Jack Smith Agrees to Republican Demand to Testify—With a Major Catch

Republicans want Jack Smith to testify about his investigations into Donald Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified documents and efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. Now the former special counsel is calling their bluff: He says he wants to do it in front of the public.

In a letter to House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan and Senate Judiciary Chair Chuck Grassley on Thursday, Smith’s legal team requested that their client be given the opportunity to testify publicly to refute the “many mischaracterizations” of his investigations.

Smith’s lawyers also requested DOJ guidance on what exactly their client would be allowed to discuss, as well as access to the special counsel’s files.

“With the guidance and access described above, Mr. Smith is available to testify in an open hearing at your earliest convenience,” they wrote.

Last week, Jordan demanded that Smith appear in a closed-door session to discuss his investigations. Specifically, Jordan was incensed by a revelation that Smith had requested Senate Republicans’ phone records from the days before and after the deadly January 6 riot, in order to see who may have been involved in Trump’s alleged efforts to subvert the election. Trump earned himself four felony counts for those alleged efforts. Those charges were dismissed after he was elected to the White House in 2024.

“As the Committee continues its oversight, your testimony is necessary to understand the full extent to which the Biden-Harris Justice Department weaponized federal law enforcement,” Jordan wrote.

Speaking on CNN Thursday as a senior law enforcement analyst, former FBI Director Andrew McCabe said it was a great idea for Smith to go public. “I think it’s important that he’s speaking up in a way to kind of demystify what has been grossly misrepresented to the American people by the senators,” he said.

McCabe also explained that the kind of telephone records Smith had requested were run-of-the-mill investigative practice, and that it would have been conducted under the purview of a grand jury subpoena.

“This is not something that a prosecutor, an FBI agent, [would] just dream up off the top of their heads and, you know, call up the phone company and say, ‘Hey, send us everything you have.’ There is a process. These records are accessed lawfully under the purview of the grand jury,” he said, adding that the request had been “grossly misrepresented” by Republicans.

Senator Rand Paul is tired of being the only Republican senator willing to stand up to President Trump.

The libertarian spoke with Politico’s Dasha Burns just days after being deliberately left out of Trump’s gathering of GOP senators in the Rose Garden. “We have everybody but one person here,” Trump said Wednesday. “We’re just missing one person. You’ll never guess who that is. Let me give you—he automatically votes no on everything. He thinks it’s good politics. It’s really not good politics.”

Paul addressed the rift between himself and Trump in an interview with Burns, released on Friday.

“The president considers it to be bizarre and weird, but I believe that we should have less debt, and we should balance our budget.... I take it as a badge of courage, really,” Paul said. “There has to be someone left. What if there’s no one left who actually believes in balanced budgets? To me, I’m worried about the demise of a conservative voice within the Republican Party if we all become rubber stamps.”

While the Kentucky senator is certainly a supporter of the president, he has made a string of decisions that make his commitment to a more traditional brand of conservatism clear. He has come out against the extrajudicial Caribbean drug boat bombings, was “not a big fan” of Trump’s military parade, and most notably was one of only three Republican senators to vote against Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act on the grounds that it would increase the national debt by $3.3 trillion.

“If I’m given the choice of President Trump versus Harris or versus Biden, without question, I choose President Trump over and over again,” Paul told Burns. “But that doesn’t mean I’m going to sit back and just say, ‘Oh, I’m leaving all my beliefs on the doorstep. I’m no longer going to be for free trade. I’m no longer going to be for balanced budgets. I’m no longer going to be opposed to killing people without trials, without naming them, without evidence.’ No, I have to remain who I am.”

Paul also expressed discomfort with Trump’s willingness to attack any Republican who may disagree with him, like Representative Thomas Massie, who the president wants primaried, or even Paul himself.

“It’s a warning sign: ‘Oppose me or my policies and I’ll come after you.’ And I don’t think that’s good for the Republican Party, nor do I think it’s good for the country,” Paul continued. “I think what made America great is capitalism ... it’s a fallacy to say the nation’s being hollowed out by trade,” referring to Trump’s trade wars.

Paul also shed light on a deep fear of challenging the president on anything within the party.

“I hear a lot of flack from Republicans and they want me to do it. They say, ‘Oh, well, you’re not afraid of the president. You go tell him his nominee can’t make it,’” Paul said. “I’m just tired of always being the whipping boy.”

The full interview is available here.

Donald Trump is mad at Canada again, this time over a TV ad criticizing his tariffs.

In a Truth Social post late Thursday night, Trump declared that “ALL TRADE NEGOTIATIONS WITH CANADA ARE HEREBY TERMINATED” thanks to an ad, paid for by the government of Ontario, which used audio from a 1987 speech from President Ronald Reagan where he said, “Trade barriers hurt every American worker and consumer.”

In a statement, the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute—which thus far has not had much to say about Trump’s tariffs—said that the ad misrepresented Reagan’s remarks and that the Province of Ontario did not seek permission to use the audio, and that it “is reviewing its legal options in this matter.” Trump attached this statement to his post.

On Friday morning, Trump blasted Canada again, claiming the country “CHEATED AND GOT CAUGHT!!!”

“They fraudulently took a big buy ad saying that Ronald Reagan did not like Tariffs, when actually he LOVED TARIFFS FOR OUR COUNTRY, AND ITS NATIONAL SECURITY,” Trump ranted on Truth Social. He claimed that the country was trying to “illegally influence” the Supreme Court against the president’s tariffs, and that Canada had a long history of cheating on import taxes.

Trump is failing (or refusing) to realize that the province of Ontario took out this ad, not the entire Canadian government. Trump’s anger is equivalent to another country blaming him and the U.S. government for an ad made by California or New York. Ontario happens to be led by Premier Doug Ford of Canada’s Conservative Party, who was a supporter of Trump prior to the president’s trade war and attacks on the country’s sovereignty.

The breaking off of trade negotiations comes only days after Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney announced plans to revamp the country’s economy to be less dependent on the U.S., saying the once-close ties between the two countries are now a vulnerability.

“Our relationship with the United States will never again be the same as it was.... We have to take care of ourselves, because we can’t rely on one foreign partner. We have to take care of each other because we are stronger together,” Carney said in a Wednesday night speech. Trump’s freakout over a TV ad is already proving Carney right.

Watch the ad that made Trump so angry below.

President Donald Trump floated the idea of expanding his extrajudicial strikes on alleged drug-trafficking vessels to dry land—or as one might refer to it, he pitched declaring war.

During a roundtable press conference Thursday, Trump claimed that he had all but eradicated drug trafficking by sea, after launching the ninth strike on a foreign vessel earlier this week without providing any actual evidence linking the boats to any drug cartel.

“So, now they’re coming in by land, and even the land is concerned, because I told them, that’s gonna be next,” Trump rambled. “You know the land is gonna be next? And we may go to the Senate, we may go to the Congress and tell them about it, but I can’t imagine they’d have any problem with it.”

“What are they gonna do? Say ‘Gee, we don’t want to stop drugs pouring in?’” Trump added.

But only Congress can decide if the United States is at war—not Trump—even if he thinks the GOP-led legislative branch is too weak-willed to stop him. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time the president has attempted to bypass Congress’s authority.

Trump has already decided to unilaterally declare war on the so-called narcoterrorist drug boats, by announcing a state of “non-international armed conflict” against vessels that are part of “designated terrorist organizations.” A memo sent to Congress last month claimed that Trump had the authority to determine cartels were “nonstate armed groups,” and that their transport of drugs constituted “an armed attack against the United States.”

Two Americans are suing Donald Trump for razing the White House’s East Wing.

While the rest of the nation was stunned by the haphazard destruction of one of the nation’s oldest and most cherished democratic symbols, at least two individuals moved to stop it. Charles K. Voorhees and Judith A. Voorhees filed a temporary restraining order Thursday intended to stop Trump’s bulldozing.

In a three-page court filing, the plaintiffs argued that the Trump administration violated the National Capital Planning Act of 1952 by failing to acquire the approval of the National Capital Planning Commission, which has been closed since the government shutdown began 23 days ago.

The Voorhees further claimed that, in fast-tracking the East Wing’s demo, Trump had breached the National Historic Preservation Act and bypassed legally required oversight from the Commission of Fine Arts. They also alleged that Trump and his associates had intentionally “decoupled” the demolition and construction process, picking apart semantics in order to stretch a loophole that could justify their unapproved blueprint for federally-owned grounds.

But their lawsuit may be too late to salvage the historic monument. Nothing but rubble remained of the East Wing by midday Thursday, according to satellite images of the grounds. The demo was apparently an essential component of the president’s plan to build a 90,000-square-foot ballroom that he had initially pledged wouldn’t interfere with the preexisting structure.

The White House’s partial destruction is, ultimately, another illustration that the country’s constitutional system of checks and balances has all but eroded. The international real estate mogul’s desire to destroy the government—and with it, the architectural face of American democracy—has received practically zero pushback from his allies in Congress, who appear all too willing to sit back as Trump courts billionaires to fund his golden banquet hall.

Resisting Trump’s drafts for the East Wing would require someone in power to actually hold the president accountable. But his desire to destroy and redevelop the White House as he sees fit should come as no surprise, since he’s never appeared to be a fan of the national symbol. During his first term, Trump reportedly called the White House “a dump” (an allegation that he has publicly refuted) and has spent no small part of his second term living and dining at his own properties rather than the executive mansion.