or in Europe. | ||
| Really, because of his heart, he wants to do this. | ||
| And we've developed ways to redevelop Gaza. | ||
| Gaza, as President Trump's been saying, has amazing potential. | ||
| And this is for the people of Gaza. | ||
| We've developed it into zones. | ||
| In the beginning, we were toying with the idea of saying, let's build a free zone, and then we have a Hamas zone. | ||
| And then we said, you know what, let's just plan for catastrophic success. | ||
| We have signed a deal, demilitarized. | ||
| That is what we are going to enforce. | ||
| People ask us what our plan B is. | ||
| We do not have a plan B. | ||
| We have a plan, we signed an agreement, we are all committed to making that agreement work. | ||
| There's a master plan. | ||
| We'll be doing it in phasing. | ||
| In the Middle East, they build cities like this in two, three million people. | ||
| They build this in three years. | ||
| And so stuff like this is very doable if we make it happen. | ||
| Rafael, we'll start with. | ||
| This will show a lot of workforce housing. | ||
| We think this could be done in two, three years. | ||
| We've already started removing the rubble and doing some of the demolition. | ||
| And then new Gaza. | ||
| It could be a hope, it could be a destination, have a lot of industry, and really be a place that the people there can thrive, have great employment. | ||
| Once this starts going, we think there should be 100% full employment and opportunity for everybody there. | ||
| And we have a lot of data on what can be, but we think that this really gives the Gazan people an opportunity to live their aspirations. | ||
| But it all starts with security and it all starts with governance. | ||
| Final note, I'll just say on the Board of Peace, which is that all the lessons we're doing is we're basically studying the best practices from all over the world and we're watching who does education the best, who does healthcare delivery the best. | ||
| All these things are, it's not secret IP. | ||
| All this is IP that the Board of Peace is going to make public and we want to encourage all the countries to be able to follow these best practices. | ||
| A lot of the things that President Trump is doing in America, if they're working, we should all be copying them. | ||
| If we find what's working in other countries, we should be copying them too. | ||
| And so what the Board of Peace will have the ability to do if we're successful with Gaza is really show how do you do peace implementation, which is something that when we got this deal done, we didn't really find too much expertise or know-how on how to do it. | ||
| So as we're creating this system, hopefully it's something that we can just document these learnings and make them available to all else who want to use them in the future. | ||
| So demilitarization, this is something we're starting now that we have a new government in Gaza. | ||
| This government will be working with Hamas on the demilitarization to really take the principles that were agreed to in the document to the next phase. | ||
| And hopefully that will be successful. | ||
| Without that, we can't rebuild. | ||
| So if Hamas does not demilitarize, that will be what holds back Gaza and the people of Gaza from achieving their aspiration, and that's very important. | ||
| So the next 100 days, we're going to continue to just be heads down and focused on making sure this is implemented. | ||
| We continue to be focused on humanitarian aid, humanitarian shelter, but then creating the conditions to move forward. | ||
| So thank you. | ||
| Final point I'll just make is this is really only possible because of the work of so many people and President Trump's great leadership. | ||
| But a lot of you have been asking how can we help? | ||
| So the countries have all been incredibly generous. | ||
| We'll be doing the first conference where we'll announce a lot of the contributions that will be made in a couple weeks in Washington. | ||
| From the private sector, there'll be amazing investment opportunities. | ||
| I know it's a little risky to be investing in a place like this, but we need you to come take faith, invest in the people, try to be a part of it. | ||
| And then finally, I'll just talk to people on the media and on the social media, which is this deal only happened because we worked with Israel, we worked with Turkey, we worked with Qatar, we worked with Saudi, we worked with Egypt. | ||
| I mean, everyone worked together. | ||
| We worked with UAE. | ||
| We all worked together to make this happen. | ||
| I see a lot of people trying to escalate, you know, criticizing Israel or Israelis criticizing Turkey or Qatar. | ||
| Just calm down for 30 days. | ||
| I think that the war is over. | ||
| Let's do our best to try working together. | ||
| Our goal here is peace between Israel and the Palestinian people. | ||
| Everyone wants to live peacefully. | ||
| Everyone wants to live with dignity. | ||
| Let's put our efforts towards promoting those who are doing the work to build this up, like Ali and his committee. | ||
| Let's focus on the positive stories and let's just calm down, turn a new chapter. | ||
| And if we believe that peace is possible, then peace really can be possible. | ||
| This is the primal screen of a dying regime. | ||
| Pray for our enemies because we're going medieval on these people. | ||
| Israel's not got a free shot at all these networks lying about the people. | ||
| The people have had a belly full of it. | ||
| I know you don't like hearing that. | ||
| I know you're trying to do everything in the world to stop that, but you're not going to stop it. | ||
| It's going to happen. | ||
| And where do people like that go to share the big line? | ||
| MAGA media. | ||
| I wish in my soul, I wish that any of these people had a conscience. | ||
| Ask yourself, what is my task and what is my purpose? | ||
| If that answer is to save my country, this country will be saved. | ||
|
unidentified
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War Room. | |
| Here's your host, Stephen K. Bannon. | ||
| It's Thursday, 22 January, Euroville, or 2026. | ||
| President Trump is back, I think, en route back to the United States, a whirlwind effort. | ||
| Of course, yesterday was all Greenland and all the situation with NATO, the outline of the, and we told you he would come with a, he would get a framework, and he did it on the first day. | ||
| I thought it actually may roll to the second day. | ||
| He got it on the first day. | ||
| Greenland deal, small pockets. | ||
| This is the overview of the framework. | ||
| It involves small pockets of land for the United States. | ||
| It involves Greenland's mineral rights. | ||
| Duration of the deal has an indefinite timeframe designed to block Russian influence in Greenland. | ||
| U.S. Golden Dome, that is the anti-ballistic missile system to protect the United States, will be involved. | ||
| So will be deployed. | ||
| That'll be the start of it. | ||
| This is why the Arctic's so important. | ||
| So the Golden Dome, an anti-ballistic missile system, will be involved. | ||
| Open doors to U.S.-backed infrastructure investment from private companies and President Trump looking to secure land, minerals, and defense in one overall deal. | ||
| And, you know, all this stuff about NATO and abandoning NATO. | ||
| Where's NATO been in this whole thing? | ||
| Oh, they were with us in the Middle East. | ||
| Come on, man. | ||
| In Iraq and Afghanistan. | ||
| Not that I'm promoting those wars should have been even fought, but it was all optics. | ||
| It's performative. | ||
| Their involvement as an ally to even protect themselves has been totally and completely performative. | ||
| President Trump is well within his rights. | ||
| Also, new Gaza. | ||
| Bottom line, as I keep saying, you got a new Palestinian state. | ||
|
unidentified
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Look at that. | |
| Jared walks through. | ||
| This has been very developed. | ||
| They have big capital commitments. | ||
| Look at the artwork. | ||
| I mean, it looks like Miami Beach on testosterone. | ||
| That thing's going forward. | ||
| You have a Palestinian state that's going to be well-financed, super modern, with the Turks as security. | ||
| As Jared says, give it a while. | ||
| I mean, what they've brought together so far is quite frankly, you know, awe-inspiring. | ||
| If your goal is peace over there, they're driving the train. | ||
| But for anybody that said, hey, you can't have a two-state solution, well, you've got a two-state solution. | ||
| I noticed crickets from Tel Aviv, Levin, in the crowd of the reality of what's going on. | ||
| The Board of Peace kicked off today. | ||
| I believe the United States is pulling out of World Health Organization one year after President Trump said what happened. | ||
| We're going to go to Jack Smith, The Grilling, all next packed morning in the war room. | ||
|
Jack Smith's Unprecedented Move
00:12:42
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|
unidentified
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Here's your host, Stephen Kay Bam. | |
| Okay, we got to juggle a lot of balls today. | ||
| I have a lot more to say about the Board of Peace, about Gaza, about all of it, obviously, Greenland, what's going on. | ||
| Peter Schweitzer is going to join us at 11, so we're going to juggle the Jack Smith hearing, which is vitally important. | ||
| We're going to stream it all live. | ||
| We're having Julie Kelly tonight for a summary. | ||
| This is much important. | ||
| So let's go right now to Jim Jordan. | ||
| He's going to kick it off as the chairman of the Judiciary Committee. | ||
| We'll begin today's hearing with opening statements. | ||
| Chair is now recognized for an opening statement. | ||
| It was always about politics. | ||
| And to get President Trump, they were willing to do just about anything. | ||
| January 7th, 2023, Kevin McCarthy becomes Speaker of the House. | ||
| 16 days later, Jack Smith issues a subpoena for his phone records. | ||
| Phone records from two years prior for a two-month timeframe, Election Day 2020 to January 7th, 2021. | ||
| Jack Smith and the Biden Justice Department get the phone records of the top Republican in government, the guy second in line to the president. | ||
| They know who he called, who called him, when the call took place, and how long it lasted. | ||
| You can pattern an individual's life. | ||
| They know who the speaker talked to before big votes, who he talked to after big votes, when he calls his colleagues, when he calls his family. | ||
| And to add insult to injury, they go to the judge with the subpoena for a gag order on the carrier. | ||
| ATT, don't tell your customer, the Speaker of the House, that you just gave his phone calls to Jack Smith and Joe Biden. | ||
| And here's the kicker. | ||
| They say to the court, we need this gag order because he's a flight risk. | ||
| Someone might tamper with witnesses or with evidence. | ||
| Are you kidding me? | ||
| The Speaker of the House is going to run? | ||
| They got my phone records for two and a half years. | ||
| Even the Democrats said this was wrong. | ||
| But of course, we shouldn't be surprised. | ||
| Democrats have been going after President Trump for 10 years, for a decade. | ||
| And the country should never, ever forget what they did. | ||
| Over the next few hours, we're going to hear a lot of yelling and screaming, I assume, from the other side. | ||
| But we should never forget what took place, what they did to the guy we, the people, elected president twice. | ||
| It all started in 2016 when they spied on his campaign. | ||
| The Clinton campaign hired the law firm Perkins Cooey, who hired the public relations firm Fusion GPS, who hired a foreigner, Christopher Steele, to put together the fake dossier. | ||
| Bunch of garbage in that document, but that was used by Jim Comey's FBI. | ||
| And we all know Jim Comey. | ||
| He was the guy who just last year was strolling along the beach when the good Lord had the waves wash up on shore seashells in the formation of 8647. | ||
| That guy took that dossier to the FISA court, lied to the court, and then spied on the other party's campaign. | ||
| This, of course, led to the Mueller investigation, two and a half years, 19 lawyers, 40 agents, $30 million to find nothing. | ||
| No conspiracy, no coordination whatsoever. | ||
| Then it was impeachment one, the anonymous whistleblower. | ||
| We couldn't even know who was bringing the charge against the guy they were trying to take it, the guy we elected, who were trying to kick out of office. | ||
| We couldn't know. | ||
| Secret hearings in the bunker, in the basement of the Capitol. | ||
| Again, nothing. | ||
| Then it was impeachment two. | ||
| No secret hearings here because they didn't have any hearings. | ||
| It was a snap impeachment, and the Senate trial actually took place after President Trump wasn't in office. | ||
| Then, of course, it was Alvin Bragg, who said before he got elected district attorney, that there was no case here. | ||
| Then he gets elected and changes his mind when the left starts pressuring him to go after President Trump. | ||
| He hires Michael Colangelo, former Democrat National Committee consultant, and the number three guy at the Department of Justice. | ||
| And then, of course, it's Sponnie and Nathan, Bonnie Willis and Nathan Wade in Fulton County, Georgia. | ||
| We actually deposed Mr. Wade, one of the most interesting depositions I've sat through. | ||
| We said to him, you know, you billed taxpayers in Georgia thousands of dollars for meetings in D.C. with the January 6th Committee and with the Biden administration. | ||
| And we asked him some questions. | ||
| Who'd you talk to, Mr. Wade? | ||
| He couldn't remember. | ||
| We said, where'd you meet? | ||
| Did you meet the Capitol? | ||
| Did you meet the White House? | ||
| Where'd you meet? | ||
| Couldn't remember that either. | ||
| We said, were these meetings in person, on the phone, or did you have a Zoom meeting? | ||
| Couldn't remember. | ||
| We finally just asked him, Did you really come to D.C. and meet people? | ||
| He said, Oh, yeah, I came. | ||
| And I billed the taxpayers. | ||
| I know I came. | ||
| Just no idea who he talked to or what he did. | ||
| And then there was the raid on President Trump's home, you know, where they searched Barron's room in the First Lady's closet. | ||
| In our deposition with Stephen D'Antoineo, head of the FBI Washington Field Office, he told us none of the normal process, none of the normal protocol was followed in the investigation. | ||
| He said, first of all, the case was run out of D.C. Normally, you run it out of the Miami field office. | ||
| No, no, no, we're going to run out of D.C. | ||
| He said he recommended, and the people in the FBI at the time in the Washington Field Office recommended they give the president notice before they do the search, or at least when they got there, before they start the search, call the president's lawyers, ask them to come there and meet them and conduct the search together. | ||
| Again, the answer from Maine Justice was no. | ||
| Which brings us back to Mr. Smith. | ||
| On November 18, 2022, three days after President Trump announces he's running for president, Attorney General Garland names Jack Smith special counsel. | ||
| One of the first things Mr. Smith does is put on his team the very people responsible for the raid on President Trump's home. | ||
| The very people. | ||
| And then Jack Smith also puts on his team the people responsible for getting the phone records of dozens of members of Congress. | ||
| People like Thomas Wyndham, who when we deposed him, took the fifth 71 times. | ||
| We've actually referred him to the Justice Department for obstructing our investigation. | ||
| Jack Smith then gets a gag order in his investigation on President Trump from Judge Chutkin without filing a single affidavit with the court from a witness or a potential witness that they felt threatened by statements from the president. | ||
| Stop and think about it. | ||
| Jack Smith restricts the speech of the former president while he's a candidate for president. | ||
| Thank goodness Mr. Smith was slapped down on appeal and the order was changed. | ||
| In fact, just two weeks ago, the Washington Post editorial page, Jack Smith would have blown a hole in the First Amendment. | ||
| I just want to read two sentences from this. | ||
| Mr. Smith seemed unconcerned about interfering in the Democratic process by seeking to muzzle a candidate for high office. | ||
| Three appellate judges, all nominated by Democrat presidents, ruled that Mr. Smith's proposed gag order infringed on President Trump's First Amendment rights. | ||
| And of course they did. | ||
| And this wasn't the only time Mr. Smith lost in court. | ||
| In the classified documents case in Miami, Judge Cannon held that Mr. Smith was not permitted to be special counsel. | ||
| Jack Smith was never properly appointed. | ||
| In fact, he couldn't be properly appointed because he was never confirmed by the Senate for any position in the executive branch as the law requires. | ||
| Here's what Judge Cannon stated. | ||
| Quote, the special counsel's position effectively usurps that important legislative authority, transferring it to a head of department and in the process threatening the structural liberty inherent in the separation of powers. | ||
| And of course, on July 1st, 2024, the United States Supreme Court ruled that President Trump had immunity for actions taken in his official capacity as the president. | ||
| One month later, after this decision by the Supreme Court, Jack Smith files a superseding indictment on August 27, 2024. | ||
| But Mr. Smith doesn't stop there. | ||
| He does something unprecedented. | ||
| On October 2nd, He files a motion with the court before President Trump's defense counsel has even responded to the indictment. | ||
| Everyone knows the normal process is the government indicts, the defense responds with some motions, and then the government responds to the defense. | ||
| But Mr. Smith skips the second step. | ||
| And the brief that he files is 165 pages, almost four times the court limit. | ||
| Even liberal Judge Chutkin, who's given Jack Smith everything he's asked for in the course of this investigation, even she called it atypical and irregular. | ||
| Now, why would Jack Smith do that? | ||
| Why would he abandon proper procedure? | ||
| Why would he ignore court rules? | ||
| Why would he do that? | ||
| Because he's running out of time. | ||
| There's an election around the corner. | ||
| It's coming in 33 days, and he's got to get President Trump. | ||
| He's got to stop President Trump from running, tie him up in court. | ||
| He's got to get to trial or at a minimum insert an 165-page political document into the presidential campaign. | ||
| It was always about politics. | ||
| The good news is the American people saw through it. | ||
| They saw through it. | ||
| For so long, the left has controlled so much in this country. | ||
| The left controlled big media, the left controlled big tech, the left controlled academia, Hollywood, certainly the Democrat Party, and I think all too much the federal bureaucracy. | ||
| But the left doesn't control we the people. | ||
| And in spite of the left and the weaponization efforts of Jim Comey, Alvin Bragg, Bonnie Willis, and Jack Smith, we the people saw through it all. | ||
| And we elected President Trump twice. | ||
| Before turning to the ranking member for his opening statement, I would just ask unanimously to enter into the record editorial. | ||
| Okay, we're going to take a short commercial break. | ||
| We're going to return Jamie Raskin. | ||
| I think you're going to see a different style. | ||
| Jordan, on one hand, Jamie Raskin's the ranking member and Jack Smith, their opening statements. | ||
| Raskin, next. | ||
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| Short break, back with Jamie Raskin next. | ||
| I want to start by recognizing the presence of four American heroes here today, four of the hundreds of officers who defended us on January 6, 2021, Michael Fanon, Aquilino Gannell, Daniel Hodges, and Harry Dunn. | ||
| And I thank them for being here today. | ||
| Mr. Smith, thank you for appearing before the American people. | ||
| I'm glad that the committee has finally granted you the same chance to report your findings to the American people that every other special counsel investigating an American president has had. | ||
|
Facts Over Politics
00:14:08
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| The good chairman started by saying it's all about the politics. | ||
| Well, maybe for them, but for us, it's all about the rule of law and who's going to stand by the rule of law and who's going to oppose it. | ||
| Now, Mr. Smith, you're one of America's great prosecutors. | ||
| For nearly three decades, you worked for justice under both Republicans and Democrats. | ||
| The Manhattan DA office, where you prosecuted sex crimes and domestic violence cases, the Eastern District of New York, where you prosecuted murderers, rapists, gangbangers, and other violent criminals. | ||
| Leading the public integrity section at the Department of Justice, you brought prosecutions against corrupt public officials across the political spectrum. | ||
| When you went to The Hague as chief prosecutor in the Kosovo trial, you prosecuted war crimes and crimes against humanity perpetrated against thousands of innocent victims. | ||
| While others may have devoted their lives to corrupt self-enrichment, you have devoted your life to the rule of law and to public service. | ||
| You've never been prosecuted for anything. | ||
| You've never been convicted of anything. | ||
| As far as I can tell, you've never even been the subject of a disciplinary proceeding over the course of your multi-decade career. | ||
| But Donald Trump says you're a criminal and you belong in prison. | ||
| He says you belong in prison, not because you did anything wrong, mind you, but because you did everything right. | ||
| You pursued the facts. | ||
| You followed the law. | ||
| You stuck with extreme caution to every rule of professional responsibility. | ||
| You had the audacity to do your job. | ||
| Everybody here knows what you did wrong in Donald Trump's eyes and why he says you belong in prison. | ||
| You found, and I quote from your sworn testimony before the committee, you found proof beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump engaged in a criminal scheme to overturn the results of the 2020 election and to prevent the lawful transfer of power. | ||
| When asked whether you believed the evidence was enough to obtain a criminal conviction against Donald Trump at trial, you had a one-word answer. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| When asked if Donald Trump was responsible for the violence that took place at the Capitol on January 6th, you said our view of the evidence was that he caused it and that he exploited it and that it was foreseeable to him. | ||
| You found that Trump knew he had lost the election. | ||
| How? | ||
| Well, his own Attorney General, William Barr, repeatedly told him so and described all of Trump's theories as BS. | ||
| Trump's top campaign advisors told him he lost the election. | ||
| Vice President Pence told him he lost the election. | ||
| More than 60 federal, state, and court decisions, including eight rendered by judges he appointed to the bench, rejected every outlandish election fraud and corruption claim that he made. | ||
| Trump himself even privately acknowledged it, gesturing to Joe Biden on TV and saying, quote, can you believe I lost to that effing guy? | ||
| He knew he lost, but he threw everything into his big lie, which some people, even in this room to this day, will stand by and swear by. | ||
| Well, when the big lie wasn't enough to convince officials like Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger, a Republican, to commit election fraud and just fine Trump 11,780 votes, when it wasn't enough to convince Trump's DOJ to, quote, | ||
| just call the election corrupt and leave the rest to me and the House Republicans, when it wasn't enough to force Vice President Mike Pence to announce and then exercise lawless powers to reject Electoral College votes and use counterfeit slates to anoint Trump the winner, that's when Trump incited mass violence on January 6th. | ||
| While more than 140 officers were being brutally assaulted by Trump's mob, while rioters beat them with flagpoles and sprayed them with chemical agents and crushed them in doorways, and while they chanted, hang Mike Pence and chased the vice president out of the Capitol, Trump and his team worked the phones, calling not the National Guard, which was under the direct unilateral control of Donald Trump, | ||
| but calling members of Congress, urging them to delay certification and to nullify the election results. | ||
| Special Counsel Smith, you pursued the facts. | ||
| You followed every applicable law, ethics rule, and DOJ regulation. | ||
| Your decisions were reviewed by the Public Integrity Section. | ||
| You acted based solely on the facts, the opposite of Donald Trump, who now has purported to take over the Department of Justice. | ||
| He's in charge of the whole thing under his unitary executive theory, and he acts openly, purely based on political vendetta and motives of personal revenge, and he doesn't deny it. | ||
| Our colleagues have complained about the special counsel's review of toll records, which are phone records like a phone bill, showing only the timing and duration of calls and containing no content, no substance whatsoever from the calls. | ||
| But those records were lawfully subpoenaed because Donald Trump made those members of Congress relevant to the investigation. | ||
| It was Trump who chose to call them to advance his criminal scheme. | ||
| As you testified, Mr. Smith, if Donald Trump had chosen to call a number of Democratic senators, we would have gotten toll records for them, too. | ||
| I trust our colleagues get the point because America certainly gets the point. | ||
| There is much Mr. Smith still can't talk about, though we know he badly wants to. | ||
| His investigation developed what he calls powerful evidence that Trump stole documents containing our country's most sensitive secrets, hoarded them in the ballrooms and the bathrooms of his well-trafficked Mar-a-Lago social club. | ||
| He showed them off to visitors, and then he obstructed a federal investigation by instructing his attorney to pluck out anything really bad before turning materials over to the FBI and having his staff delete incriminating security tape footage. | ||
| But today, we're not going to hear a lot about that because you are gagged by an absurd judicial order rendered faithfully by Trump's most servile and sycophantic appointee to the federal bench, Judge Eileen Cannon. | ||
| This order not only blocks release of volume two of your report, which is unprecedented about the classified document scam, it also gags you from discussing the report or its contents with us, with America. | ||
| And so we don't know what's in it, but it must be pretty devastating because Donald Trump is desperate to keep Mr. Smith or any other DOJ official for all time from ever releasing it to Congress and to the American people. | ||
| Now, Mr. Smith, if any of our colleagues foolishly choose to attack you and vilify you today, and I know that's not going to happen from some serious prosecutors over there like Mr. Knott and Mr. Schmidt, who understand what federal prosecutors do and what the rule of law means. | ||
| But if anybody decides to attack you personally, they will only be revealing their own ignorance of what prosecutors do and their own indifference to what the rule of law requires in America. | ||
| They will only be stroking the wounded ego of a lawless, twice-impeached, convicted felon president who not only unleashed a mob against Congress and his own vice president, but has now pardoned and released into our communities hundreds of extremists, insurrectionists, and cop-beating felons who have proceeded to commit dozens more crimes against the American people since they were pardoned. | ||
| Mr. Smith, I understand you are a long-distance marathon runner. | ||
| I read that you're a triathlete who's done more than 100 triathlons in nine Ironman competitions. | ||
| You are in the fight for justice and the rule of law for the long distance, for the long haul. | ||
| And I thank you for that. | ||
| And we should all try to follow your example. | ||
| America looks forward to your testimony today. | ||
| I yield back to you, Mr. Chairman. | ||
| The gentleman yields back without objection. | ||
| All of their opening statements will be included in the record. | ||
| We will now introduce today's witness. | ||
| Mr. Jack Smith was appointed as special counsel in November on November 18, 2022. | ||
| He served until January 7, 2025. | ||
| We welcome our witness today. | ||
| We'll begin by swearing you in. | ||
| Would you please rise and raise your right hand? | ||
| Do you swear or affirm under penalty of perjury that the testimony you're about to give is true and correct to the best of your knowledge, information, and beliefs? | ||
| So help you, God. | ||
| I do. | ||
| Let the record reflect that the witness has answered in the affirmative. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| You can be seated. | ||
| Please know that your written testimony will be entered into the record in its entirety. | ||
| Accordingly, we ask that you summarize your testimony. | ||
| Mr. Smith, you may begin. | ||
| Chairman Jordan, Ranking Member Raskin, members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to discuss my work as special counsel. | ||
| I love my country and believe deeply in the core principles upon which it was founded. | ||
| For nearly three decades, I've served as a career prosecutor in both Republican and Democratic administrations. | ||
| I've handled cases ranging from domestic assault and gang violence to public corruption and election crimes across the United States, and I've prosecuted war crimes overseas. | ||
| I am not a politician, and I have no partisan loyalties. | ||
| My career has been dedicated to serving our country by upholding the rule of law. | ||
| Throughout my public service, my approach has always been the same: follow the facts and the law without fear or favor. | ||
| Experienced prosecutors know that specific case outcomes are beyond our control. | ||
| Our responsibility is to do the right thing the right way for the right reasons. | ||
| These principles have guided me through my career, including as special counsel. | ||
| I'm proud of the work my team did, and I appreciate the opportunity to appear here today to correct false and misleading narratives about our work. | ||
| During my tenure as special counsel, we followed Justice Department policies, we observed legal requirements, and took actions based on the facts and the law. | ||
| I made my decisions without regard to President Trump's political association, activities, beliefs, or candidacy in the 2024 election. | ||
| President Trump was charged because the evidence established that he willfully broke the law, the very laws he took an oath to uphold. | ||
| Grand juries in two separate districts reached this conclusion based on his actions, as alleged in the indictments they returned. | ||
| 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. | ||
| After leaving office in January of 21, President Trump illegally kept classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago Social Club and repeatedly tried to obstruct justice to conceal his continued retention of those documents. | ||
| Highly sensitive national security information was held in a ballroom and a bathroom. | ||
| As I testify before the committee today, I want to be clear. | ||
| I stand by my decisions as special counsel, including the decision to bring charges against President Trump. | ||
| Our investigation developed proof beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump engaged in criminal activity. | ||
| If asked whether to prosecute a former president based on the same facts today, I would do so regardless of whether that president was a Democrat or a Republican. | ||
| No one, no one should be above the law in this country, and the law required that he be held to account, so that is what I did. | ||
| To have done otherwise on the facts of these cases would have been to shirk my duties as a prosecutor and as a public servant, of which I had no intention of doing. | ||
| I remain grateful for the counsel, judgment, and advice of my team. | ||
| President Trump has sought to seek revenge against career prosecutors, FBI agents, and support staff simply for having worked on these cases. | ||
| To vilify and seek retribution against these people is wrong. | ||
| Those dedicated public servants are the best of us, and it has been a privilege to serve with them. | ||
| After nearly 30 years of public service, including in international settings, I have seen how the rule of law can erode. | ||
|
The Commitment to Law
00:10:35
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| 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 and 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. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Gentlemen, we will now proceed under the five-minute rule. | ||
| We have voted for the public. | ||
| There's actually, I don't know how this happened, but they're going to actually have to recess for a vote or votes on the floor. | ||
| We're going to come back to the question which is about to start. | ||
| Do I have a Ben Berkwomb? | ||
| I have the Ben Berkwom is with us. | ||
| Ben, obviously, we're taking a short break on the Jack Smith situation. | ||
| You're at a very important event today, although I hear it may be some disturbance. | ||
| This is John Yep and his team with this, basically honoring Tom Holman from an official Catholic group. | ||
| Where are you? | ||
| What is going on? | ||
| Yeah, hey, Steve. | ||
| We're in Washington, D.C. right now with Catholics for Catholics and the Gold Institute to honor Tom Holman for the Protector of America Award. | ||
| You know, nobody deserves it more. | ||
| What Tom Holman has done standing up for this country, the Catholics for Catholics organization. | ||
| And really, this is, you know, this is such an important point that we within our churches, whether you're Protestant or Catholic, that you stand up for the values that you believe in. | ||
| And sometimes the church or some organizations go the wrong way. | ||
| Catholics for Catholics is really about focusing and refining what the Catholics believe in and honoring the people that stand up for those values. | ||
| And today, that's Tom Holman. | ||
| So, Ben, and it's so, I'm so glad this is happening today and we get to focus on home and devalues this. | ||
| I can tell you from the chat, we started off in, we started off with the Board of Peace summary of what's happening in Gaza, this kind of new Gaza, which is a Palestinian state. | ||
| Let's just be blunt. | ||
| And you see it, it looks like something out of the Jetsons, right? | ||
| But you can tell there's going to be hundreds of billions of dollars spent there. | ||
| We then went to Jack Smith, and all of this, you know, today is supposed to be to really expose Jack Smith in front of the American people, but we're asking these guys going to fight back. | ||
| What the chat is saying, and all whether it's Getter, whether it's Rumble, the other things, my phone's blown up, is about the focus. | ||
| You know, President Trump's been in Davos. | ||
| He did the Greenland deal or the framework. | ||
| There's all kinds of things going on. | ||
| He's meeting with Zelensky to bring peace to the world, to stop the Third World War. | ||
| Obviously, it's inextricably linked with America First, Western Hemisphere, hemispheric dominance, the kind of Manifest Destiny 2.0, Monroe Doctrine, all of that. | ||
| But folks are sitting there going, hey, we've been watching Berquam. | ||
| He's out there in the field homing. | ||
| They're not feeling it. | ||
| I'll just be blunt. | ||
| They're not feeling it on the central issue that we have to get our arms around and we can't look away and we can't avoid it. | ||
| I don't care how uncomfortable this is, right? | ||
| And that is mass deportations. | ||
| There's a sense that people are blinking and that Tom Holman and continued talking about bad ombres and the worst criminals. | ||
| And you've heard it in Holman's comments over the last couple of days. | ||
| Your assignment. | ||
| You've not only spent five years on the border in the jungles down there telling us how this was happening, showing us how 12 to 15 to 20 million illegal aliens were coming into the country, but you've been at the forefront of going out with ICE and doing these raids. | ||
| Can you, just given your sense of where this is going, can you give your assurance that, hey, behind the scenes, we're actually teeing up for the mass deportations? | ||
| Because if we don't do the mass deportations, nothing else matters. | ||
| The two things you got to do is go after the deep state hard, right? | ||
| And you have to get the mass deportations rolling, whether you like it or not. | ||
| Otherwise, you're not going to have a country. | ||
| Your sense, sir. | ||
| Well, look, when I was down there, Steve, we got to backtrack a little bit. | ||
| When I was down there in Lukeville, Arizona, or in Del Rio, Texas, or McAllen and Brownsville, and everywhere along our border, Sonoita, and all these places, I was watching millions of illegals come across. | ||
| And I was thinking, okay, they know what they're doing. | ||
| The Democrats know exactly what they're doing. | ||
| They're doing this on purpose. | ||
| To what end? | ||
| And I prayed that we would win the election. | ||
| We won the election. | ||
| If we hadn't won the election, our country was dead. | ||
| President Trump came in, we stopped the bleeding on the southern border. | ||
| But what I wasn't necessarily prepared for was the pieces that the Democrats already had in place to use the same NGOs that they used to invite the invasion into our country. | ||
| And many of those we talk about all the time: Catholic Charities, Lutheran Social Services, Jewish Family Services, a lot of these same organizations that then are now leading some of the protests along with Indivisible and these traitorous, treasonous organizations across America to obstruct ICE doing their job. | ||
| And so from day one, when I rode with Tom Holman in Chicago, the very first day operations rolled out to remove the illegals that Joe Biden and the Democrats had let in, there was obstruction from the judiciary, all of these leftist communist judges, to the politicians, to direct action like we're seeing in Minneapolis. | ||
| And so the fight that we're in, this is a bloody fight to undo the damage. | ||
| And it was clear this was orchestrated from the beginning. | ||
| They brought them in knowing it was going to be a disaster trying to get them out, having the policies in place. | ||
| But every time I've ridden with ICE or Border Patrol or any of the all-of-government approach, FBI, DEA, ATF, they are all, every time they are changing their strategy. | ||
| This is what's so brilliant about President Trump and his team, Tom Holman, Christine Noam, the entire team, obviously Stephen Miller, big part of that. | ||
| These guys do not rest. | ||
| So as the left changes their tactics, they attack, they say, oh, you can't go in on administrative warrants. | ||
| In California, this is crazy. | ||
| And Calm will be releasing a video later today. | ||
| In California, you cannot walk on the property of a suspected illegal alien because the ACLU sued. | ||
| And in 2022, under Joe Biden, they compromised and said, okay, fine, we won't even go to the market. | ||
| But my profile is not eliminated. | ||
| So they're not part of that. | ||
| I hear all. | ||
| By the way, I hear that. | ||
| Let me just say. | ||
| Hang on. | ||
| No, Hang on. | ||
| I want to get to John Yupp. | ||
| I hear all that. | ||
| I love it, but that's a word salad. | ||
| Okay, we knew these guys are going to be tough. | ||
| They organized 20 million people to come in the freaking country in four years. | ||
| It's mass deportations. | ||
| You got to go. | ||
|
unidentified
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I need to see CEOs perp walk, chief operating officers perp walk. | |
| We need. | ||
| I don't buy that. | ||
| I'm telling you, they're doing everything. | ||
| But what I'm waiting for, what you're waiting for is for prosecutions against these guys that are obstructing. | ||
| Until that happens, I'm not sure they're doing everything. | ||
| I think John Holman, who you're going to honor today, is being totally restrained at what's happening. | ||
| Let's get to John Yep. | ||
| Ask John Yep, why are we even doing this today? | ||
| Yeah, John, thank you so much for having us out here. | ||
| It's great to have you. | ||
| Catholics for Catholics, this honoring of Tom Holman. | ||
| Talk to us about this event and what it's for and why it's so important. | ||
| Look, we all know, people like yourselves, Ben, have been reporting on it for years that the Catholic Church has had a major role in this invasion at the southern border, right? | ||
| So we as Catholics feel a responsibility now to, number one, we voted President Trump in, but also congratulate the people like Tom Homan who are doing the work to restore law and order in our country. | ||
| And specifically, it's like we don't talk about this enough. | ||
| 62,000 children have been rescued by Tom Homan and ICE. | ||
| Why aren't we talking about this enough? | ||
| Why aren't church leaders speaking up about this? | ||
| You know, you can say whatever you want, inhumane treatment all day, whatever, whatever, but can we please get together, focus, and take us for a win for the kids? | ||
| Yeah, I mean, that on its own, 300,000, probably 500,000 lost kids under Biden, 62,000 where it's an uphill battle to get them back. | ||
| And, you know, Steve was just asking me about that. | ||
| The American people want mass deportations. | ||
| I want mass deportations. | ||
| You look at what the Democrats did on this invasion. | ||
| Are you satisfied with what the administration is doing or what do you want to see? | ||
| I think both of you were alluded early on. | ||
| We're not going to see that kind of deportation until people are arrested. | ||
| Like, speaking for my own self, Catholic Charities, who in Catholic Charities knew that they were going to be involved in the facilitation of this invasion of the Southern Border? | ||
| Like, who are those people? | ||
| They need to be held accountable. | ||
| Because if not, it's going to continue on, right? | ||
| So credit to people like yourself, Ben. | ||
| I mean, we watched your videos all the time. | ||
| You were there on the Southern Border, looking at the kind of charities filming those videos. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| So it's people like yourself and Tom who this event is about today to give that award to the protectors of America. | ||
| We need to support these guys. | ||
| They need our prayers and our support. | ||
| Steve? | ||
| Ben, ask John, where do people go to find out more about Catholics for Catholics? | ||
| I want to send everybody to the website and social media right now. | ||
| Where can they go to find out more about the event and your guys' organizations? | ||
| You can watch it now live or you'll have it here on cforc.com. | ||
| Catholics for Catholics. | ||
| We're about mobilizing Catholics to get engaged in the fight for America. | ||
| So you're going to stay tuned for this event. | ||
| And most importantly, keep us in the presence of spiritual battle, especially when you're talking about kids, okay? | ||
| A nation is defined by how it treats its young people. | ||
| It's the most vulnerable. | ||
| Thank you, John. | ||
| Ben, Ben, I will come back to you in the 11 Kakari. | ||
| Just stick around. | ||
| John Yep, right there, that's taking responsibility. | ||
| He had nothing to do with Catholic charities, but he's saying, hey, we as Catholics, that Catholic charities happened under the official umbrella of the church and money that was taken from second collections. | ||
| And there you have Catholics or Catholics saying, hey, we're going to step up. | ||
| We're going to honor Holman because we have an obligation here. | ||
| That's character. | ||
| That's what's going to turn this thing around. | ||
| Mass deportations are we ain't got a country. | ||
| It's that simple. | ||
| Short break. | ||