Crabb. Giardina. Su. Thibault. Toleman. These are five of the principal players in what may prove to be the biggest attempted coup in U.S. history — and Chuck Grassley, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, plans to expose it.
Tuesday, the committee will hold another hearing on Arctic Frost, the secretive federal operation that became the foundation for then-Department of Justice Special Counsel Jack Smith’s elector case against Donald Trump.
Arctic Frost was opened by the FBI in early 2022, and its origins trace directly to Timothy Thibault, the FBI Washington Field Office’s then-assistant special agent in charge, who drove the matter forward outside of normal protocol. The central allegation is grave but precise: Arctic Frost was the originating FBI vehicle from which Smith’s later election case emerged. That charge rests on emails, approvals, and investigative updates now in public view.
Those records sketch a damning chronology. On Feb. 14, 2022, Thibault sent draft language that later became part of the opening of Smith’s elector case. On Feb. 25, subordinate agents reported that Trump and others had been added as criminal subjects, and Thibault replied, “Perfect.” Then came the formal approvals: an April 11 signoff from Thibault, an April 13 note that the FBI deputy director had approved the opening, and a same-day message to prosecutor John Crabb that the elector case was approved. This was not drift. It was design.
Crabb was not just a prosecutor in my own U.S. v. Peter K. Navarro contempt-of-Congress case. He appeared for the government in Steve Bannon’s contempt case and held senior supervisory roles across the Jan. 6 Capitol protest docket — first as chief of the criminal division, later as chief of the Capitol siege section. That makes Crabb an evidentiary bridge linking the Navarro and Bannon prosecutions to the broader Jan. 6 machinery and to Arctic Frost itself. Crabb was demoted but remains at DOJ under U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro.
Arctic Frost’s Speed and Breadth
Arctic Frost quickly burst beyond ordinary FBI-DOJ lanes. Newly disclosed emails show Biden White House officials — including then-Deputy Counsel Jonathan Su — personally assisted the FBI in securing the government phones of President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence before Trump was formally added as a subject. Su was also instrumental in trying to strip me of any executive-privilege defense.
Once open, Arctic Frost moved with extraordinary speed and breadth. Investigators planned roughly 50 interviews across at least seven states, and in just four days in June 2022 spent about $16,000 in travel to conduct the interviews, serve subpoenas, and execute device warrants. Whatever each step may look like in isolation, the total picture is unmistakable: this was a full-throttle partisan federal dragnet.
Lawfare against Jeff Clark
Jeff Clark, a key witness at Tuesday’s hearing, was then serving as assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s Environment and Natural Resources Division, and sits at one of the key junctions in this story. DOJ and FBI officials discussed merging the DOJ Office of Inspector General investigation involving Clark into Arctic Frost. Then the FBI added Clark to Arctic Frost, and the OIG matter was formally merged, giving investigators access to phones and email accounts from multiple DOJ officials, including former Attorney General Bill Barr.
Clark became one of the hinges on which the whole operation turned. And look at what was done to him.
Federal agents executed a pre-dawn raid on Clark’s home and seized his electronic devices. He was then forced through years of fighting disbarment while shouldering millions of dollars in legal fees. This was classic lawfare: use every available lever — raid, ruin, disbar, bankrupt, prosecute — to break the man when you cannot break the cause.
Clark’s treatment also helps identify the cast. Thibault and Blaire Toleman, then a supervisory special agent at the FBI, are tied directly to the point at which Arctic Frost absorbed Clark through the merger with the DOJ-OIG investigation. Su’s connection is broader but still important: he appears as part of the White House machinery assisting Arctic Frost as it widened to include Clark and many Hill Republicans.
Widening Dragnet
By September 2025, records showed that 92 Republican-linked individuals and groups had been placed within Arctic Frost’s investigative scope, including the Republican National Committee and the Republican Attorneys General Association. In October came disclosure that the FBI had sought toll records for eight Republican senators and one House member.
Later that month, 197 subpoenas sent to 34 individuals and 163 businesses were shown to seek records tied to at least 430 named Republican individuals and entities. Then, in March 2026, committee materials described a Smith-team wish list identifying 14 members of Congress for possible toll-record requests (meaning cell-phone call metadata rather than call content) alongside internal concern about speech or debate privilege.
That is not the profile of a tightly cabined criminal investigation. It is the profile of a dragnet reaching deep into a political ecosystem.
Walter Giardina’s Role
Walter Giardina — the FBI agent responsible for putting me in leg irons — is part of a recurring cast that runs from Crossfire Hurricane and Robert Mueller to the Hillary Clinton emails matter, the Dan Scavino and Roger Stone cases, the Crimson River operation later renamed Red Maasari, and Arctic Frost.
My own prior reporting has also tied Giardina to the Steele-dossier hoax. According to whistleblower allegations, Giardina was an initial recipient of the Steele dossier and falsely claimed it had been corroborated. That helped jumpstart the now thoroughly discredited Russia hoax investigation.
This is the profile of a repeat player in one anti-Trump operation after another. For example, three officials involved in my investigation — Giardina, Toleman, and Thibault — also spearheaded Arctic Frost. That overlap shows continuity of personnel across supposedly separate Trump-targeting matters.
This is why today’s hearing matters. The question Arctic Frost can help us answer is whether a Democrat-controlled federal government turned prosecutorial power into a political weapon against a former president and the movement that sought to return him to office.
