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.”