Smith twice sat down to answer questions from lawmakers about cases involving Mr. Trump. In December, he testified for more than eight hours during closed-door testimony before the House Judiciary Committee.
During that deposition, Smith was asked about subpoenas his team issued for the tolling cases of some members of Congress. He told the committee he did not seek a search warrant for the contents of lawmakers’ text messages, but only for toll records.
But Republicans accused Smith of lying during his appearance because of information revealed by the Senate Judiciary Committee in July.
The Justice Department provided the Senate committee with documents showing that Smith’s team searched for and obtained text messages from the National Archives and Records Administration, which included messages from 44 members of Congress — Republicans and Democrats.
Smith discussed his decision to analyze Republican phone records in January, when he appeared before the panel in a public place.
“The conspiracy that we were investigating, it was relevant to obtain toll records to understand the scope of that conspiracy, who they were seeking to coerce, who they were seeking, to influence who was seeking to help them,” Smith said.
He said securing phone records, which only contained data about calls and not their content, was “common practice” in complex investigations.
During that hearing, Smith also defended his handling of investigations involving Mr. Trump and told House members that he pursued the unprecedented charges against the president “because the evidence established that he deliberately broke the law — the very laws he was sworn to uphold.”
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