On January 22, 2026, during a House Judiciary Committee hearing, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) grilled former Special Counsel Jack Smith about his Trump-related investigations. Issa asked if believing election fraud occurred made Trump a criminal, defended First Amendment rights, and accused Smith of selective prosecution and “spying” on congressional members.
He also pointed out how these secret subpoenas for records were made without notifying Congress or judges, implying bias toward Biden’s political rivals. The exchange highlighted Republican allegations of DOJ weaponization against Trump.
Rep. Darrell Issa began his comments by asking, “If the President believed that he was cheated in an election, that there was fraud, or in some other way, a number of items led to his defeat, when in fact, he should have won according to the Constitution. Does that make him a criminal?”
After the cowardly Smith answered no, he kept going. “Mr. Smith, these people here are continuing to grapp grapple constantly with things that aren’t true, as socialism works, or that somehow everything the Republicans do is evil, and everything they do is right,” the California Republican noted.
Still not done, he continued, “They’ve never reached a conclusion in a typical partisan case in which we’re not evil because we think something different and we’re not wrong. You understand the Constitution? Do you understand the Bill of Rights that someone has the absolute right to believe something, whether it’s true or not, and to advocate for something, whether it’s true or not? Do you understand that, in addition to your oath to the Constitution, that’s one of the things the First Amendment allows for, isn’t it?
“Yes, sir,” Smith aashamedly answered. Continuing, the courageous Rep. stated, “Okay, so if you know that people have a right to opine, lobby for, assert, do everything they can legally, to ask for people to make different decisions. Then why is it you saw criminal conduct on behalf of a president who believed he didn’t win?”
“Chairman Jordan and I have something in common, along with a number of others. Here, we saw wrongdoing, and on January 6, we voted not to confirm two states because they had violated the US Constitution in how they selected who got ballots,” the lawmaker alleged.
"*" indicates required fields
Laying out the double standard, he noted, “Yet you’re going to come here and say, Oh, I just followed the law when you went after these people, and you said, Well, technically, I can do that. You didn’t see any selective nature or any separation of powers under the Constitution to spying on the activities and the conversations of the Speaker of the House.”
Building on this point, he noted, “Maybe they’re not your political enemies, but they sure as hell were Joe Biden’s political enemies, weren’t they? They were Harris’s political enemies. They were the enemies of the President, and you were their arm, weren’t you?”
Watch the clip here:
Wrapping up his comments with a flurry of condemnation, he stated, “So you spied on the Speaker of the House and these other senators and so on and informed no one, and in fact, put in a gag order so they couldn’t discover it if they were not subjects of a conspiracy investigation, why did Congress, a separate branch that you are under the Constitutio,n have to respect?” adding, “Why is it that no one should be informed, including the judges?”
featured image from embedded video