Today the Republicans who constitute a majority on the House Judiciary Committee “claimed that Jack Smith and his team had ‘weaponized’ the criminal justice system on behalf of the Biden administration — an accusation that Mr. Smith repeatedly and adamantly denied.
“Several times, under questioning by Democratic lawmakers, Mr. Smith said that he had never received orders from the attorney general at the time, Merrick B. Garland, or from anyone else in the Biden administration about how to pursue his cases against Donald Trump.
“’I am not a politician and I have no partisan loyalties,’ Mr. Smith said during his opening statement.
“He said that, after three decades as a prosecutor, he had simply followed the facts and the law without ‘fear or favor.’
“’No one should be above the law in this country, and the law required that he be held to account,’ he said of Mr. Trump. ‘So that is what I did.’
“Mr. Smith insisted that he would not be cowed by any of the vitriolic broadsides that Mr. Trump has continued to make against him personally. Those included a message that was posted online in the middle of the hearing by an official White House social media account, saying, “Jack Smith is a deranged animal, who shouldn’t be allowed to practice Law.”
“Mr. Smith acknowledged that he believed that Trump officials would ‘do everything in their power’ to indict him ‘because they’ve been told to do so by the president.’ But he said he would not bend in the face of the threats.
“’I will not be intimidated,’ he declared.” — from reporting by N.Y. Times correspondents Alan Feuer and Glenn Thrush.