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Confusion Over Potential Greenland Agreement; Trump Meets With Volodymyr Zelenskyy; Jack Smith Testifies. Aired 11-11:30a ET

Aired January 22, 2026 - 11:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

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PAMELA BROWN, CNN HOST: Former special counsel Jack Smith testifying on Capitol Hill.

WOLF BLITZER, CNN HOST: It's the first time Smith is answering questions from lawmakers in public.

Welcome to our viewers here in the United States and around the world. I'm Wolf Blitzer with Pamela Brown, and you're in THE SITUATION ROOM.

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

BLITZER: And we begin this hour with the former U.S. special counsel Jack Smith testifying up on Capitol Hill on camera this hour. Smith was sworn in last hour before the House Judiciary Committee. He's been a frequent target of President Trump's and many Republicans, and that's why he asked to testify publicly today.

BROWN: Smith secured two criminal indictments against Trump when he was with the Biden Justice Department. They involved Trump's alleged role in trying to overturn the 2020 election and charges that he mishandled classified material.

And, this morning, Smith again emphasized that he operated without any political bias.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JACK SMITH, FORMER SPECIAL COUNSEL: I want to be clear. I stand by my decisions as special counsel, including the decision to bring charges against President Trump.

Our investigation developed proof beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump engaged in criminal activity. If asked whether to prosecute a former president based on the same facts today, I would do so regardless of whether that president was a Democrat or a Republican.

(END VIDEO CLIP) BROWN: CNN congressional correspondent Lauren Fox is on Capitol Hill.

Lauren, testimony began about an hour ago. The hearing is still in recess, but what have you heard that jumped out to you?

LAUREN FOX, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, I mean, what you're seeing here are two distinct efforts by both Republicans and Democrats.

And Democrats are really trying to give Jack Smith some space to tell the story of his investigation, to remind voters who may have forgotten over the last year of Trump's presidency what was at stake in this investigation for Jack Smith and his team.

You heard from the beginning Jamie Raskin, the ranking member, laying out Jack Smith's history as a nonpolitical prosecutor and sort of trying to make it clear that this is someone who would have done this investigation regardless of if this was a Republican or a Democrat who had carried out these actions.

Meanwhile, you have Republicans doing the exact opposite, trying to put him in the hot seat, trying to triangulate any differences that may come up between what he said in a closed-door deposition to members just a few weeks ago and what he is saying in public.

Republicans obviously are being very careful here to try to create any daylight, any kind of perjury trap here for Jack Smith. So that is something that is also playing out in sort of the piece of this as he is testifying.

Now, I will note that lawmakers on Capitol Hill are engaging right now in a vote series on the House floor. That is why you are having this recess. So they sort of got started, had a couple of members do questioning, and then they quickly had to adjourn and turn to the House floor because they obviously have important issues to deal with today, including trying to get that government funding bill passed before the government funding deadline at the end of next week.

BROWN: All right, busy day there on Capitol Hill.

Lauren Fox, we appreciate it -- Wolf.

BLITZER: We have an all-star panel of reporters and analysts here with us in THE SITUATION ROOM to discuss.

CNN anchor and chief legal analyst Laura Coates is with us. CNN special correspondent Jamie Gangel, CNN senior justice correspondent Evan Perez, and CNN anchor and chief national affairs analyst Kasie Hunt is with us as well.

Thanks to all of you.

Jamie, let me start with you. What stood out to you, at least so far?

JAMIE GANGEL, CNN SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT: So, just big picture, this is in effect Jack Smith's day in court, the one he never got to have. And what I'm told is that we should expect testimony eventually -- this is just the beginning -- where he is going to go back to Donald Trump's words and actions on January 6, that he's going to talk about the phone calls that President Trump made to the Hill, that President Trump refused for three hours to really take any action.

[11:05:13]

And, also, I'm told that he may make mention of a tweet by President Trump at 2:24 that afternoon. It's now been deleted. I think we have a copy of it, but it's where President Trump said, "Mike Pence didn't have the courage to do what should have been done," that Jack Smith sees this as a sign and will say that, without question, it endangered Mike Pence's life.

BROWN: We all remember that day, right?

Kasie, you were actually there at the Capitol when the January 6 attack happened.

KASIE HUNT, CNN HOST: Yes.

BROWN: It's striking, as Evan pointed out earlier, at the amnesia we're seeing from some of Trump's allies on this and how the view of that day has changed.

HUNT: Well, as I've been watching this hearing this morning, that really has been the big picture piece of this that has struck me, right, that this is really part of the Republicans under Donald Trump, right, really trying to please him, take this in the direction he wants to see it go, to further rewrite what happened that day and the public accounting that came afterward.

And you saw that in the way that Jim Jordan was trying to undermine what we saw in the January 6 hearings that Jamie covered so extensively, right, making essentially jabs at how they were done, talking about how they were produced by the Democrats and trying to raise questions about the credibility of Cassidy Hutchinson, one of the witnesses there.

So this does seem to me to be a part and parcel of that effort. And we have seen, frankly, President Trump had some success in convincing Americans, the polling shows this, to have a different view of what happened that day than perhaps was held in the immediate aftermath, when, remember, President Trump was essentially a pariah.

He was exiled to Mar-a-Lago, before people like Kevin McCarthy, who had previously gone to the floor, Jamie, as you remember, and said that President Trump bore responsibility for what happened on January 6, and essentially resurrected him from the political dead.

So I see this as part of a very long story about that day.

BROWN: Yes.

And at the end of Republican Congressman Kevin Kiley's questioning, he asked Jack Smith if he had any regrets about how Smith conducted the investigation. Let's watch how he responded. All right, we don't have that sound. I was told we did.

But, Laura, bottom line is he said he has no regrets. In fact, he said the only regret he had was not speaking out more on behalf of the prosecutors in his unit and the hard work, the diligent work that they had put forth.

And that was a moment, because he was essentially doubling down, saying, I would do this again if I had the opportunity.

LAURA COATES, CNN CHIEF LEGAL ANALYST: In his opening remarks, he says this much. "I stand by my decisions as special counsel, including my decision to bring charges against President Trump."

He talks about a beyond a reasonable doubt investigation, which we not only know about the burden of proof at trial, but investigators and prosecutors are looking at that standard at every step of an investigation. Can I prove this beyond a reasonable doubt? What am I looking for? It's not a reverse engineering of, all right, I have got to prosecute this person. Now let me find what's going on.

Now, the Republicans who are questioning thus far have attributed that reverse engineering to him, but he is saying he is following the facts. And one point that Kevin Kiley was raising was that there was an absence of humility when it came to Jack Smith, pointing out his career missteps that he looked at through the lens of court opinions and his decisions, but also the idea of you have made no mistakes here?

But, remember, this is somebody who is not personally actually overseeing an investigation as his individual self. He is a special counsel on behalf of the Department of Justice. And so for him to suggest that he has made a mistake would suggest that the Department of Justice has made a mistake, has lost credibility, which has fatal implications to the longstanding traditions of the Department of Justice.

But I think what's interesting here is that he is a little bit constrained in what he can say with respect to the classified documents case. And I wonder if people will look at that, based on the order by Judge Cannon says he can't speak about it, will look at that as him being regretful, as opposed to following a court order.

BROWN: Yes.

BLITZER: And very important, and both of those cases clearly already being discussed, but a lot more is about to unfold during the course of this hearing.

COATES: Yes.

BLITZER: Jamie, it was clear that Jack Smith came very prepared for this hearing. He's been obviously working on it for a long time. He was taking time to pause and think before his answers, though, because they're so specific. Give us your thoughts. GANGEL: So, as, Evan, you mentioned earlier, he is being very careful

about what he has to say, the perjury trap threats from Donald Trump.

But, also, my understanding is, there are things apart from the classified documents case that he can't talk about that were in grand jury testimony.

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EVAN PEREZ, CNN SENIOR JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Right.

There's still some -- there are still rules. There are still orders from judges that have sealed some of those discussions. And so there is limitations on what he can discuss. And you can see that in the deposition, for instance, where Steve Castor, who is a questioner on the Republican side, asks him questions that he knows Jack Smith cannot answer.

And so you see that play out again in the deposition that went on in December. And you're going to see that again play out today. One of the interesting things that I think that overhangs this, to Kasie's point, and going back to the theme of the amnesia, I think a lot of people are forgetting also that, before we got here over the past year, there's been a campaign of retribution against FBI agents, against prosecutors.

Anyone who touched a case involving Donald Trump or his allies has been fired by the Justice Department simply for doing their job, right? And that includes dozens of people at the FBI.

And so that overhangs all of this, because I think you see some of the regret about Jack Smith that some of these people have suffered the consequences of simply doing their job. And Smith is still sitting here having to defend the work that went on.

BROWN: Yes, and it also is against the backdrop of DOJ, as you pointed out, going against Trump's perceived political adversaries, including James Comey for his congressional testimony.

PEREZ: Right.

BROWN: And so we know that this DOJ is not afraid to do that.

PEREZ: Right. And they're investigating...

BROWN: And that's why he has to parse his words and be careful, and against what, as you said...

PEREZ: They're investigating John Brennan.

BROWN: John Brennan, yes.

PEREZ: There's a number of people who are facing possible prosecution for these -- for something just like this, which is saying something that differs from something else in the record. BLITZER: Quick thought, Laura. I'm just curious. Jack Smith, he

indicted Trump on two specific cases, illegally holding classified documents, highly classified documents at Mar-a-Lago in the ballroom, the bathroom, his office, other places in Mar-a-Lago, indicted him for that. That was a crime he suggested.

And also it was a crime that he tried to derail the presidential election of 2020 with illegal actions. Both of those cases were eventually dropped. Explain.

COATES: Yes. They were dropped because there is a longstanding policy about having a sitting president of the United States being prosecuted.

We can imagine the president of the United States has a full slate of things he ought to be doing. And the idea of the ultimate distraction of somebody who's headed the executive branch of government who oversees the enforcement of laws to be held to account, even if there is, according to Jack Smith, valid reasons to do so, there has been an Office of Legal Counsel opinion that says we can't do that.

And so that's part of the issue here. The other part is, they were dismissed, because which members of the prosecution team under a DOJ that is controlled by somebody serving under the pleasure of President Trump is going to go forward with those particular cases as well?

But this is all part of the sort of conundrum, catch-22 that he is dealing with right now, where, on the one hand, he wants to be steadfast in the position that he has taken that the grand jury hasn't indicted these cases. Remember, it's the grand jury. It's not Jack Smith saying this should happen, it shall be. A grand jury has found this.

But you still got that tension politically that I think they want to seize on that, for somebody who's unaware of that opinion or what should be done, the thought that, oh, hold on a second, suddenly, he's in office and you no longer want to prosecute him because your whole point was keep him out of office, well, that's not genuine.

(CROSSTALK)

BLITZER: Which case was stronger, Laura?

COATES: Well, according to the grand jury, they indicted both overwhelmingly, and they saw them as very different fact patterns.

But I think if you're talking about the optics, the images of boxes in Mar-a-Lago makes you kind of bristle. The images of law enforcement being crushed by people on Capitol Hill on a day that should have been a performative ceremonial task of certifying election, that's brutal.

HUNT: Wolf...

PEREZ: There was also a recording of the president, of the former president at the time discussing that he knew certain documents, for instance, a document about attacking Iran, was classified and he couldn't share it with people in this room.

And so things like that were going to be very damaging to the president if that case had ever gotten to trial. And, by the way, those are the things that certainly we would like to hear. We would love to hear that audio played certainly now even, because it's still under seal from a judge.

BLITZER: Kasie, you want to make a point?

HUNT: Yes.

I mean, I will say my political sources also agreed with you that the classified documents case was perhaps stronger in court than -- or more damaging politically to President Trump.

But, Wolf, you asked Laura the legal question about these cases, why they were dropped, et cetera. She answered it very well. The political question, the answer is that Donald Trump won the election, right? That's why these cases went away. It's because the American people watched what happened on January 6.

They saw those boxes get dragged out of Mar-a-Lago. And they voted him back into office anyway. And that's why Jack Smith's cases never -- ultimately were dropped.

[11:15:04]

BROWN: It was a big part of his campaign strategy, saying, I'm the victim. DOJ has been weaponized against me. And a lot of Americans bought what he sold there.

BLITZER: Believed him.

All right, everybody, stand by. There's a lot more coming up.

And I want to remind our viewers, you can always watch much more of Kasie, on her show, "THE ARENA," 4:00 p.m. Eastern Monday through Friday. I watch every day. And a lot more of Laura Coates on her show, "LAURA COATES LIVE," 11:00 p.m. Eastern, right here on CNN.

BROWN: And still ahead here in THE SITUATION ROOM: The prime minister of Greenland is speaking right now, hours after President Trump announced the framework of a deal for the Arctic territory.

BLITZER: Also, President Trump and the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, meeting for an hour on the sidelines of Davos -- the latest on how that meeting went.

BROWN: And close to 125 million people across nearly half the country must prepare ahead of what could be one of the most severe winter storms in years.

You're in THE SITUATION ROOM, and we will be right back.

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BROWN: Welcome back.

We are waiting for the House Judiciary hearing to resume with former special counsel Jack Smith testifying in public for the very first time. And when it begins, we'll bring you back there live.

And we have some breaking news coming in, President Trump meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Davos, Switzerland, this morning.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

QUESTION: President Trump, can you come to the cameras?

QUESTION: How was the meeting, Mr. President?

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The meeting was good. We have a ways to go. I'm meeting with President Putin today, as you know. The meeting was good with President Zelenskyy. We'll see how it turns out. A lot of people being killed.

QUESTION: What's going to be the message to President Putin? What do you want President Putin to know?

TRUMP: The war has to end.

QUESTION: Do you have a deal?

QUESTION: So, you didn't get a deal today, Mr. President?

(CROSSTALK)

TRUMP: We hope it's going to end. There are a lot of people being killed. Last month, they had 30,000 people killed, 30,000, mostly soldiers.

And it's really a war that has to end. It's horrible.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: And this comes as Trump's special envoy Steve Witkoff and son- in-law Jared Kushner are due to meet with Russian leader Vladimir Putin in Moscow today.

Witkoff says Russia-Ukraine peace negotiations are -- quote -- "down to one issue." And President Trump says they're getting close to a deal, but you also heard him there say there's still a lot of work to be done.

So let's go live now to see in a chief international security correspondent Nick Paton Walsh.

Nick, President Trump says a failure to secure a peace deal would be a disgrace. What more are you hearing about this meeting with Zelenskyy this morning? NICK PATON WALSH, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT:

Yes, I mean, very scant details as to exactly what they discussed.

And they were together for about an hour or so. But Zelenskyy did emerge, saying that he believed the documents are almost ready. Quite by what he means by ready, ready to be presented to the Russians or ready to be signed by all parties, that's unclear.

The big stumbling block I think many see here, as was laid out by Steve Witkoff, is this one remaining issue, a European official telling me that is territory. Look, that's been the key point of the Russian invasion in the first place to occupy Ukraine.

And it is the sticking point, with Ukraine not wanting to cede territory that Russia has not conquered militarily, and the Russians saying to the Ukrainians, just give us the rest of the Donetsk region that we haven't managed to take by force yet.

Zelenskyy, I think, trying to preempt Moscow here, possibly put them in a little bit of a bind when Witkoff arrives, saying during his speech that there was supposed to be in the coming days a trilateral meeting with the Ukrainians, the Russians and the Americans in the Emirates.

Now, that's not something we have heard us or Russian officials comment on at the moment. It is something that President Trump suggested was possible potentially late last year. And I think now what Zelenskyy is doing is throwing that at Moscow and essentially prejudging the outcome of what may happen in the Kremlin later on today and throwing it forwards to two days of talks.

They may still happen, but Zelenskyy's speech as well too trying to make the European leaders and officials assembled in front of him uncomfortable ultimately about their lack of action. The fact that that audience is still spinning after the last week around Trump's statements over Greenland was something Zelenskyy seized upon.

He said, look, you can't always be in Greenland mode, hoping that something somewhere somehow will do something. You can't just sit here waiting for President Trump to change his mind. If the old world order is collapsing, you have to act.

Now, I think a lot of that will make many Europeans uncomfortable, but at the same time he said he was in a Groundhog Day essentially making the same case again and again. But the outcome of this Moscow meeting is key. I think Putin has been clear from the start he wants to make the illusion of an edging towards a peace process or conclusion something that Trump can see, whilst not giving up his maximalist of demands for territory and other things from Ukraine.

So the outcome in Moscow key, but something thrown into the works here by Zelenskyy saying there's potentially two talk -- two days of talks, unprecedented trilateral talks, in the Emirates coming. That's something the Russians presumably have to sign up to or potentially annoy the White House -- Pamela.

BROWN: Yes, it was interesting, because Steve Witkoff, he sounded pretty bullish, saying, look, we're down to one issue here.

But, I mean, that issue is territory. And that is not an easy issue to solve.

WALSH: It was the point of the invasion.

Look, I mean, it's the last 10 percent, right, that is always the tricky bit.

BROWN: Right.

[11:25:00]

WALSH: But it's the bit you don't want to agree to that stops the deal from happening.

So, yes, it's key. It's always been at the heart of Zelensky's disagreement with the peace process. It's interesting to see that Witkoff thinks the other issues, like the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, like the prosperity fund, like all the other potential things that were deeply uncomfortable for Ukraine, may now be somewhat in a position where Kiev and Washington can sign on to them.

But it's territory this is always about. Putin's being clear what he wants. He said, we will take it militarily if you don't give it to us. Zelenskyy has said, along with his European allies, why would we just give you land that you haven't been able to take from us through violence?

And that's the sticking point, ultimately, here. And in terms of the last, more public version of the peace deal text we heard about the late stages of last year, ultimately, Zelenskyy wants to keep the front lines as they are for now.

BROWN: All right, Nick Paton Walsh, thank you so much -- Wolf.

BLITZER: All right, Pamela, also happening now, the prime minister of Greenland, Jens-Frederik Nielsen, speaking this morning just hours after President Trump announced a -- quote -- "framework" of a future deal on Greenland.

Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: It's a long-term deal. It's the ultimate long-term deal. And I think it puts everybody in a really good position.

QUESTION: How long will the deal be, Mr. President?

TRUMP: Infinite.

QUESTION: Did you speak to Denmark? Did you speak to Denmark?

TRUMP: There is no time limit. It's forever.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: It's forever. That's what he just said.

Sources say it includes renegotiating an agreement that formalized U.S. military presence on the island and potentially building more U.S. military bases there. A spokesperson says NATO Chief Mark Rutte did not propose any compromise to Danish sovereignty in his discussions with President Trump.

And moments ago, our Nic Robertson had a chance to speak with the prime minister at that press conference. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMATIC EDITOR: Is Greenland safe now from the threat of U.S. ownership? If not, why not? And does Donald Trump and the United States get anything more out of this agreement than he already had? And what are the details of that agreement?

JENS-FREDERIK NIELSEN, PRIME MINISTER OF GREENLAND: Thank you for your question.

First of all, nobody else in Greenland and the Kingdom of Denmark have the mandate to make deals or agreements about Greenland and the Kingdom of Denmark without us. That's not going to happen.

In terms of the deal that's been talking about, I don't know what's concrete in that deal either. But I know that we have now a high-level working group working on a solution for both parties. We have said from the beginning in Greenland we have some red lines. We cannot cross the red lines.

We have to respect our territorial integrity. We have to respect international law, sovereignty. We are ready to cooperate more in economics and in other areas, but that's something we have to talk about in mutual respect.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: And Nic Robertson is joining us now live. He's in Greenland for us.

Nic, what else did the Prime Minister say?

ROBERTSON: He said -- and you heard some of it there -- that he is willing to negotiate, they're willing to talk. There are very clear red lines.

I think a couple of points that he made were quite important there. He talked about the fact that Greenland's foreign minister just last week had had a meeting in Washington, as we know, with the vice president, secretary of state as well.

And, there, they put forward their position about the possibility of wider talks of Arctic security. But it was the point that he made that -- as well, that the foreign minister had also, just in the past couple of days, reiterated to the NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte that there are clear red lines.

And he said that was communicated to Mark Rutte, the NATO secretary- general. I believe he communicated that to the president. So there's a very clear line of information that they feel has been communicated about Greenland, its sovereignty very clearly.

And he repeated that many times through the press conference. The idea of Greenland being used as part of the Golden Dome, the idea of putting more troops there, all of that through the press conference -- so this question came up a number of times. He said all of that is open in the discussions.

But I think -- that he expects to be had with the United States. But I think perhaps a big takeaway for the audience in here is that even the prime minister of Greenland doesn't know the details of this agreement. He is convinced and sure that Greenland's position has been fully represented to the United States, but he's not cognizant of all the details.

And I think that perhaps sheds light on where exactly this agreement is. It is at the very beginning and something that has a lot more discussions to come. But he does feel safe from the idea of a military intervention here by the United States.