The Senate will likely hold “Watergate-style hearings” to get to the bottom of the Biden administration’s pursuit of President Trump and other Republicans stemming from the aftermath of the 2020 election, Sen. Eric Schmitt told The Washington Times.
The Missouri Republican said former special counsel Jack Smith tried to “weaponize” the federal justice system to place Mr. Trump behind bars before the 2024 election. He said Mr. Smith will eventually be called as a witness in the hearings.
Mr. Schmitt, speaking with The Washington Times’ “The Sitdown with Alex Swoyer” podcast, also called antifa activists protesting U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement the “paramilitary arm of the left” and said they deserve to be treated as a terrorist network.
“They throw firecrackers out to lure ICE agents out and try to murder them and assault them,” the senator said. “It’s not just some ideology. It’s an organization that’s a terrorist organization.”
Mr. Schmitt, in the wide-ranging interview, also urged the House to move ahead with impeachment proceedings against U.S. District Judge James Boasberg, who has emerged as a major judicial adversary for the Trump administration.
The senator said that until the impeachment issue is settled, Judge Boasberg must be suspended from handling cases — including his renewed effort to pursue a criminal contempt investigation into the Trump administration over its deportation of Venezuelan gang suspects to El Salvador in March.
“I think Boasberg is the poster child for what a rogue judge is now in 2025,” Mr. Schmitt said.
’Arctic Frost’
Mr. Schmitt, who won election to the Senate in 2022 after serving as Missouri’s attorney general, has found himself in the middle of some of the biggest legal and political battles of the decade.
As state attorney general, he led a lawsuit that exposed the deep ties between the federal government and social media platforms, which saw government operatives pressure the tech firms to shut down voices that questioned the 2020 election or challenged prevailing government messages about the coronavirus pandemic.
Those activities were later confirmed after Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter (now known as X) and the release of what became known as the Twitter files.
“It was Orwellian, honestly,” Mr. Schmitt said of the Biden administration’s activities.
A member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Mr. Schmitt predicted that panel will hold public hearings to expose the efforts by the Biden administration to investigate Mr. Trump and initiate criminal prosecutions in the wake of the 2020 election.
That probe was dubbed “Arctic Frost” and eventually was led by Mr. Smith, the special counsel appointed by then-Attorney General Merrick Garland and secured indictments against Mr. Trump over his handling of classified documents and his efforts to overturn his election loss.
“This is a big deal,” the senator said. “The fact that Jack Smith — really what he was trying to do is create this massive nationwide show trial where people got caught up and criminally prosecuted for their political views. He thought he was going to be the hero in this story. He’s really the villain.”
“I can’t wait for Jack Smith to come,” Mr. Schmitt said, referring to the former special counsel’s expected testimony. “But before that happens, we need to make sure we have all the information. What we don’t want to have is that Jack Smith is the only one who has been privy to a lot of this information.”
As part of the probe, it has been revealed, Mr. Smith secured access to phone records of sitting members of Congress and judges ordered the lawmakers not be told about it.
One of those was Judge Boasberg. He now faces an article of impeachment, drawn up in the House, over that decision.
“Impeachment should move forward in the house,” Mr. Schmitt said.
The senator has also led a letter to the chief judge of the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, which oversees the district court, asking that Judge Boasberg be suspended while impeachment is a possibility.
“He shouldn’t be able to hear cases. There should be some accountability,” Mr. Schmitt said.
Antifa and ICE
Mr. Schmitt has emerged as a leader among Republicans for a stiffer immigration policy, and he delivered a harsh critique of Democrats’ direction on the issue.
“The modern Democratic Party actually just doesn’t believe in borders. That is the truth,” he said.
He said that is feeding a startling level of resistance to immigration enforcement, which has seen Democratic leaders liken ICE arrests of illegal immigrants to “kidnapping,” and has urged resistance to the federal government.
“They think anybody should be here for any reason and shouldn’t have to go back home and so what you are seeing is this tension where elected leaders are calling for this sort of resistance,” Mr. Schmitt said. “This is a dangerous thing that is happening right now because people have been radicalized.”
He said anti-ICE clashes in places like the Chicago area and Portland, Oregon, are supported by antifa, which he said runs a network of safe houses where it conducts training on how to carry out the resistance.
“They’re kind of the paramilitary arm of the left,” he said. “We have to treat antifa for what it is, which is a terrorist organization.”
Mr. Trump in September designated antifa as a “domestic terrorist organization.”
Earlier this year, the president declared Tren de Aragua, a Venezuela-based gang, a foreign terrorist organization, and used that justification to back his campaign of missile strikes to sink boats the U.S. says are trafficking drugs from South America to the U.S.
Mr. Schmitt said the strikes are the next step after Mr. Trump sealed off America’s southern border, forcing drug smugglers to take to the water.
“I think President Trump is sending a clear message,” Mr. Schmitt said.
