Oh, how the turntables have turned. The guy who spent years going after Donald Trump with the full weight of federal law enforcement is now getting a criminal referral of his very own. Former special counsel Jack Smith, the man who treated political prosecution like an Olympic sport, has been referred for criminal prosecution by the House Judiciary Committee. The alleged crime? Lying under oath to Congress. You know, the thing that tends to be frowned upon in legal circles.
Here is the beautiful irony. Jim Jordan sent a six page referral to Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche laying out exactly what went down. During a December 2025 deposition, Smith was asked point blank whether his office sought search warrants for the text message content of any lawmakers. His response was basically a shrug and "nah, not that I recall." When pressed on whether toll records from congressional members contained actual text message content, he simply said "No."
Sounds pretty definitive, right? Well, turns out there was a teensy little detail he forgot to mention. Documents have since revealed that his team got their hands on the actual contents of lawmakers' text messages through the National Archives. Senior Assistant Special Counsel Thomas Windom received 54 spreadsheets worth of texts from Trump White House phones back in August 2023. He reviewed them and shared them with fellow prosecutors. Those messages included communications from 44 members of Congress, some of which may have been protected by the Speech or Debate Clause. And the best part? They completely bypassed the DOJ filter team, which is literally the safeguard designed to keep privileged material out of investigators' hands.
So Smith technically answered the narrow question about search warrants correctly while letting Congress believe his team never touched lawmakers' messages. That is some world class lawyering right there. Jordan's referral noted that Smith was explicitly warned before his deposition that half truths and strategically incomplete answers could qualify as false statements. He knew what he was doing.
Smith's legal team called his testimony "unimpeachably truthful," which is a phrase that does a lot of heavy lifting. Meanwhile, Democratic Ranking Member Jamie Raskin argued that investigators simply asked the wrong questions. So the defense boils down to: a career federal prosecutor who built his entire reputation on the precise weaponization of legal language somehow did not understand what Congress was getting at. Sure, and I definitely believe my dog ate my homework.
The Department of Justice has confirmed receipt of the referral and says it will investigate all evidence of criminal conduct. Now a referral is not a guarantee of charges, but it does guarantee that somebody is going to be looking very closely at what Smith said versus what actually happened.
For years, Jack Smith told America that nobody is above the law. Apparently that sentiment now applies to him too. Funny how that works out.
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