Former special counsel Jack Smith's investigation into President Donald Trump quietly collected the private text messages of 44 members of Congress, Republicans and Democrats alike, while circumventing the internal filter process designed to protect attorney-client privilege and screen for relevance, Senate investigators revealed Tuesday evening.
The findings, released jointly by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley and Senate Investigations Subcommittee Chairman Ron Johnson, represent the most detailed accounting yet of what Grassley called a "runaway train that had no brakes." The probe, code-named "Operation Arctic Frost," swept up communications from sitting senators, House members, and former officials, many of whom had no apparent connection to the 2020 election disputes at the center of Smith's mandate.
The revelations land with particular force because Smith, under oath before a congressional counsel, answered "no" when asked whether the records he requested from members of Congress included text messages. The new Senate findings say otherwise.
Grassley and Johnson built their investigation on records provided by the Trump Justice Department. The senators published their findings on the Senate Judiciary Committee's website, detailing how Smith's team obtained and reviewed work-related text messages from the 44 lawmakers without first routing them through the filter team assigned to the case.
That filter team existed for a reason. It was tasked with reviewing millions of documents to determine which were relevant to the investigation and which were protected by attorney-client privilege. Smith's prosecutors bypassed that step entirely, the senators said.
Grassley did not hold back in his assessment:
"Based on the information that's been produced to me and Senator Johnson, Biden DOJ and FBI investigators apparently ignored their own routine 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."
That last phrase matters. Grassley was not merely objecting to the collection of his own messages. He was asserting that the lawmakers whose communications were captured fell outside the boundaries of what Smith was authorized to investigate.
The list of affected members reads like a cross-section of Congress. Among Republicans: House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, former House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes, Sen. Mike Lee, Sen. Dan Sullivan, former Senate Republican Conference Chairman Lamar Alexander, the late Sen. Lindsey Graham, House Freedom Caucus member Scott Perry, Rep. Thomas Massie, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, and Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins.
Several Democrats were caught in the net as well, including Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, Rep. Josh Gottheimer, Sen. Cory Booker, and Rep. Adam Smith, the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee.
The bipartisan nature of the collection undermines any argument that the sweep was narrowly targeted. If Smith's team was pursuing specific leads related to the 2020 election, the inclusion of lawmakers from both parties with no known involvement in those events raises hard questions about how broadly the investigation cast its net, and who, if anyone, was minding the boundaries.
The broader pattern of congressional Republicans pressing the DOJ for accountability on the Trump prosecutions has been building for months. These new findings give that effort its sharpest factual edge yet.
Rep. Elise Stefanik, one of the 44 members affected, issued a statement Tuesday saying Smith had "unlawfully and unconstitutionally accessed my private text messages, along with 43 other Members of Congress, in clear violation of the Constitution." Stefanik pointed to the speech and debate clause, which shields lawmakers from being questioned outside the Capitol for legislative acts. Courts have extended that protection to internal communications as technology has evolved.
Sen. Josh Hawley went further. "Joe Biden's DOJ not only tapped my phone; I just learned they illegally obtained my texts with members of President Trump's administration," Hawley said. He called for "everyone involved [to] be prosecuted."
Sen. Rand Paul described the findings as a "blatant abuse of power and exactly what our Founders warned about," while noting Smith's prior denial under oath, a denial now contradicted by the Senate's documentary record.
Sen. Johnson, for his part, called the episode a "grotesque example" of Biden-era "weaponization" of the executive branch.
The contradiction between Smith's sworn answer and the Senate findings is not a minor discrepancy. When a congressional counsel asked Smith whether the records he requested from members of Congress included text messages, Smith said no. The Grassley-Johnson probe now presents evidence that his team did, in fact, obtain and review those very messages.
Fox News Digital reached out to a representative for Smith for comment. No response was recorded.
Smith first appeared for a closed-door deposition before the House Judiciary Committee on December 17, 2025, after Chairman Jordan subpoenaed him rather than accepting Smith's earlier offer to testify in an open public hearing. Smith's attorney, Peter Koski, expressed disappointment at the time, saying, "We are disappointed that offer was rejected, and that the American people will be denied the opportunity to hear directly from Jack on these topics."
Smith returned for a public hearing on January 22, 2026, in the Rayburn House Office Building. During that appearance, Jordan's committee pressed him on the broader conduct of his investigation, which Republicans have framed as part of a pattern of political weaponization under the Biden administration.
The questions surrounding DOJ and FBI conduct extend well beyond Smith. The federal case against former FBI Director James Comey and ongoing probes into intelligence community overreach reflect a broader reckoning with how federal law enforcement operated during the Trump years.
In his December 2025 closed-door testimony, Smith defended his prosecutions as legally and factually justified. He told lawmakers that "if asked whether to prosecute a former president based on the same facts today, I would do so regardless of whether the president was a Republican or Democrat."
On the question of congressional phone records specifically, Smith argued that Trump and his associates had contacted members of Congress "in furtherance of their criminal scheme, urging them to further delay certification of the 2020 election." His framing: "I didn't choose those members; President Trump did."
But that defense does not address the central finding of the Grassley-Johnson probe, that the filter team was bypassed. Even if some lawmaker communications were legitimately within scope, the failure to route them through the established review process raises separate and serious procedural concerns. A prosecutor who skips his own safeguards does not inspire confidence that the investigation was conducted with appropriate restraint.
Smith abandoned both criminal cases against Trump after the 2024 election, citing longstanding DOJ policy against indicting a sitting president. Both cases were dropped, not resolved on the merits.
Jordan had previously referred former Smith aide Thomas Windom to the DOJ for potential prosecution, as the New York Post reported, signaling that Republican scrutiny of the special counsel's office extends to its staff as well.
Grassley indicated he plans to recall Smith before Congress to "hold him accountable," adding that he hoped Democrats would "discard their partisanship" and join the effort. Whether that bipartisan cooperation materializes remains to be seen. None of the Democratic members whose texts were swept up have publicly responded to the findings.
The ongoing DOJ probes into intelligence community conduct during the Trump era provide a broader institutional backdrop. The Smith revelations are not isolated. They fit a pattern in which federal investigators, operating under a political mandate, pushed past procedural guardrails that exist precisely to prevent the government from abusing its surveillance powers against the people's elected representatives.
Several open questions remain. What specific content did Smith's team review? How was the decision made to bypass the filter process, was it a deliberate choice or a procedural failure? And how does Smith reconcile his sworn denial with the documentary record now in the Senate's hands?
The current FBI leadership under Kash Patel has signaled a different approach to accountability and transparency. Whether that shift produces consequences for the officials who authorized Operation Arctic Frost will test whether the federal government is serious about policing its own.
The speech and debate clause is not a technicality. It is a structural protection written into the Constitution to prevent the executive branch from intimidating the legislative branch. When a special counsel's office collects the private text messages of 44 members of Congress, from both parties, without running them through its own filter process, and its leader then denies under oath that such collection occurred, the word "abuse" is not a partisan talking point. It is a description of what the record shows.
If a prosecutor cannot follow his own rules, he has no business enforcing anyone else's.