Jack Smith Tells the Senate He Will Not Be Silenced, Which Is the Point of a Hearing

WASHINGTON — Former special counsel Jack Smith appeared voluntarily before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, was accused of abuse of power by the party he investigated, and told the room that he “will not be silenced by the continued threats of prosecution from the president or others,” which is the single most procedural sentence a procedural institution can produce.

Consider the structure, because the structure is the achievement. A man brought two criminal cases against a sitting president. The president’s party now controls the committee. The man walked into the committee’s room, on his own, sat at the witness table, and said out loud that he could not be silenced — by the very people holding the microphone. If that is not the rule of law performing its own theme song, I don’t know what is.

Some say the hearing was a kangaroo court. Others say it was a court, just with kangaroos, meaning senators, who are large, loud, and hop between talking points. The truth lies in a third position I just invented: it was a conversation, conducted under oath, in which both sides said what they were going to say regardless of what the other side said, and the record — the only participant nobody accuses of anything — wrote it all down.

Smith told the committee he stands behind the cases he brought, and that he and his team acted without regard to politics, a claim the Republicans in the room disputed by accusing him of politics, which is itself a political act, and the loop closed so neatly you could hang a picture on it.

At press time, no one had been silenced, no one had been prosecuted, and the transcript had been distributed to the press in a PDF, which is what a hearing is for.