Representative Harriet Hageman QUESTIONS Jack Smith on January 6 Testimony — Sharp Oversight Moment

Come on, you’re an attorney, Mr. Smith.  You can answer the question.  Of course it was hearsay.  And hearsay isn’t admissible in a court of law, is it?  Why?  Because it is inherently unreliable and the victim or the target of a prosecution is not  able to cross-examine.  This may look like a partisan clash, but it’s actually a stress test for how justice is  assembled in America.

 What’s really being tested here is whether investigations are built on verifiable standards  or shaped by selective processes.  This raises broader questions about the boundary between political narratives and legal thresholds,  and how power is constrained when evidence handling becomes opaque.  In this video, we’ll break down what happens when prosecutorial authority intersects  with congressional processes and why that matters for democratic accountability.

 The general from Wyoming is recognized for five minutes.  Mr. Smith, it was during your deposition with our committee that you revealed that you tasked  your team, specifically J.P. Cooney, to engage with a partisan January 6th committee. You had  to have known at the time the controversy surrounding this committee,  including the fact that all of the members had been appointed by Nancy Pelosi,  who disallowed the Republicans from being able to engage.

 Yet you proceeded anyway, raising numerous questions as to your strategy for conspiring with the J6 committee.  You had every possible resource available to you.  Your prosecution of President Trump was clearly a priority for the Biden administration,  and it is clear that you had an unlimited budget.  And you also left no stone unturned, even subpoenaing records from sitting members of the House and Senate.

 So what information could the J6 committee possess that you and the nation’s top law enforcement agency could not obtain on your own?  I did request, J.P. Cooney. What did they have that you couldn’t obtain on your own?  In any investigation. What information did they have that you did not you were not able to obtain on your own? I couldn’t know that until I had their information.

 Was there anything there?  Did you find that they had information that you were not able to obtain?  Was there anything there? Did you find that they had information that you were not able to obtain?  I don’t recall specifically every bit of information.  What I can tell you is we took in their information because we wanted to collect any information  that could be relevant.

 We made our own independent assessment of the evidence.  Okay, so from the time that you were appointed as special counsel up to the date of your  resignation in January of 2025, did you personally have any contact with any members, staff,  or contractors of the House’s January 6 select committee and if so who I do not  believe I had contact with anybody personally from the January January 6  committee failed to archive or preserve its video recordings of witness  interviews deleting or destroying as many as 900 interview summaries or

 transcripts involving more than one full  terabyte of digital data. I repeat, the J6 committee destroyed evidence. Let that sink in.  Why would they do such a thing? I think we have a dang good idea.  The committee actually used selective clips from these videos and transcripts during their hearings,  and yet by destroying this evidence, they have denied Congress and the public the ability to obtain their full content and context.

 They created their narrative by selective use of the evidence before them, so how very convenient.  Did you or your team receive any of those witness transcripts or video recordings of transcribed interviews  from the select committee that were not released to the public what i can tell you is that i  requested jp cooney to contact the select committee do you know if you received any of  the evidence or testimony that the j6 committee eventually destroyed i don’t have any information  that the j6 you don’t know one way or the other as you sit here today?

 No, what I’m telling you is that I requested all the information we could get from the January 6th committee.  Has all of the information that you requested been preserved?  All of the information from the J6 committee, has that been preserved?  The information that we requested and received, we reviewed it.

 Has it been preserved?  Yes, as part of our files. requested and received. We reviewed it. Has it been preserved? Yes. Thank you. Were you or your  team advised or did you get the impression from anyone affiliated with the January 6th committee  that these documents were not for public release, even though portions of them had already been  shown to the American people? Were you advised to keep any of the information from the J6 committee  confidential? As I sit here right now, I don’t recall that. I recall. Did the J6 committee

 provide you with the Cassidy Hutchinson testimony as part  of the trove of documents that you received?As I sit here now, I don’t recall, but it would…  Well, you’re familiar with her testimony, aren’t you?  I am.  In fact, wouldn’t you agree with me that Ms. Hutchinson’s testimony, especially  the most explosive allegations made, was comprised of hearsay upon hearsay upon hearsay?  Come on, you’re an attorney, Mr. Smith. You can answer the question. made was comprised of hearsay upon hearsay upon hearsay?

 Come on, you’re an attorney, Mr. Smith.  You can answer the question.  Of course it was hearsay.  And hearsay isn’t admissible in a court of law, is it?  Why?  Because it is inherently unreliable and the target of a prosecution is not able to cross-examine.  Isn’t that correct?  In fact, Mr. Smith, if you had attempted to walk into court with Cassidy Hutchinson’s testimony, you would have been thrown out on your ear.

 No judge, no legitimate judge would have ever allowed the testimony of Cassidy Hutchinson  to be admitted in a court of law, would they?  I disagree.  Well, and then we’ve already talked about your record.  Mr. Chairman, the gentlelady’s time has long since expired.  The moment that just unfolded in this hearing was not subtle, and it was not accidental.

 When Representative Harriet Hageman pressed Jack Smith on why he reached out to the January 6th  committee, why he leaned on a body born of partisan design despite possessing vast authority,  resources, and reach, she was not asking a procedural question.

 She was exposing a fault line, a crack in the foundation of how power was exercised, justified, and  shielded from scrutiny. Smith acknowledged that he directed his team to  engage with that committee. He did not deny it, and yet when asked the most  basic follow-up, what information they had that his office could not obtain on its own,  his answers dissolved into uncertainty.  I don’t recall. I couldn’t know until I had their information.

 Words that sounded less like clarity and more like retreat.  In a room built for accountability, memory suddenly failed.  This is where the gravity of the moment settles in.  The January 6th Committee was not a neutral fact-finding body.  Its membership was hand-picked, its scope tightly controlled, its opposition excluded.

 That reality is not disputed.  And yet despite that reality, the nation’s most powerful prosecutorial apparatus chose  to treat its work as a resource.  Not as a contested narrative, not as a political document, but as material worthy of incorporation  into a criminal investigation.  That decision matters.

 Because when government investigators rely on politically curated material, they inherit  not just information,  but bias, omissions, and intent.  The danger is not merely procedural, it is moral.  It raises the question of whether outcomes were pursued first and justifications assembled  later.  The exchange grew more serious when Hageman turned to what the committee failed to preserve.

 Video interviews, transcripts, digital records, massive amounts of material,  gone, not misplaced, not delayed, destroyed.  Evidence erased after selective portions had already been shown to the public.  Enough to shape a narrative, but not enough to allow independent verification.  That is not transparency. That is control.  And when asked whether any of that unreleased material made its way to Smith’s team,  whether prosecutors received information the public never saw, there was no clear answer.

 Not yes. Not no. Just uncertainty. The kind of uncertainty that should never  surround evidence tied to matters of national consequence.  ever surround evidence tied to matters of national consequence. This is the heart of the issue.  Justice in America depends not only on what is presented,  but on what is preserved, on context, on completeness.

 When records vanish, trust follows them.  And when prosecutors cannot say with confidence  what they received, what was withheld,  or what was lost forever, the integrity of  the entire process is called into question.  Then came the discussion of testimony that became central to public perception.  Explosive claims, widely circulated, emotionally charged, and yet, when examined through the  lens of law rather than politics, deeply contested. Hageman cut through the rhetoric and addressed the principle at stake,

 reliability, the difference between what can be said in a hearing room  and what can stand in a courtroom.  This was not an argument about personalities.  It was about standards, about whether rules bend depending on the target,  about whether some narratives are protected from challenge,  while others are dismantled piece by piece.

 Smith disagreed.  But disagreement alone does not resolve the tension,  especially when the weight of the federal government stands behind one side of the scale.  What this moment reveals is not simply a clash  between a lawmaker and a prosecutor,  it reveals a broader pattern in modern American governance,  where process is often defended after the fact,where memory becomes selective,  and where the line between investigation and advocacy  grows increasingly thin.

 Power, once centralized, resists examination.  And yet examination is precisely what democracy demands.  Hageman’s questions forced something rare into the open,  the uncomfortable space where authority meets accountability,  where intentions are no longer enough,  where actions must be justified not by urgency or political consensus, but by enduring principles  of fairness and due process.

 This hearing was not about the past alone.  It was about precedent.  About what future investigators will feel empowered to do.  About whether political bodies can shape prosecutorial paths without consequence.  About whether evidence can be curated, reduced, and erased, then treated as sufficient.  And perhaps most importantly, it was about whether the American people are entitled to  the full truth, or only the version deemed acceptable. In moments like this, silence is not neutrality.

 It is surrender. The strength of the system depends on citizens who pay attention when  answers fall short, who recognize when uncertainty is not harmless but revealing,  who understand that justice does not survive on trust alone?  It survives on proof, preservation, and principle.  This is why these hearings matter.

 This is why these exchanges cannot be ignored or dismissed  as partisan theater.  Because once standards erode, they rarely rebuild themselves.  If you believe transparency matters,  if you believe power matters. If you believe  power should never operate beyond challenge. If you believe the American  system is strongest when it is questioned, not protected from scrutiny,  then stay engaged. Support our work to expose the truth.