Jack Smith Suggests He'll Call Members Of Congress To Testify Against Trump

Special prosecutor Jack Smith submitted a filing this week seeking to bar Donald Trump from spreading conspiracy theories and other forms of misinformation during the upcoming trial. But there was one small phrase that really should have grabbed the headlines - Smith made sure to say that some witnesses need to be protected so that they don't violate the "Speech or Debate Clause," which only applies to members of Congress. Farron Cousins explains what this means.

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*This transcript was auto-generated. Please excuse any typos.

Special prosecutor Jack Smith filed a motion in court this week seeking to bar Donald Trump and his legal team from doing and saying certain things in the upcoming trial. This is the one of course, in front of Judge Tatkin, uh, Donald Trump's attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, the fraud against the government, the Capitol Riot. This is that trial. So some of the things very obviously, that they do not want Donald Trump to talk about is they don't want him to walk into court and have him and his lawyers start spouting conspiracy theories about stolen elections. Here's what they specifically say. The court should not permit the defendant to turn the courtroom into a forum in which he propagates irrelevant disinformation and should reject his attempt to inject politics into this proceeding. So he's also saying, listen, don't let him come in here and say this is election interference.

Like, just stick to the facts of the case. Uh, he also asked to exclude evidence, quote, regarding agency preparation for and responses on January 6th, uh, Smith sided Trump's claims blaming Washington DC Mayor Muriel Bowser, the National Guard and Capitol Police for the attack. A bank robber cannot defend himself by blaming the bank's security guard for failing to stop him. Smith wrote all very, very obvious stuff like, don't, don't spout conspiracy theories. Don't lie, don't spread disinformation. And, uh, you can't say that the Capitol Riot was the fault of the police or the National Guard because they were there and did what they could. But that's not what's important. What is important is this little note. Smith also requested that when trial witnesses, witnesses are cross-examined, Trump's lawyers have to be barred from asking questions that would force them to breach attorney-client privilege or the speech and debate clause.

We can't have these people that will be taking the stand, violate the speech or debate clause. There's only one group of people in this country that the speech and debate clause applies to, and that is sitting members of the United States House of Representatives and the United States Senate. That sentence implies that Jack Smith is going to be calling members of Congress as witnesses in this trial. That is huge. Like most of the headlines talking about this story have been like huge, you know, tried to restrict the misinformation. Yeah, yeah. We get that. We get that, um, members of Congress are going to be testifying in this trial that that's your headline. That's what you should go with media outlets who did a poor

Job of reporting on this, because Smith is tipping his hand here. He's signaling to Trump in a very clever and creative way that, Hey, by the way, I got members of Congress coming. You know, all those people you were, you were talking to, you were working with, they were out there talking to states and doing all this. Yeah, yeah. You remember I got their cell phones, I got Scott Perry's cell phone. So yeah, he's, he's gonna be showing up and he's gonna be testifying in court. That's gonna be fun, right? This is big. And this may explain, not saying he's offered any plea deals, but this may explain why Jack Smith, even with, you know, evidence like Scott Perry's cell phone, um, hasn't brought any charges against these people. Maybe he's trying to keep 'em dry. Maybe he's trying to let them know that I could, I might, but I won't.

If you come and testify, honestly, again, not necessarily a plea deal, but just kind of holding it over their heads like, Hey, I can do things, but I'm not gonna do things because I'm gonna give you the opportunity to do the right thing. So this is big, and hey, maybe it's just the people who, uh, worked on the January 6th Select committee. Maybe they're gonna come and testify about the evidence they uncovered. Maybe they're gonna explain some of that to the court. Who knows?