House Judiciary Chairman Jordan sent criminal referral to DOJ urging charges against former Special Counsel Jack Smith

On July 22, 2026, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan sent a criminal referral to Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche urging the Justice Department to bring criminal charges against former Special Counsel Jack Smith, the prosecutor who led federal indictments of Donald Trump stemming from the January 6, 2021 Capitol attack and the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case. Jordan alleged Smith made "materially false statements" to the Committee when Smith testified in a deposition that his team had not received the contents of lawmakers' phone communications — only tolling records — while investigating Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Jordan argued that a separate request Smith's team sent to the National Archives and Records Administration produced text messages between Trump-era White House staffers and dozens of members of Congress, which Jordan alleged Smith failed to disclose to the Committee. Smith's attorneys rejected the referral as baseless, calling his answers "unimpeachably truthful" and noting that the deposition questions were specifically about the subpoena for tolling records, not the NARA request. They also noted that the text messages had been disclosed to Trump's own defense lawyers without objection at the time. The DOJ confirmed receipt of the referral and said it "will investigate all evidence of criminal conduct." Smith prosecuted the first-ever federal indictments of a former president; both Trump cases ended without convictions after Trump won the 2024 election. The referral is part of a broader House Republican effort to direct the Justice Department against former Trump investigators, a pattern the House Judiciary Committee's top Democrat called "baseless and vindictive."