Ranking Member Raskin’s Statement on Chairman Jordan’s Refusal to Let the American People Hear Directly from Former Special Counsel Jack Smith

Washington, D.C. (December 3, 2025)—Today, Rep. Jamie Raskin, Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Committee, issued the following statement after Chairman Jim Jordan refused the offer from former Special Counsel Jack Smith to testify publicly before the American people regarding his investigations into President Donald Trump’s criminal wrongdoing, instead issuing a subpoena for his private, closed-door testimony:

“Chairman Jordan has denied Special Counsel Jack Smith’s offer to speak publicly to the whole Congress and the whole country about his investigations into Donald Trump, instead demanding he comply with a subpoena for a closed-door, private session simply so Republicans can spin, distort, and cherry-pick his remarks through press leaks. What are our colleagues so afraid of, that they won’t let the American people hear directly from the Special Counsel?

“In recent months, Congressional Republicans and the Trump Administration have mounted a coordinated campaign to smear Special Counsel Smith and his team for conducting their professional criminal investigation into the months-long effort by Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani, and their allies to keep Trump in power and overturn the results of the 2020 election, which Trump lost to Joe Biden by more than seven million votes, 306-232 in the Electoral College. Most recently, they have falsely claimed that the Special Counsel ‘spied’ on certain Senators and ‘tapped’ their phones. In fact, he issued lawful subpoenas for three days of their phone records around the January 6 attack—not the content of their calls, but the record of calls, the kind of information found on a monthly phone bill.

“As documents obtained by the Judiciary Committee consistently confirm, Special Counsel Smith followed well-established legal principles, protocols, and guidance at every step of this investigation into an attempted political coup and insurrection. Smith’s team subpoenaed these phone records because Trump’s co-conspirators were actively trying to recruit Members of Congress to assist their efforts by submitting fraudulent election certificates and refusing to certify the 2020 election results from a number of states, including Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona, and Michigan.

“Special Counsel Smith’s careful investigative steps stand in contrast to a separate subpoena issued for 2.5 years of Chairman Jordan’s personal phone records that was recently produced to the Committee and appears manifestly overbroad.

“That subpoena, issued before Special Counsel Smith was even appointed, is markedly different from the ones issued by Special Counsel Smith’s team, which were narrowly tailored to obtain phone records for the days surrounding January 6. 

“The American people deserve to hear the full unvarnished truth about Special Counsel Smith’s years-long effort to investigate and prosecute the crimes committed by Donald Trump and his co-conspirators. We deserve to hear directly from Special Counsel Smith in a public hearing about the findings documented in the Special Counsel’s Volume I report on January 6—released publicly by DOJ under Attorney General Garland—and in the still secret Volume II report on Trump’s hoarding of classified documents and obstruction of justice at Mar-a-Lago—which the Trump DOJ has ridiculously withheld from the American people.

“Judiciary Committee Republicans want to force the Special Counsel into the shadows of a backroom interrogation and subject him to the tiresome and loathsome partisan tactics of leak-and-distort, when the American public is demanding transparency and a public hearing.”