Tipsheet

Watch Law Professor Jonathan Turley Decimate Jack Smith

Matt Vespa
Matt Vespa  |  January 23, 2026 3:25 PM

Former Special Counsel Jack Smith, who failed miserably to stop Donald Trump via lawfare on not one, but two investigations relating to classified documents and his alleged role on January 6, testified before the House Judiciary Committee, which was an animated hearing, where Republicans accused him of overreach and politicizing the process, whereas Democrats heaped praise and apologized to him ad nauseam. It’s what you’d expect, but as CNN’s Elie Honig mentioned, Smith’s own record sort of corners him.

On Fox News, Jonathan Turley, who isn’t conservative, had the same sentiments, adding that the problem with the defense of Smith’s actions is that his own record works against him: 

The problem with Smith is that his own record is the case against him. For example, when the hearing began someone asked him to respond to my criticism that he was stretching the law beyond the breaking point in case after case. And he just sort of shrugged and said he always respected the law. The record is the record. He was table secure unanimous decision against one of his most famous cases. The undoing of Jack Smith has always been his appetite. He has a serious problem with limitations and they undermine his case

The core of the hearing was the politics that oozed from the investigations, which was laid bare when Smith attempted that Hail Mary legal motion in October 2024—a shoddy October Surprise that didn’t work. Honig wrote in The New Yorker that this move broke the cardinal rule of federal prosecutions: to avoid any actions that would impact an election, showing that Smith was willing to bend the rules to get results. It was a total abandonment of department policy due to politics.