Jordan Refers Jack Smith to DOJ for Not Reading Minds

What Jordan Is Actually Claiming

Here's the setup. Last year, it came out that Smith's team had obtained phone records from several Republican lawmakers as part of the post-January 6th investigation into Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Smith testified before the House Judiciary Committee that his team never received the contents of any calls or text messages, because the records they pulled were 'toll records,' which just show numbers dialed, timestamps, that kind of thing. Metadata. The boring stuff.

But last week, as CBS News reports, the Justice Department informed lawmakers that in a separate subpoena directed at the National Archives and Records Administration, Smith's team had actually obtained text messages between Trump-era White House staffers and dozens of members of Congress. Different subpoena. Different target. Different records entirely.

Jordan's position is that Smith lied to Congress. Smith's position, as articulated by his defenders, is that he answered the questions he was asked. Those two things are, legally and logically, very different.

The Part Where Jamie Raskin Ends Jim Jordan

Rep. Jamie Raskin, the Maryland Democrat who serves as ranking member on the Judiciary Committee, did not mince words. He called the referral 'baseless and vindictive' and predicted it 'will get laughed out of court.' Pretty standard stuff for Washington.

Then he got to the actual substance. Raskin pointed out that committee investigators asked Smith specifically about the subpoenas related to Republican lawmakers' toll records. Not about the National Archives subpoena. Not about any other subpoena. The toll records. Smith answered that question. Truthfully.

Then Raskin wrote the sentence of the week: 'The Republicans fault Mr. Smith for not reading the minds of congressional investigators and for not volunteering information they didn't ask for. This is absurd. Mr. Smith may be telegenic but he is not telepathic.' Credit where it's due. That's a clean kill.

The DOJ's Response Should Concern You

Here's where this stops being funny. Jordan sent the referral to Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, who is, let's remember, one of Trump's former personal defense attorneys. The man who represented the president in his criminal cases is now running the Justice Department that just received a referral asking it to investigate the prosecutor who brought those criminal cases.

A DOJ spokesperson confirmed to CBS News that the department received Jordan's letter and said it 'will investigate all evidence of criminal conduct.' That's a boilerplate phrase, technically. Agencies say that. But in this context, with this cast of characters, that sentence lands differently than it might under a normal administration. The DOJ is not run by people who have any incentive whatsoever to take a pass on going after Jack Smith.

This Is What Retribution Looks Like When It Dresses Up as Process

Let's zoom out for a second, because the mechanics of this story matter. Jack Smith spent years building federal cases against Donald Trump. Trump won the election. The cases collapsed. Smith resigned. And now, less than a year into Trump's second term, the Republican chair of the House Judiciary Committee has sent a criminal referral to an attorney general who used to work for Trump asking that Smith be criminally investigated.

Jordan's referral letter, as CBS News reports, accuses Smith of making 'materially false statements' and says he 'failed to disclose' the National Archives subpoena to the committee. The committee never asked him about that subpoena. Jordan knows this. Whether it matters to the DOJ under Blanche is a different, and much more troubling, question.

Criminal referrals from Congress go nowhere most of the time. Congress has no power to charge anyone. All Jordan did was write a letter. But writing a letter to this particular DOJ, at this particular moment, about this particular target, is not nothing. It's a signal. It's a pressure campaign with a paper trail.