Jack Smith faces Senate grilling as Republicans press for

Jack Smith will walk into a Senate hearing room Tuesday morning, and for once he won't be the one doing the interrogating. The man who spent years and tens of millions of dollars trying to put President Trump behind bars will sit alone at the witness table, answering to Republicans who have read his file and don't like what they see. The hearing title says it plainly enough: abuse of authority and targeting of Republicans. That's not a conspiracy theory. That's a job description.

Smith indicted a sitting president twice. He raided Mar-a-Lago, fought the Supreme Court, and kept litigating long after the public had lost patience. He’s also the same “independent” prosecutor who waited until the 2024 campaign was underway to deliver his greatest hits, and then resigned quietly after Trump won. The 2020 election case collapsed, the classified documents case got dismissed, and Smith was left holding a very expensive bag full of nothing. Tuesday is the reckoning he tried to avoid.

Republicans on the Judiciary Committee should press him on the specifics: the pressure he put on state officials, the aggressive tactics against Trump’s staff, and the creative legal theories that judges repeatedly rejected. Smith will no doubt play the martyr and talk about the rule of law. But the rule of law cuts both ways, and it looks a lot like lawfare when you send armed agents to the home of a former president, then can’t get a single conviction to stick. The subpoena power goes both directions.

We’re not expecting Smith to break down and confess. He’ll be measured, evasive, and probably a little condescending, because that’s how Washington power has always worked. But the hearing matters because it puts the record in plain sight, on camera, for everyone who wondered why their government seemed so eager to bury the man they voted for. The voters already delivered their verdict. Today is just the paperwork.