Jim Jordan sent a criminal referral to the Justice Department on Wednesday asking it to investigate Jack Smith for alleged false statements to Congress, turning a fight over subpoenas and testimony into a potential federal criminal matter. The Ohio Republican told Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche to examine whether Smith lied when he described what records his team had sought.
The referral landed the same day lawmakers and lawyers were already parsing a dispute that has hung over the committee’s work for months. Jordan says Smith made materially false statements and failed to disclose a subpoena to the National Archives and Records Administration, while the Justice Department said last week that Smith’s team had, in a separate subpoena, obtained text messages between Trump-era White House staffers and dozens of members of Congress.
The timing matters because the referral is not a warning shot; it is a request for a criminal case. Jordan’s letter says Smith had an obligation to comply with a duly authorized congressional inquiry and that his testimony included intentionally false statements designed to obstruct the committee’s oversight. Smith had testified in a deposition last year that his team did not receive the contents of any phone calls or text messages because the records sought were toll records.
That explanation is at the center of the dispute. Jordan’s case depends on the claim that Smith should have disclosed the separate subpoena to the National Archives and Records Administration, but the testimony at issue was about subpoenas for Republican lawmakers’ toll records. Jamie Raskin, the House Judiciary Committee’s top Democrat, said Wednesday night that the referral was baseless and vindictive, arguing that Smith answered the committee’s questions truthfully and was never asked about the separate request to the archives.
Raskin went further, saying the Republicans faulted Smith for not reading the minds of congressional investigators and for not volunteering information they did not ask for. He called the move absurd and said it would get laughed out of court. The Justice Department has not said whether it will move beyond review, only that it received the letter and will investigate all evidence of criminal conduct.
What happens next now rests with the Justice Department, which can choose to do nothing, ask for more information or pursue charges. For Smith, the referral has already done what Jordan clearly intended: it has dragged a former special counsel into a new and public legal fight, with the department itself now holding the file.
