CNN’s Evan Perez Calls Out Trump Allies at Jack Smith Hearing Who Bashed Trump After Jan. 6 Riot

CNN senior justice correspondent Evan Perez called out Trump allies on the committee grilling former special counsel Jack Smith for their “amnesia” about their own statements against President Donald Trump’s actions at the time of the January 6 riot.

The Republican-led House Judiciary Committee held a hearing on Thursday entitled “Oversight of the Office of Special Counsel Jack Smith,” which immediately became heated.

Republicans on the committee relentlessly assailed Smith at the hearing, while Democrats bashed Trump and the Republicans — and were largely supportive of Smith.

On Thursday’s edition of CNN’s The Situation Room, during a recess in the hearing, Perez reminded viewers that some of the Republicans yelling at Smith sang a different tune when Trump fans were storming their own workplace:

PAMELA BROWN: Trump continues to say the 2020 election was stolen. He just said it in Davos, he said it twice. And I think that that’s relevant as we’re in this moment and looking ahead to the midterm elections.

And that’s one reason why Jack Smith and everyone associated with these cases, they’ve had to hire lawyers because there is a grand jury that is sitting in the Southern District of Florida that the Justice Department is trying to use to go after people who– everyone. Going back to 2016.

You heard Jim Jordan outline exactly the case that they’re trying to pursue which is that there’s been this grand conspiracy since 2016 going through 2024 to try to prevent Donald Trump from taking office, from being president.

And so there’s this long-distance work that is being done by the Justice Department.

I think Jack Smith knows that, he know– well We know he knows that because he’s had to hire lawyers.

And the president keeps pushing the Justice department to do things more aggressively. He believes that they are not moving quickly enough to go after his enemies. And so that’s also the context.

The other thing I think we should recall as you’re watching the Republicans talk on this panel, there’s a lot of amnesia.

A lot of those members were very disturbed at what Donald Trump did on January 6th of 2021. They were very, very disturbed by what he didn’t do, right, to try to stop the violence.

And so in the aftermath of that, some of them provided testimony to express those concerns to Jack Smith’s team, to the special counsel’s office and to the investigation.

And they want to erase that because they don’t want people to remember where they were on this very issue, because now that obviously Donald Trump is president, again.

Everybody wants to forget that, especially on the Republican side.

Watch above via CNN’s The Situation Room.

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