Jack Smith Will Finally Take On Trump in Public Testimony

Former special counsel Jack Smith is going to get the chance to testify to Congress in the full view of the public.

On January 22, Smith will testify before the House Judiciary Committee as part of its investigation into Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, said its chair, Representative Jim Jordan, on Monday. In December, Smith testified for eight hours in a closed-door hearing before the committee.

Smith, who was appointed to oversee Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified documents and efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, has long sought to testify in a public hearing, but was rebuffed by Republicans in favor of one behind closed doors. In that hearing, Smith said that he stood by his prosecution of Trump.

“If asked whether to prosecute a former president based on the same facts today, I would do so regardless of whether the president was a Republican or Democrat,” Smith said in his opening statement.

In next week’s public hearing, Republicans will likely try to attack Smith’s credibility and accuse him of a political witch hunt against the president, while Democrats will hope to highlight the evidence that Smith collected against Trump and his inner circle. Smith has said that he wants to share the results of his election investigation but was prohibited by the Department of Justice, which is keeping parts of the case sealed.

The hearing will be a good chance for Smith to share information that he hasn’t before directly to the American people, which would not be received well by Republicans or by Trump. They won’t be able to control what the seasoned prosecutor says to the live TV cameras, reporters, and the public, and it could very well be damaging to the White House.

President Donald Trump says he won’t meet with Iranian government officials until they stop murdering their own people.

In a post on Truth Social Tuesday, Trump urged the millions of protesters who have taken to the streets to oppose the Islamic Republic to “KEEP PROTESTING—TAKE OVER YOUR INSTITUTIONS.”

“Save the names of the killers and abusers. They will pay a big price,” Trump wrote. “I have cancelled all meetings with Iranian Officials until the senseless killing of protesters STOPS. HELP IS ON ITS WAY!”

Trump was scheduled to discuss options to support protesters and weaken the regime in Iran Tuesday morning, and had previously indicated a preference toward conducting a military strike, a White House official with direct knowledge told Axios Monday. 

Trump had sent some dangerously mixed messages on how exactly he planned to intervene in Iran’s crackdown on antigovernment protesters. The president previously claimed he was willing to use military force against Iran if the government continued to kill protesters, but also said that he was open to negotiation. 

It seems that Trump hopes to signal that the time to negotiate has come and gone, as his latest message seems to indicate that a military strike could be imminent. The president’s instruction for protesters to start taking names suggests he anticipates a sudden regime change.  

The U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency, which has spent years documenting protests in Iran, estimates that more than 10,000 people have been arrested in the last two weeks, and at least 500 have been killed. The Narges Foundation, dedicated to currently imprisoned Nobel Peace laureate Narges Mohammadi, estimates more than 2,000 people have been killed.

President Donald Trump issued a chilling threat of reckoning and retribution to the people of Minnesota Tuesday after state and city leaders sued the administration over its deadly “federal invasion.”

Following the news that Minnesota and the Twin Cities were suing to stop the Trump administration’s “Operation Metro Surge,” the president took to Truth Social to air his frustration with his besieged constituents.

“Do the people of Minnesota really want to live in a community in which there are thousands of already convicted murderers, drug dealers and addicts, rapists, violent released and escaped prisoners, dangerous people from foreign mental institutions and insane asylums, and other deadly criminals too dangerous to even mention,” Trump wrote.

He claimed that all the “patriots of ICE” wanted was to “remove” these individuals. But last week, the residents of Minneapolis saw something entirely different: an ICE agent senselessly killed a U.S. citizen, Renee Good, and was then defended by every level of government.

Good’s death sparked civil unrest in Minneapolis (and nationwide), as well as requests for federal immigration forces to take their leave. But the Trump administration has doubled down on its occupation, deploying roughly 1,000 more U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers.

“Minnesota Democrats love the unrest that anarchists and professional agitators are causing because it gets the spotlight off of the 19 Billion Dollars that was stolen by really bad and deranged people,” Trump wrote, referring to the federal fraud investigations into the state’s childcare system.

“FEAR NOT, GREAT PEOPLE OF MINNESOTA, THE DAY OF RECKONING & RETRIBUTION IS COMING!” Trump warned.

Already, Minnesota residents are seeing what this looks like: ICE agents have been emboldened toward violence against protesters and civilians—with Good as their rallying cry.

Federal agents in Minnesota aren’t happy with the backlash they are receiving after ICE agent Jonathan Ross shot and killed Renee Good last week.

Ken Klippenstein reports that the Department of Homeland Security is having trouble finding agents to send to Minneapolis for its “Operation Metro Surge.” The department is asking for volunteers and telling agents to maintain a low profile.

“We do have personnel but some just don’t want to go,” one Border Patrol agent told Klippenstein. The same agent told Klippenstein that they disagreed with Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s claim that Good carried out “an act of domestic terrorism” by attempting “to run a law enforcement officer over.”

“There is a video and she just lied,” the agent said, and added that there were others in the Border Patrol who agreed with him but were afraid to speak up. The agent was not optimistic about the volunteers who would sign up to go to Minnesota.

“Key word is it’s on a ‘voluntary’ basis,” the agent said. “If no experienced senior agents step up, they send the new guys straight out of the academy. Not a good idea.

“In a nutshell, it’s ‘Us versus them’ on steroids and I think some Border Patrol agents are more willing to use force and not feel restrained when you got DHS leadership lying to cover for them. For example, Kristi Noem lying her ass off on what happened is like saying to the federal agents on the ground: ‘Go ahead and do whatever you have to do. We got your back. We will find a way to justify it,’” added the agent.

A senior DHS official told Klippenstein, “There might be some immature knuckleheads who think they are out there trying to capture Nicolás Maduro, but most field officers see a clear need for deescalation.

“There is genuine fear that indeed ICE’s heavy handedness and the rhetoric from Washington is more creating a condition where the officers’ lives are in danger rather than the other way around,” the official added.

The same official said that several DHS employees were worried about the growing backlash to immigration enforcement.

“The claim is that recruiting is up, but there is also dread that the gung-ho types that ICE and the Border Patrol are bringing in have a propensity towards confrontation and even violence,” the official said.

At least four high-ranking officials at the criminal arm of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Office are quitting over their department’s refusal to investigate the ICE killing of Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis last week.

These departures—from the division chief, the principal deputy chief, deputy chief, and acting deputy chief—are the most the DOJ has seen since the department dropped the controversial federal indictments of former New York City Mayor Eric Adams.

This current Justice Department decision not to investigate Good’s killing reeks of a cover-up. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Vice President JD Vance have essentially already declared the officer’s immunity, and Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon shared a post insinuating that Good was trying to “ram a police officer or a federal agent” with her car, a claim that is not made evident in the various videos of the killing.

While these departures leave massive holes in the department’s administrative infrastructure, Dhillon is likely more than happy for the opportunity to replace these principled former employees with complete sycophants, something the administration has done in every department it can.

“I think that’s fine,” Dhillon said back in April on the Glenn Beck podcast. “We don’t want people in the federal government who feel like it’s their pet project to go persecute police departments based on statistical evidence or persecute people praying outside abortion facilities instead of doing violence.”

Renee Good, the Minnesota mother killed by ICE agents last week, is being investigated by the FBI for ties to activist groups.

The New York Times reports that federal agents are looking into whether Good was involved with organizations protesting the Trump administration’s immigration policies, seemingly following President Trump’s accusation on Sunday that Good and her wife were “professional agitators.” Meanwhile, the FBI continues to shut local Minnesota authorities out of the investigation.

The White House is trying to smear Good’s character to deflect blame from ICE for her death, hoping to brand Good as a domestic terrorist before presenting any evidence. Other administration officials, including Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Vice President JD Vance, have also levied accusations against Good without evidence.

Video footage of the shooting indicates that Good was trying to drive away from federal agents instead of at them, and at least one ICE agent can be heard calling Good a “fucking bitch” after shooting her. The agent who shot Good, Jonathan Ross, has not been charged.

The shooting has touched off protests across the country and increased opposition to the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement, particularly in Minnesota. The response from the White House has been to double down and claim the protesters are inciting violence. The more it does so, the greater the backlash from the public will be.

A potential fresh new war crime has come out of President Trump’s lethal double-strike boat bombing in the Caribbean Sea: perfidy.

The New York Times has reported that the Trump administration used an aircraft disguised as a passenger plane to extrajudicially kill 11 people in September, claiming that they were trafficking drugs.

The administration has maintained that these bombings are completely legal because the country is at war with this ambiguous group of cartels in the region. If we take this to be true, then the decision to use a civilian-disguised plane to carry out those acts is a war crime known as “perfidy”—using deception to convince the target that they’re safe.

“Shielding your identity is an element of perfidy,” Retired Maj. Gen. Steven J. Lepper told the Times. “If the aircraft flying above is not identifiable as a combatant aircraft, it should not be engaged in combatant activity.”

Officials who saw video footage of the boat strike say the plane swooped low enough for people on the boat to see it.

The Trump administration remains steadfast in its denial of any wrongdoing, stating that “the strike was fully consistent with the law of armed conflict.”

The United States has killed at least 123 people in 35 strikes since this bombing campaign began last year.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt can’t understand why the country is up in arms over the ICE-induced violence taking place in Minneapolis.

“It’s striking that all weekend you had agitators and violent citizens in the streets of Minneapolis protesting—protesting what, exactly?” Leavitt asked while addressing reporters outside the White House Monday.

Nationwide protests took place over the weekend after Agent Jonathan Ross shot and killed Renee Nicole Good Wednesday. More than 1,000 individual demonstrations were planned. Good was a 37-year-old mother who, alongside her wife and dog, had just dropped her 6-year-old child off at school. Ross is an Iraq War veteran who worked for Homeland Security for more than a decade before he pointed his firearm into the open driver’s side window of Good’s SUV, shooting her several times in the face.

Administration officials immediately worked to shove the extrajudicial killing under the rug, claiming that Ross had acted in self-defense. Donald Trump claimed that Good “viciously ran over” the agent—an allegation immediately disproven by video footage captured from several different angles. Still, the administration decided to brand Good as a domestic terrorist.

Even as the rhetoric fell apart, other officials, including Vice President JD Vance, argued that Good’s death was effectively her own fault on the basis that she was “brainwashed,” that the national outrage was little more than a Democratic-fueled smear campaign, and that protesting ICE was not a valid expression of Americans’ First Amendment rights.

“Apparently, they are protesting the removal of heinous murderers and rapists and criminals from a city that I can guarantee you, when you look at the list of the illegal criminals that ICE is removing from our communities every day, not a single person in those protests, and not a single person standing here that works in the mainstream media in Washington, D.C., would want those individuals in your neighborhood, in your community, around your children, and around your families,” Leavitt said on Monday.

But that’s largely untrue: The Trump administration’s pledge to prioritize violent criminals in its mass deportation scheme has not panned out. ICE agents have been tasked with arresting upward of 3,000 undocumented immigrants a day at Homeland Security adviser Stephen Miller’s direction. That gargantuan figure has largely forced agents to focus on noncriminal immigrants and has even sent them hunting for potential deportees at kids’ sport practices.

The unpalatable development has tanked job satisfaction for ICE officials and agents alike, who have reportedly never been so miserable, despite constant praise and material bonuses from the White House.

Meanwhile, ICE’s presence has made some cities across the country significantly less safe. In 2025, before Good’s death, the agency killed 32 people—its deadliest year in more than two decades.

Alpha News, the conservative blog that got first access to Jonathan Ross’s cell phone footage of him killing Renee Good, boosted a fundraiser for the ICE agent that describes the deceased as a “stupod bitch that got what she deserved.”

It seems that in exchange for the website’s high-profile scoop—that got shared by the vice president of the United States—the Minnesota-based news site has decided to line the pockets of a killer. Liz Collin, a conservative podcaster for Alpha News, shared links to multiple fundraisers for Ross.

One GoFundMe campaign was made by Clyde Emmons of Mount Forest, Michigan, according to Wired. “The stupod cunts want to make a go fund me for the stupod bitch that got what she deserved,” Emmons wrote in a post on Facebook, referring to Ross as the “ICE officer who did his job.”

The virtual fundraiser created just three days ago had already amassed more than $489,000 of the $550,000 goal by Monday evening. The largest donor appeared to be conservative billionaire Bill Ackman, who donated $10,000. GoFundMe appears to have violated its own rule against helping to raise money for individuals connected to violent crimes, Wired reported.

Collin also shared the link to another fundraiser as the “preferred method” to send cash tips to the federal agent who killed a U.S. citizen, and Emmons updated his fundraiser to say that the creator of that second site had established “direct contact” with Jonathan. The creator of the second fundraiser described Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey as an “anti-American” traitor “who is Jewish,” according to Prem Thakker of Zeteo News.

The Supreme Court could undo the president’s “Liberation Day” tariffs in as few as two days—and Donald Trump is not taking the countdown well.

The nation’s highest judiciary did not issue its tariff ruling last week, as it widely had been expected to do. That surprised markets, forcing them into a holding pattern as the question of the legality of Trump’s tariffs—which were enacted through provisions under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act—remained in doubt.

It’s not clear when the Supreme Court will issue its ruling on the tariffs, but the decision could  be released in the next wave of court judgments on Wednesday, a reality that has apparently spent the president spinning.

In a lengthy rant on Truth Social Monday, Trump claimed that the U.S. would have to “pay back … Hundreds of Billions of Dollars” to the countries and companies that pledged to invest in American factories and plants in order to avoid his tariffs if the Supreme Court determined his economic action was unlawful.

“When these Investments are added, we are talking about Trillions of Dollars!” Trump wrote. “It would be a complete mess, and almost impossible for our country to pay.”

He then tried to shift blame for the hastily constructed tariff plan—which was built on bad math—onto the judiciary. He claimed that the nine-justice bench would be at fault for the fallout of the plan rather than his office, which forced it through in April against the advice of at least two dozen Nobel Prize–winning economists.

“Anybody who says that it can be quickly and easily done would be making a false, inaccurate, or totally misunderstood answer to this very large and complex question,” Trump continued. “It may not be possible but, if it were, it would be Dollars that would be so large that it would take many years to figure out what number we are talking about and even, who, when, and where, to pay.

“Remember, when America shines brightly, the World shines brightly,” he concluded. “In other words, if the Supreme Court rules against the United States of America on this National Security bonanza, WE’RE SCREWED!”