Public documents newly released by Sens. Chuck Grassley and Ron Johnson show that Jack Smith spied on Congress as a special counsel, then lied to them about it. It’s the latest in a congressional investigation Grassley says has already uncovered criminal abuse of power by Democrats that is far “worse than Watergate.”
During the Biden Department of Justice’s investigation of Donald Trump under the pretext of prosecuting Jan. 6, 2021, unrest and complaints about 2020 election lawbreaking, Smith’s team ignored required procedures to view text messages written by 44 members of Congress. Yet Smith testified to Congress that he only had obtained “toll records,” or data about the texts, such as timestamps and recipients, not the text content.
Grassley and Johnson are among the lawmakers whose private communications were unconstitutionally obtained, say the newly released public records. These are the latest revelations from the lawmakers’ Arctic Frost investigation, called such after the codename for Smith’s operation.
Earlier disclosures from the investigation showed Smith illegally obtained Republican senators’ communications data and was using his investigation as a pretext to harass out of existence the entire conservative movement. He issued nearly 200 comprehensive subpoenas to more than 400 conservative individuals and organizations, all under a gag order that prevented them from telling anyone about this gross abuse of power.
The new disclosures provide yet more evidence the Biden administration violated officeholders’ oaths of office by abusing the separation of powers. The Constitution’s “speech and debate” clause protects members of Congress from criminal prosecution for speech in pursuit of their legislative duties.
Congress and the executive are constitutionally separate and equal branches of government. An executive agent spying on members of a legislature not only violates the Constitution but is a hallmark of authoritarian states. It allows agencies to engage in blackmail and life-destroying lawfare through selectively releasing bits of distorted information illegitimately obtained about their targets.
While engaging in authoritarian activities of the highest degree, the Biden administration and its media echo chamber insisted their victims were the real authoritarians. Projection at such scale is not only a mark of psychopathy, but also of totalitarianism.
Breach of Protocol and Highest Law in the Land
The new records indicate Smith’s team ignored DOJ and longstanding judicial rules that require a “filter team” to sift private records Smith obtained to protect “privileged” documents, such as those protected by attorney-client privilege, or constitutionally banned from being seized by the executive or used as pretext for criminal prosecution.
As part of the sweeping Smith prosecution, which cost taxpayers more than $23 million, the filter team previewed “several million documents.” The newly released documents give more detail about the massive scope of the special counsel effort to impose life-destroying legal and professional costs on those who worked with Trump. The filtering team included more than 50 publicly paid DOJ staffers, who worked on filtering for well more than an entire year and reviewed some 15 million documents, the records show.
The records also show the DOJ staff were to code their work under “national security/domestic terrorism,” another way in which Democrats not only criminalized their opponents’ constitutionally protected speech but prosecuted it under the most severe and non-transparent domain available in federal law.
Smith’s Jan. 6 investigation was named “Project Coconut,” and his Trump documents investigation was named “Project Cranberry,” according to Grassley’s office. More than 200 publicly paid staff across the FBI, DOJ, NARA (National Archives and Records Administration), and more agencies worked on Project Coconut alone, the documents show.
Yet Smith’s team apparently sidelined the filtering to view the protected communications of lawmakers, the new records show. It happened when, in August 2023, the special counsel received the results of its subpoena to NARA for all text messages between October 2020 and Jan. 20, 2021, from phones of dozens of Republicans, including White House staff.
The subpoena targeted phones of Trump, his son and daughter, Vice President Mike Pence, advisers Stephen Miller and Peter Navarro, now-CIA Director John Ratcliffe, now-FBI Director Kash Patel, White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, and 44 lawmakers.
On Aug. 21, 2023, within a half hour of receiving the texts from NARA, “one of Smith’s senior lawyers, Thomas Windom, downloaded the texts and, within one hour, other members of Smith’s investigative team downloaded and began reviewing the texts. It appears the review was done without waiting for the Filter Team to evaluate and segregate privileged information,” says a press release from Grassley’s office.
“[Filter] teams protect the integrity of a prosecution and preserve the constitutional rights of the parties involved,” noted Assistant Attorney General Patrick Davis in a letter to Grassley released today with other public records documenting Smith’s spying. “Failure to adhere to sound filter team protocols can lead to the suppression of evidence or the disqualification of the prosecution team.”
Davis’ letter notes Smith’s team had been trained on this matter and thus knew this action was unconstitutional. That is demonstrated in the documents release, which shows filter team instructions and training clearly outlining the protocols Smith’s team reportedly violated.
Four of the lawmakers violated this way were Democrats, says the letter, including Sen. Cory Booker and then-Rep. Adam Smith. The other 40 were Republicans, including Sens. Susan Collins and Mike Lee and Reps. Jim Jordan, Devin Nunes, Elise Stefanik, and Kevin McCarthy.
Democrats’ authoritarian use of spy agencies to erase their opponents from the ballot has a long history, extending in recent years back to the Spygate operations President Barack Obama brought into the federal government from Hillary Clinton’s campaign in 2015. These operations, such as Democrats’ Jan. 6 Select Committee and Spygate itself, have also included the destruction of evidence. The Federalist’s Margot Cleveland disclosed last June that the FBI maintained a secret records system that hid information from elected officials at the highest clearances, and used it to disappear evidence of spy agency malfeasance.
That recent history indicates these gross abuses by Smith’s team are just one part of a much larger body of evils. In other words, prepare for more revelations about this special counsel operation.
The question remains: When will Congress do something serious about this besides pontificate on TV and in no-results hearings? Federal agencies have already spied on Congress on other topics and gotten away with it. This sheds light on why many Republican lawmakers are too fearful to fight to preserve the republic from becoming a leftist police state and instead protect these dangerous agencies. The most recent episode of this was GOP senators’ shameful objections to a Democrat lawfare compensation fund.
Nothing changes if people aren’t imprisoned for these high crimes. The most obvious place to start in this case is prosecuting Smith for lying to Congress, and firing every federal employee who worked for him. If they can’t be fired, assign them to the legal equivalent of Siberia. Make them work child p*rn cases or something.
“Smith’s team ran roughshod over the Constitution even after repeated warnings,” Grassley said in a statement. “Jack Smith has answering to do, and I intend to have him before the Senate Judiciary Committee in the coming months to hold him accountable.”
