House Judiciary Committee chairman Jim Jordan has issued a criminal referral for former special counsel Jack Smith.
Submitted on Tuesday to the Department of Justice (DOJ), the referral accuses Smith of having lied when he testified before Congress in December.
#BREAKING: Chairman @Jim_Jordan referred former Special Counsel Jack Smith to the Department of Justice for criminal prosecution.
The evidence appears to show that Jack Smith knowingly made false statements while testifying under oath before the Committee.
Read the letter ⬇️ pic.twitter.com/yxz5rF6d48
— House Judiciary GOP 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸 (@JudiciaryGOP) July 23, 2026
During his testimony to the House Judiciary Committee, Smith was asked whether he’d ever sought a search warrant so as to obtain access to the text messages of members of Congress.
“No, I don’t recall that,” Smith alleged, adding that he’d just sought search warrants for telephone toll billing records.
“Did the toll records that you requested from the senators, did they include the content of the phone calls?” he was then asked.
He said no.
“Did the records that you requested, the toll records from the members of Congress, include the content of text messages?” members of Congress pressed.
Again, he replied no.
But in a tweet posted last week, Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Chuck Grassley disputed Smith’s statements to Congress by revealing that he’d received DOJ records “confirming” that Smith’s team had “reviewed the contents” of the text messages of at least 44 members of Congress:
I received records frm DOJ confirming Jack Smith’s investigative team reviewed the contents of text msgs sent by 44 MEMBERS OF CONGRESS Im 1 of the 44
Im alerting my colleagues who were impacted and will release the records w Sen Johnson so American ppl can see the evidence
— Chuck Grassley (@ChuckGrassley) July 14, 2026
In a letter submitted on Wednesday to Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, Jordan cited Grassley’s findings as “strong evidence” of a “potential violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1001,” a statute that outlaws lying to Congress.
“The Committee on the Judiciary writes to refer strong evidence that appears to show Jack Smith, former Special Counsel, knowingly made false statements during his December 17, 2025, deposition,” Jordan wrote.
“While testifying under oath, Mr. Smith seemingly made willfully and intentionally false statements of material fact that contradict new documents obtained by the Committee from the Department of Justice (DOJ). The Committee is providing this information for the DOJ to investigate a potential violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1001,” he added.
Democrats and their media allies are now pushing back hard on Jordan, arguing that the toll records his team reviewed contained only the times of the calls, not the actual content of those calls.
Anna Bower, the senior editor for Lawfare, further alleged that the records Grassley had referred to were entirely different from the ones that were mentioned during Smith’s congressional testimony:
Why is everyone pretending they don’t understand the meaning of words?
I’m sorry, but there’s zero ambiguity here.
Nothing in the Grassley docs raises any real question of perjury.
Smith was asked about a completely different category of documents. https://t.co/XFlphnn2Tt
— Anna Bower (@AnnaBower) July 14, 2026
Smith was specifically asked about *toll records* obtained from *Members of Congress.* He accurately said those records didn’t include message content.
Grassley’s docs relate to texts of *WH officials,* obtained via *NARA,* which happened to include exchanges w/ congresspeople. https://t.co/5DujeEU44P
— Anna Bower (@AnnaBower) July 14, 2026
In a statement, Democrat Rep. Jamie Raskin seized on Bower’s statement, using it to slam his GOP colleagues for “embarrassing themselves” with what he referred to as a “baseless and vindictive criminal referral” that “deliberately distorts and misstates the facts, including what questions the Republicans actually asked at Mr. Smith’s interview.”
Politico senior legal affairs reporter Kyle Cheney further alleged in a tweet that Jordan’s criminal referral is essentially meaningless.
“Criminal referrals from Congress, in general, are nonsense (with exception of formal contempt votes of the House/Senate),” he wrote. “DOJ has had all of the information/evidence for months — the transcript/video of Smith’s deposition and the texts in question. They don’t need a referral from Jim Jordan to decide if a crime happened.”
And finally, according to The New York Times, Smith’s lawyers responded to the referral by writing their own letter calling the allegations against their client “spurious.”
“Mr. Smith’s legal team accused Republicans of intentionally taking his answers out of context to provide an excuse to investigate him,” they wrote. “They say he was responding narrowly to the inquiry about the toll records, not speaking more broadly about an investigation he is precluded from publicly discussing without approval from Trump administration officials.”
Writers and editors can be contacted at [email protected] with feedback, tips, or corrections.
V. Saxena is a staff writer with a decade of experience as a professional writer, and a lifetime of experience as an avid news junkie. He holds a degree in computer technology from Purdue University. Saxena also contributes to BizPac Review.
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