Jack Smith put 'meat on the bones' of Jan. 6 committee's case against Trump: investigator

The lead investigator for the House Select Committee that investigated the Capitol riots reacted to the "damning" new evidence presented by special counsel Jack Smith in the Jan. 6 case against Donald Trump.

Tim Heaphy, a former U.S. attorney who led the investigation into the former president's role in the insurrection, said the special counsel had advanced the findings turned up by the congressional probe, and he told MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell that former vice president Mike Pence's testimony was especially valuable.

"It's meat on the bones that the select committee put in place," Heaphy said. "We told the story, this narrative of an intentional multi-part plan led by the former president to disrupt the joint session [of Congress] and prevent the transfer of power. The pleading puts an important new meat on those bones. We didn't talk to the vice president, he refused to speak with the committee. He provides evidence very, very consistent with the theory that we laid out."

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U.S. District judge Tanya Chutkan unsealed a 165-page filing from Smith's office that describes the former president's pressure campaign on Pence and other Republicans as part of a sprawling effort to overturn his 2020 election loss, and now the judge must determine which of those actions should be shielded from prosecution under the Supreme Court's immunity ruling.

"The president's leadership, his awareness of the fact that he had lost, his incessant pressure on the vice president and, ultimately, I think the most damning thing is that he launches this angry mob to pressure, to put public pressure on the vice president on the morning of Jan. 6 in this last-gasp effort to achieve his goal," Heaphy said. "It's consistent with the story that we told, but has some really significant steps forward, because Jack Smith got some evidence we weren't able to get."