Grassley says he has records showing Jack Smith team reviewed 44 lawmakers’ text messages
Records show the team bypassed a filter review process and reviewed messages involving Republican and Democratic lawmakers, according to Senate Judiciary Committee leaders.
- Justice Department records released to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley and Sen. Ron Johnson reveal that former Special Counsel Jack Smith's team accessed text messages sent by 44 members of Congress to first-term Trump administration officials.
- The Justice Department established a Filter Team to protect privileged materials, but the investigative team allegedly bypassed this process, directly accessing communications without waiting for a review to segregate privileged information.
- Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley criticized the actions Tuesday, stating the investigation "ran roughshod over the Constitution." He argued communications regarding official legislative duties are protected under the Constitution's Speech or Debate Clause.
- Sen. Ron Johnson labeled the incident a "grotesque example of the Biden administration's weaponization of the Justice Department," indicating he intends to bring Smith before the Senate Judiciary Committee in coming months for accountability.
- During a December 2025 congressional deposition, Smith denied that his team examined "the content of text messages" during his probes into President Donald Trump; lawyers for Smith did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
94 Articles
94 Articles
POLITICS: Jack Smith spied on me in Congress — this illegal weaponization needs to end
One year ago, when whistleblowers first revealed that special counsel Jack Smith and the FBI had targeted Republican senators in a highly secretive and unconstitutional spying operation, I immediately picked up the phone and called my close friend and colleague Jim Jordan. “Jim, there is no way that we weren’t spied on,” I said. “There’s a larger list and my hunch is that we’re both on it.” Smith’s surveillance operation, dubbed Arctic Frost, wa…
Jack Smith Team Accessed 44 Congress Members' Texts
Jack Smith's former special counsel team reviewed the contents of text messages involving 44 current and former members of Congress, and did so by sidestepping the very filter protocols the Justice Department had established to protect privileged material. That is not an allegation from a political opponent. It is what the DOJ's own records now say. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley and Sen. Ron Johnson released the documents Tu…
Beatrice Daily Sun
Jack Smith reviewed texts from 44 lawmakers, senators say
Former U.S. Special Counsel Jack Smith's team reviewed text messages from 44 Republican and Democratic members of Congress during his investigation into President Donald Trump's attempts to overturn the 2020 election, according to two Republican senators.
Jack Smith's Team Secretly Pulled Text Messages From 44 Lawmakers
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) disclosed Tuesday that the Justice Department notified him that former special counsel Jack Smith’s investigative team “secretly obtained” text messages from 44 members of Congress without following the department’s own filtering protocols, sweeping up communications from lawmakers who had nothing to do with any criminal investigation. Grassley, chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said he was among those 44 lawmak…
Grassley: Jack Smith “ran roughshod over the Constitution,” accessed content of text messages and lied about it
by Laura AinsworthIt’s becoming ever clearer why then-Attorney General Merrick Garland --- or whatever Democrat officials were pulling the strings --- chose Jack Smith to be the special counsel (he was never confirmed, by the way, and later disqualified) who would investigate President Trump in both the so-called “classified documents” case in Southern …
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