Jim Jordan Issues Criminal Referral to DOJ for Jack Smith

J. Scott Applewhite/AP Photo

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) issued a criminal referral for former Special Counsel Jack Smith to the Department of Justice, accusing him of allegedly making false statements during his congressional testimony, an issue that was already thoroughly dissected and debunked by numerous legal reporters last week.

The controversy relates to Smith’s testimony before the House Judiciary Committee last December:

Question: Did you seek a search warrant for the content of any text messages from Members?

Smith: From Members?

Question: Yes.

Smith: No, I don’t recall that.

Question: Okay. It was just toll records?

Smith: Correct

…

Question: Did the toll records that you requested from the Senators, did they include the content of the phone calls?

Smith: No.

Question: Did the records that you requested, the toll records from the members of Congress, include the content of text messages?

Smith: No.

Last week, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) posted a tweet saying he had “received records [from] DOJ confirming Jack Smith’s investigative team reviewed the contents of text msgs sent by 44 MEMBERS OF CONGRESS.” Grassley and other Republicans were quick to accuse Smith of not only an “abuse of power” but also of lying under oath during his December testimony.

However, as numerous legal reporters pointed out, the documents Grassley was writing about and what Smith was asked about during his testimony were “a completely different category of documents,” as Lawfare senior editor Anna Bower wrote, as the toll records his office requested from Congress contained information about the time of calls and text messages, not their contents.

“[T]here’s zero ambiguity here,” Bower added. “Nothing in the Grassley docs raises any real question of perjury.”

Nonetheless, in the letter Jordan sent to Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche Wednesday, he wrote that there was “strong evidence” of a “potential violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1001,” the federal statute prohibiting making false statements to Congress, federal courts, and other federal agencies:

The Committee on the Judiciary writes to refer strong evidence that appears to show Jack Smith, former Special Counsel, knowingly made false statements during his December 17, 2025, deposition. While testifying under oath, Mr. Smith seemingly made willfully and intentionally false statements of material fact that contradict new documents obtained by the Committee from the Department of Justice (DOJ). The Committee is providing this information for the DOJ to investigate a potential violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1001.

The Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee fired back, characterizing the Republicans’ criminal referral letter as “fault[ing] Jack Smith for not reading the minds of congressional investigators and for not volunteering information they didn’t ask for.”

“This is absurd,” the Democrats added. “Jack Smith may be telegenic but he is not telepathic.”

In a separate statement, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), a former constitutional law professor and the Ranking Member on the Judiciary Committee, lambasted his Republican colleagues for “embarrassing themselves” with a “baseless and vindictive criminal referral” that “deliberately distorts and misstates the facts, including what questions the Republicans actually asked at Mr. Smith’s interview.”

Politico senior legal affairs reporter Kyle Cheney commented on the story by pointing out that these congressional criminal referrals, other than those that follow actual votes to hold someone in contempt of Congress, “in general, are nonsense.”

“DOJ has had all of the information/evidence for months — the transcript/video of Smith’s deposition and the texts in question,” Cheney wrote. “They don’t need a referral from Jim Jordan to decide if a crime happened.”

The New York Times’ Glenn Thrush reported that Smith’s lawyers, Peter Koski and Lanny Breuer, wrote a letter responding to the referral that denounced it for being based on a “spurious claim.”

“Mr. Smith’s legal team accused Republicans of intentionally taking his answers out of context to provide an excuse to investigate him. They say he was responding narrowly to the inquiry about the toll records, not speaking more broadly about an investigation he is precluded from publicly discussing without approval from Trump administration officials,” wrote Thrush about the letter, sharing some quotations from it:

“The referral is made not because Mr. Smith made a false statement, which the letter concedes, but because he did not proactively disclose information that was not responsive to a question asked,” they wrote.

“During his testimony, Mr. Smith provided truthful, responsive answers and candidly discussed his work,” they added. “This referral reflects a chilling eagerness to weaponize the justice system by attacking a career, nonpartisan public servant who faithfully and fearlessly performed his duties by following the facts and the law.”

This article has been updated with additional information.

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