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As Capitol Hill braces for a tense, off-camera deposition with special counsel Jack Smith, Democrats in the House of Representatives are pushing the DOJ to publish the unreleased half of his report detailing President Donald Trump's handling of classified material.
Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., the top Democrat on the committee, said Smith should have the chance to have his complete work speak for itself ahead of what's likely to be a contentious closed-door meeting with lawmakers on Wednesday.
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"They are afraid of the embarrassment of what is contained within the report," Raskin told Fox News Digital on Monday evening.
Smith submitted his final report to the attorney general in January after Trump won re-election to the presidency in 2024. The DOJ released Volume I of Smith's report earlier this year, which covers the investigation into whether Trump coordinated efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
According to that report, Volume II deals with whether Trump unlawfully retained classified information in the wake of his first term.
Lawmakers will likely probe Smith over the collection of lawmaker phone records as a part of his investigation into Trump. Smith allegedly used the FBI to collect thousands of phone records from lawmakers without their knowledge.
Raskin believes Republicans will likely use the closed-door hearing as a basis for prosecution against Smith.
"They should allow Jack Smith to testify in public. Every special counsel report has been released. And every special counsel or independent counsel has testified in public. So, yeah, they are trying to get him on the fast road to one of their ridiculous prosecutions," Raskin said.
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"Republicans don't want to go along with it because they want to get him into a backroom and then cherry-pick statements, distort them, leak them, spin them," Raskin added.
When asked whether there was a reason why the DOJ shouldn't publish Smith's full work, Republicans pointed to the order that had originally blocked Volume II, as well as ongoing adjudication over its release.
"Attorney General Bondi is simply following the order of the federal judge who sealed Volume II of Jack Smith's report. Judge Cannon will decide by January 2026 whether Volume II should be released," Russell Dye, a spokesperson for the committee, said in a statement to Fox News Digital.
"Of course, ranking member Raskin knows all of this but despises President Trump so much that he would rather mislead the American people than get the facts straight," Dye said.
Dye's reasoning echoes the wording used by the DOJ. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said its release would propagate an incomplete review of Trump's handling of classified information and enable partisan attacks on the president.
"By his own admission, Smith has not concluded his mission. [Releasing Volume II] in order to justify preparation of one last long-winded, inaccurate, and unlawful smear of the President-elect and others would violate the Special Counsel Regulations," Blanche wrote in an addendum to Volume I.
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In response to claims of the investigation's findings, Raskin said that's a difficult determination to make.
"Well, it's hard to, it's hard to say why we need to know the things that we don't know," Raskin said.
