Accountability Deferred, Not Denied: What Jack Smith’s Testimony Reveals About Donald Trump, Presidential Immunity, and the Limits of Justice

Washington — For millions of Americans watching from home, Special Counsel Jack Smith’s congressional testimony this week raised a question that has hovered over the country since the end of Donald J. Trump’s presidency: Is accountability truly over, or merely postponed?

The answer, as lawmakers and legal analysts made clear, is complicated. The prosecutions against Mr. Trump brought by Mr. Smith — covering efforts to overturn the 2020 election and the mishandling of classified documents — have been dismissed without prejudice, meaning they may be revived in the future. Yet the obstacles standing in the way of renewed accountability have grown steeper, shaped not only by political resistance but by an increasingly expansive interpretation of presidential immunity by the Supreme Court.

The hearing, convened by House Republicans, was ostensibly designed to scrutinize Mr. Smith’s conduct. Instead, it evolved into a broader referendum on whether the American legal system is capable of holding a former president to account at all.

From Impeachment to Immunity

The current moment cannot be understood without revisiting the aftermath of the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol. Mr. Trump was impeached for incitement of insurrection and acquitted by the Senate in a 57–43 vote — the most bipartisan vote to convict a president in American history, though still short of the two-thirds threshold required for removal and disqualification.

At the time, several Republican senators justified their votes by arguing that criminal prosecution, not impeachment, was the proper venue for judgment. That position would later be reversed.

When the Department of Justice appointed Mr. Smith as special counsel, Republicans pivoted to a strategy centered on absolute presidential immunity — arguing that a president cannot be criminally prosecuted for actions taken while in office, even if those actions involve alleged felonies.

That argument found a receptive audience at the Supreme Court.

In a landmark decision authored by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., the Court ruled that presidents enjoy immunity from criminal prosecution for “core constitutional functions,” a doctrine that legal scholars across the ideological spectrum have described as novel and sweeping. The ruling did not eliminate the possibility of prosecution entirely, but it introduced a new, high legal bar — one that has already reshaped the future of presidential accountability.

Dismissed, But Not Erased

During the hearing, Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland, a constitutional law professor and a leading figure in the House impeachment effort, emphasized a crucial legal distinction: the cases were dismissed without prejudice.

“That means,” Mr. Raskin said, “they are not dead. They are dormant.”

Reviving them would require navigating statutes of limitation, the Supreme Court’s immunity framework, and the political realities of a deeply polarized country. Still, nothing in the law permanently forecloses future prosecutions.

Mr. Raskin and other Democrats argued that this fact alone undermines the Republican claim that Mr. Trump has been fully exonerated. Instead, they framed the moment as one in which accountability has been delayed by institutional constraints, not disproven by evidence.

Volume Two and the Classified Documents Case

Democrats signaled that their immediate focus is not the 2028 election, but unfinished congressional oversight — particularly concerning the classified documents case at Mar-a-Lago.

Mr. Smith’s final report was split into two volumes. The second, which details alleged obstruction, concealment of evidence, and the storage of classified materials at a resort frequented by foreign nationals, has not yet received sustained congressional scrutiny.

Representative Raskin indicated that Democrats would seek Mr. Smith’s testimony on this volume regardless of the electoral calendar.

“This is about national security,” he said. “Not campaign strategy.”

The documents case, legal analysts note, is widely regarded as the strongest of the prosecutions. Unlike the January 6 case, which hinges on intent and state of mind, the documents case is largely factual: possession, refusal to return materials, and alleged efforts to hide them.

Republicans, Witnesses, and Selective Skepticism

Republican members of the committee repeatedly attacked the credibility of prior witnesses in the January 6 investigation, including Cassidy Hutchinson, a former top aide to White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows.

Democrats countered that such attacks ignored a central contradiction: Republican leaders themselves had encouraged firsthand witnesses not to testify. Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro served prison sentences for defying congressional subpoenas. Mr. Meadows declined to cooperate. Others invoked executive privilege at the urging of the Trump White House.

The result, Democrats argued, was a manufactured complaint — rejecting secondhand testimony after actively suppressing firsthand accounts.

“Their position,” one Democratic lawmaker remarked, “appears to be no witnesses at all.”

Politics in the Age of Clips

Several panelists and commentators noted that the hearing was shaped less by legislative inquiry than by modern media incentives. In today’s fragmented information ecosystem, lawmakers increasingly prioritize viral moments over comprehensive arguments.

Jack Smith, by contrast, offered restrained, procedural responses — declining to engage in theatrics or political sparring. That approach, some analysts suggested, frustrated Republicans seeking confrontational exchanges suitable for social media.

Yet the strategy may have backfired. Clips circulating on mainstream and left-leaning platforms portrayed the special counsel as methodical and unshaken, while some Republican members appeared agitated or dismissive of January 6 violence — including confrontations involving Capitol Police officers who had defended them that day.

Accountability Versus Survival

Underlying the entire exchange was a deeper tension: whether pursuing accountability now strengthens or endangers American democracy.

Mr. Raskin framed the issue starkly. The immediate priority, he argued, is not relitigating past prosecutions, but ensuring the survival of democratic institutions themselves.

“Nothing is impossible,” he said of future accountability. “But first, democracy has to survive.”

That sentiment reflects a growing consensus among Democratic leaders and legal experts: the legal system alone cannot resolve what is fundamentally a political and civic crisis. Courts can rule, prosecutors can charge, but voters ultimately decide whether norms of accountability endure.

An Unfinished Reckoning

Jack Smith’s testimony did not close the book on Donald Trump. Nor did it reopen the cases against him. Instead, it offered a sobering reminder of the fragility of legal accountability in an era where power, precedent, and partisanship collide.

The prosecutions remain suspended, not erased. The evidence remains documented, not discredited. And the question that lingered as the hearing concluded was not whether accountability is possible — but whether the country still has the will to demand it.

As one Democratic lawmaker put it privately afterward, “History hasn’t ruled yet. It’s waiting.”