00:00I approved those records, and those records were materially relevant to our investigation.
00:05Why were they relevant?
00:07For a number of reasons.
00:09First, with respect to the toll records regarding the evening of January 6th,
00:16those records corroborated evidence that we had that the president,
00:22President Donald Trump, and his co-conspirators were seeking to exploit the violence on January 6th
00:28in furtherance of their criminal scheme.
00:31They were taking the fact that law enforcement officers had been brutally assaulted at this institution
00:37and using that to seek to delay the proceedings further in violation of the law.
00:43It was an important part of our investigation.
00:46We had interviewed co-conspirators who talked about the calls that were made to members of Congress.
00:54There is, I think, appropriate concern by members of this committee and members of Congress
01:02as to your activities related to their telephone conversations, text messages, and records.
01:09Please explain to us what involvement you had with any information from members of Congress.
01:23First, with respect to toll records.
01:26Toll records are non-content records.
01:30They show who a call was to, who a call was from, and the length of that call.
01:36My office did secure toll records from third parties, third-party telephone companies,
01:43in the course of our investigation, that were records for members of Congress.
01:48Before we did that, we consulted with the public integrity section regarding whether those toll records subpoenas were appropriate.
01:58I approved those records, and those records were materially relevant to our investigation.
02:04Why were they relevant?
02:06For a number of reasons.
02:07First, with respect to the toll records regarding the evening of January 6th,
02:15those records corroborated evidence that we had that the president, President Donald Trump,
02:22and his co-conspirators were seeking to exploit the violence on January 6th in furtherance of their criminal scheme.
02:30They were taking the fact that law enforcement officers had been brutally assaulted at this institution
02:36and using that to seek to delay the proceedings further in violation of the law.
02:42It was an important part of our investigation.
02:45We had interviewed co-conspirators who talked about the calls that were made to members of Congress.
02:53We had recordings of voicemails that showed, and these voicemails are public,
03:00where the co-conspirators were, again, providing false information to try to delay the proceedings.
03:07It was an important part of our investigation, and it was centrally relevant to the issue of criminal intent
03:17to seek to further delay the proceedings in violation of the law given what had happened that afternoon at January
03:256th,
03:25in my view, added to the powerful evidence we had of Donald Trump's guilt
03:32and the participation of his co-conspirators in his criminal scheme at his behest.
03:38So we have the Capitol under siege.
03:41We have the Vice President removed from presiding over the Senate by the Secret Service.
03:47We have members of the Senate and House and both political parties who are told to leave the building because
03:54of the danger.
03:55I want to ask, is it fair to surmise from what you have said
03:58that the President was in contact with some members of Congress during this period of time?
04:09Yes, that is correct.
04:12Both members of Congress, we gained evidence reaching out to the White House asking,
04:20please help us.
04:21Please stop what's happening.
04:23Please have your supporters stop attacking the Capitol.
04:26And then also, again, after the attack had occurred, telling his co-conspirators,
04:35there's a message, I believe it's between Mark Meadows and one of the co-conspirators,
04:40that the President wants you to call these senators.
04:44And that record should be in the material that you all have.
04:48Co-conspirators, including Rudy Giuliani, then sought to make those calls.
04:53We also had evidence that the President himself was trying to reach out to individual senators.
05:01Now, this has been characterized by some as a wiretap.
05:05Did you initiate any wiretaps relative to members of Congress of either party?
05:14No, the records that we're talking about are non-content records, the toll records,
05:20are non-content records that we sought to corroborate evidence we had
05:24and also to assist us in questioning witnesses about these events, among other things.
05:28So what did the records disclose to you if they didn't disclose the content and conversation?
05:35Well, they were relevant for a number of reasons.
05:38First, they corroborated other records we already had.
05:42Some of those records were helpful, but they had gaps in them in terms of when certain calls happened.
05:48There was also the issue of when we interviewed one of these co-conspirators who was involved in making these
05:55calls,
05:56It was unclear from that interview how many phones were, in fact, being used to make those calls.
06:03And so getting these records would help us figure out how many phones, in fact, were being used to make
06:10these calls
06:10and to see who else, if anyone, was involved in that.
06:15It is possible, and certainly, as I understand, legal for a member of Congress to have more than one phone.
06:22The official business of the Senate may require one phone number.
06:29There may be a personal phone number for you and your family.
06:34There may even be a political phone number, which you could resort to if you were involved in political activity.
06:40Did you make any distinction in terms of the phone messages which you were investigating of these three possibilities?
06:50My recollection is being focused on the phones of the co-conspirators.
06:55When you say co-conspirators, do you mean members of Congress?
06:59No, no.
07:00I'm thinking specifically of Rudy Giuliani.
07:04One of the things that we learned in this interview of another co-conspirator is that he had multiple phones.
07:11And so the question was, if we had records, did we have all the records of the phones that were
07:17making calls to try to exploit the violence?
07:21But in terms of the phones themselves, of the members of Congress, where did you find those phone numbers?
07:32As I sit here, I do not recall.
07:34What I recall my role in this aspect of the investigation was I was asked by my staff to approve
07:42toll records subpoenas for these sort of records.
07:48After discussing the matter with my staff, I told them I wanted to make sure the Public Integrity Section approved
07:55of that process.
07:56That process happened, and they did.
07:59With respect to how agents figured out or thought they'd figured out which phones belonged to which senators, I don't
08:07have an answer to that.
08:08Assume for a moment that one of the phone conversations was between the President of the United States and a
08:13member of the Congress.
08:15Does the White House maintain any records of calls made by the President or on his behalf?
08:25My understanding is the White House does, but my recollection, and I think the terminology is the White House switchboard,
08:33my recollection is that we had discovered at various points in time those records were incomplete, or we didn't have
08:42all the records.
08:42And so that was another important point to corroborate, for example, evidence of an email where someone says the President
08:51is trying to reach out to these people,
08:53but then to find the actual records of the actual call.
08:59Mr. Smith, my colleagues have spent an extensive amount of time discussing Timothy Thiebaud, who retired from the FBI in
09:07August of 2022.
09:09According to our information, you were appointed special counsel three months after his retirement in November of 2022.
09:17Was Timothy Thiebaud a part of your special counsel team?
09:22No.
09:24Did you ever meet him during your work as special counsel?
09:28No, not that I recall.
09:30Did Timothy Thiebaud or the work that he had done, whatever it was, influence any of your decision making a
09:36special counsel?
09:39No.
09:39We made our decisions based on the facts and based on the law, based on the investigation that my team
09:46conducted.
09:47So I would say to those who are following the hearing, after hearing all these references to Timothy Thiebaud, he
09:53was gone.
09:54He was gone.
09:55He was gone from the FBI by the time Mr. Smith was appointed, and he'd never met him, and he
10:01was not part of his team.
10:02Some of these conspiracy theories just keep mushrooming despite the evidence to the contrary.
10:08Thank you very much.
