Grassley: Jack Smith “ran roughshod over the Constitution,” accessed content of text messages and lied about it
by Laura Ainsworth
It’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 Florida and the J6 so-called “election interference” case in DC. They reached halfway around the world to import him from The Hague in The Netherlands to go after Trump, and no wonder --- it seems there are just no lines he won’t cross.
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(Note: It’s funny now to look at this comment from the Encyclopedia Britannica: that Garland selected Smith in part because of “his reputation for tenacity.” No kidding. Sort of like the inspector in “Les Miserables.”)
Recall that in testimony before the House Judiciary Committee in December 2025, in answer to the question of whether Smith’s team looked at “the context of text messages” from the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) in the course of investigating, Smith flatly said, “No.” He repeatedly stated that his look at legislators’ phone messages stopped at “toll records,” nothing more than who called whom, and when.
Committee attorney: “Did you seek a search warrant for the content of any text messages from Members?”
Smith: “No, I don’t recall that.”
Attorney: “It was just toll records?”
Smith: “Correct.”
In the entire 255-page deposition, Smith never did volunteer that his investigators had directly accessed the actual content of members’ messages by harvesting them from the other side of conversations. Committee members questioning him were, at that time, unaware of the trove of records and so never asked.
As reported by Tyler Durden, “A review of the transcript also found Smith sharpened his sworn answers after the fact. In an errata sheet correcting the record, Smith revised his response on whether any other lawmaker’s phone had been seized from ‘I don’t know’ to a definitive ‘I don’t --- no.’ Another correction strikes the word ‘text’ from his reference to ‘text records’ that could prove certain Jan. 6 calls happened – leaving just ‘records.’”
But DOJ records released Tuesday to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, who chairs the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, show that Smith’s team not only directly accessed the text messages of 44 members of Congress, but also bypassed the Justice Department’s own “privilege safeguards” to do it. They had the FBI match the phone numbers to the legislators’ names. The FBI can do that, you know.
“Looks like perjury,” posted Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley of Smith’s testimony. Hawley was also one of those whose messages were read.
At midday Tuesday, Sen. Grassley posted, “I received records frm DOJ confirming Jack Smith’s investigative team reviewed the contents of text msgs sent by 44 MEMBERS OF CONGRESS Im 1 of the 44. Im alerting my colleagues who were impacted and will release the records w Sen Johnson so American ppl can see the evidence”
So on Tuesday, 44 members of Congress found out what it feels like to have their conversations spied on.
Those lawmakers include Grassley himself; Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, Tom Cotton of Arkansas, and Cory Booker of New Jersey (yes, there were a few Democrats among almost all GOP); House Majority Leader Steve Scalise of Louisiana; Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York; Rep. Adam Smith of Washington State, ranking member of the Armed Services Committee; then-Rep. Karen Bass of California, now (unbelievably) mayor of Los Angeles; and then-Rep. Lee Zeldin of New York, now head of the EPA.
Another is Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, who posted Tuesday afternoon that in “December 2025: Jack Smith swore under oath that he didn’t spy on text messages belonging to members of Congress. Today: New evidence confirms he spied on dozens of members of Congress, myself included. This is a blatant abuse of power, and exactly what our Founders warned...”
Of course, our Founders didn’t need to live during the time of text messaging to be able to anticipate what some people will do to abuse power. (Heck, they didn’t even use “messaging” as a verb.)
Normally, there’s something called the “Filter Team,” which, as Assistant Attorney General Patrick Davis told Sen. Grassley in a cover letter, Smith’s team bypassed to get the records...unfiltered. This team is supposed to screen all messages for PRIVILEGED MATERIAL before line investigators see them. Did Jack Smith respect privileged material, at least that having to do with President Trump? Obviously not!
“Based on the information that’s been produced to me and Sen. Johnson,” said Grassley, “Biden DOJ and FBI investigators apparently ignored their own investigative protocols to obtain and review work-related messages from me and dozens of my Republican and Democrat colleagues who were outside the scope of the government’s investigation.”
As reported by Tyler Durden at ZeroHedge, records show that “the messages, sent between October 2020 and January 20, 2021 [Biden’s Inauguration Day], ran between a bipartisan roster of lawmakers and Trump White House figures including Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, Dan Scavino, Ivanka Trump, Stephen Miller, Peter Navarro, now-CIA Director John Ratcliffe and now-FBI Director Kash Patel…”
In an internal DOJ email from August 2023, Smith’s team discusses “54 excel files with text messages from White House phones” being loaded into a shared drive – material gathered under the code names “Project Coconut,’ the election-interference probe, and “Project Cranberry,” the Mar-a-Lago documents case.
In Grassley’s words, “Jack Smith(‘s) criminal investigation was a runaway train that had no brakes.” He charged that investigators reviewed messages from dozens of lawmakers “outside the scope of the government’s investigation.”
“Jack Smith has some answering to do,” Grassley said, adding that he would be bringing Smith before the Senate Judiciary Committee “in the coming months.”
Sen. Johnson said that no one should be shocked by “Smith’s recklessness and blatant abuse of power,” calling this revelation “yet another grotesque example” of weaponization under the Biden DOJ.
This new revelation comes on the heels of other disclosures showing the huge overreach of Arctic Frost, including almost 200 subpoenas touching more than 430 Republican individuals and groups, plus toll (phone call) records for at least 11 senators and 6 members of Congress that were concealed by court-appointed gag orders.
As we reported last week, it was revealed that as investigators were looking into Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified materials, they were themselves mishandling classified materials.
From Bob Hoge at RedState: “The Democrats are constantly prattling on about how the Trump administration has turned the Justice Department into a political weapon, but as the saying goes, ‘pot, meet kettle.’”
He also has the full list of lawmakers who were spied on.
The DOJ now reveals that Smith’s team member Thomas Windom sought “all text messages” from phones “associated with a long line of White House personnel. Toll records had been targeted for “several” members of Congress “on the belief that they had communicated with President Trump or Rudy Giuliani.” Well, we knew there had to be good reason.
So - if members of Congress get the dirty end of the Deep State stick there will be hell to pay.
But We the Folks ( like the Jan 6th Patriots and Martyrs) have our lives turned into hell and - nothing. 😡😡😡
What a pathetic joke. This just keeps going on and on and on more Congressional hearings that go nowhere. They apparently can't do anything about any of this wasting taxpayer money and time. How about getting back to the job you're supposed to do which is getting bills passed to protect this country and the citizens in it. We elected you and president Trump to do that you're making sure that he isn't going to be able to do much of it. The one big beautiful bill doesn't cover all of the other things that need to be done to ensure fair and legal elections how about we try there first. Most of you guys need to be primaried and gone you don't seem to be able to deal with anything other than grandstanding and theatrics.