WhoWhatWhy80%
Jordan Calls on DOJ to Investigate Special Counsel Smith for Perjury 50%
By Klaus Marre88%
7/23/2026, 4:26:13 AM
BS Summary: This article contains 24 faulty reasoning types, including Negativity Bias, Ad Hominem, and Appeal to Emotion, with Biased Writer Voice as the most egregious example at 24.5% saturation with 176 hits. Analysis detected 1,505 faulty-reasoning hits from 718 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 50.2% and a BS Rank of 50% (10,979 of 21,887 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 50.20% of the article peer group.
Donald Trump’s retribution campaign against his many nemeses — from prosecutors and the former chairman of the Federal Reserve to a guy who allegedly tore off a piece of the unglued lining of the Reflecting Pool — remains in full swing and could soon turn against enemy number one: former special counsel Jack Smith, who investigated the president’s coup attempt and his hoarding of classified documents and secured indictments in both cases.
On Wednesday, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH), a staunch ally of Trump, asked the Department of Justice (DOJ) to investigate whether Smith had lied to Congress when he was asked earlier last year about his team’s access to the communications of lawmakers.
Specifically, the lawmaker said in a letter to Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general, that “the responses provided by Mr.
Smith gave the impression that neither Mr.
Smith nor his team had access to the content of Members’ privileged text messages.”
Sen.
Chuck Grassley (R-IA), Jordan’s Senate counterpart, revealed earlier this month that the special counsel and his team had access to text messages he and 43 other lawmakers sent to and received from White House staff at the time of Trump’s efforts to overturn his loss in the 2020 election.
“Based on this new information, there is cause for investigation to determine whether Mr.
Smith knowingly made false statements to obstruct the Committee’s oversight,” Jordan wrote .
And, to save Blanche some time, the lawmaker states later in his letter that the special counsel “‘knowingly and willfully’ made false statements to the Committee.”
It is noteworthy that Jordan goes out of his way to point out that providing incomplete information or “half-truths” also constitutes perjury.
Smith’s defenders argue that’s because the special counsel’s answers were completely truthful responses to the questions Republicans asked him during a deposition last December.
“Wishing that you had asked different questions while you had the opportunity to examine a witness is not a proper basis for a referral of a witness for criminal prosecution,” stated Rep.
Jamie Raskin (D-MD), the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, who said that his GOP colleagues “embarrassed themselves again” in the investigation of the special counsel.
Raskin pointed out that Republicans merely asked Smith about these text messages in connection with the so-called toll records he obtained from phone companies.
This data includes which number a phone called at what time and how long the call lasted.
However, the special counsel obtained the text messages by subpoenaing the National Archives and Records Administration to get access to text messages sent from the phones of Trump and White House staff.
Therefore, Raskin argues, Smith was completely truthful during his deposition.
“When asked if his subpoena for Members’ toll records sought the content of either Member’s phone calls or messages, he truthfully replied that they did not,” the Democrat stated.
“That statement was true when he said it, and it is true today.”
He added that “Jack Smith could not have lied because Republican Members never even asked the question their theory is based on.”
It remains to be seen whether DOJ will act on this referral.
On the one hand, Blanche, who is Trump’s former personal attorney and a loyal lackey, won’t need much prodding to use his hyper-weaponized department to go after one of the president’s main “enemies.”
However, allowing Smith, who only abandoned his investigation because Trump was elected in 2024, to testify about all of the ways in which the president tried to overturn the results of the 2020 election, culminating in the storming of the Capitol by a now-pardoned mob, is quite a risk.
In addition, it seems doubtful that members of the current administration want to see DOJ establish such a low bar for prosecution, i.e., that not volunteering information that wasn’t requested could count as perjury, because that would mean a whole lot of them would find themselves in legal trouble once the GOP is out of power.
All that being said, Trump (predictably) wants Smith prosecuted.
At 5:30 am on Thursday morning, the president shared an article about this criminal referral with the comment “Just at last???”
Jordan Calls on DOJ to Investigate Special Counsel Smith for Perjury originally appeared on WhoWhatWhy
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