In the final days of the Biden administration, FBI agents and a top Jack Smith deputy quietly arranged to preserve all evidence from the bureau's sprawling Trump election-interference probe, setting a retention date of no earlier than February 1, 2030, well past the end of a second Trump term. Internal memos and emails obtained by Just the News show the FBI's Washington Field Office closed the investigation known as "Arctic Frost" on paper while simultaneously locking down every piece of evidence under a litigation hold and freeze list, a move that ensured the case file could be reopened by a future prosecutor once Trump left the Oval Office.
The documents, reported by John Solomon and Jerry Dunleavy, lay out a paper trail that runs from January 8, 2025, through September 30, 2025. Taken together, they reveal a bureaucratic architecture designed not to end a prosecution but to suspend one.
That distinction matters. When a federal investigation closes, evidence is typically returned or destroyed on a set schedule. These memos did the opposite. They ordered retention of everything, and they did so with the explicit written concurrence of Jack Smith's deputy.
The key document is an FBI "Case Closing" electronic communication dated February 5, 2025, originating from the Washington Field Office's CR-15 team. Its title: "Arctic Frost, Election Law Matters, Sensitive Investigative Matter." Its stated purpose: "To Document the Closing of Captioned Investigation."
But the body of the document tells a different story. It states plainly that "this investigation is subject to a litigation hold and is on the freeze list; as a result, no evidence can be returned or destroyed and must be retained." A companion retention memo specifies that evidence will be held "until at least February 1, 2030, but in no case prior to the lift of the freeze and litigation hold."
February 2030. That date falls five years after the case was nominally closed, and, not coincidentally, after the end of Trump's current presidential term.
The closing document also notes that because Arctic Frost was a Sensitive Investigative Matter involving a presidential candidate, the same chain of approval required to open the probe was required to close it, up to and including the FBI director. The enclosures listed on the closing memo included a "Deputy Special Counsel Concurrence" and a "Retention of Evidence Approval."
The concurrence came from J.P. Cooney, identified in the documents as the deputy special counsel under Jack Smith. In a January 8, 2025, message to the FBI, Cooney wrote that "the SCO has submitted a final confidential report to the Attorney General, has concluded its work, and is winding down the office." He added that "under the circumstances, the SCO must decline further prosecution of the FBI's Arctic Frost Investigation, and we do not object to FBI closing the case file."
That language, "decline further prosecution", is carefully chosen. Cooney made clear the declination was not an exoneration. His message stated that "the dismissal was not based on the merits of the prosecution, which the SCO stands behind." He went further: "Because the SCO reached no final conclusions [regarding the prosecution of co-conspirators], our declination of further prosecution should not be read to exonerate any particular person."
In another passage quoted in a bureau memo, Cooney wrote: "I note that Mr. Trump was charged with participating in crimes with at least six co-conspirators."
The effect of that language, paired with the evidence-retention order, is hard to miss. The Special Counsel's Office was closing its doors but leaving the toolkit intact, and on the record asserting that the case remained meritorious. Cooney's campaign website for a Democratic congressional primary in Virginia describes him as having served as "Principal Deputy to Special Counsel Jack Smith" and "a lead prosecutor in both criminal prosecutions of President Trump."
The pattern of long-running FBI probes targeting Trump and his circle stretches back nearly a decade, and the Arctic Frost episode fits squarely within it.
The FBI's closing memo recounts the procedural history. After Trump won the November 5, 2024, election, the Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel reaffirmed its longstanding position that a sitting president cannot be federally indicted and prosecuted. Smith moved to dismiss the indictments without prejudice. On November 25, 2024, U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, an Obama appointee, granted the unopposed motion.
"Without prejudice" is a legal term that preserves the government's right to refile charges later. It is the opposite of a final disposition. Combined with the retention order and Cooney's language insisting the prosecution stood on its merits, the dismissal reads less like an ending and more like a bookmark.
Todd Blanche, then Trump's defense lawyer and now the acting U.S. attorney general, saw the maneuver coming. In a letter to then-Attorney General Merrick Garland, Blanche wrote: "As you know, Courts in Florida and the District of Columbia have now dismissed both of Jack Smith's failed cases against President Trump." He accused Smith of seeking "to disseminate an extrajudicial 'Final Report' to perpetuate his false and discredited accusations" rather than "acknowledging, as he must, President Trump's complete exoneration."
Smith fired back in his own letter to Garland, calling Trump's exoneration claim "false" and asserting that the constitutional bar on prosecuting a sitting president "does not turn on the gravity of the crimes charged, the strength of the Government's proof, or the merits of the prosecution, all of which the Office stands fully behind."
The FBI's case-closing document described the original investigation as having been "opened based on specific and articulable facts and circumstances that individuals affiliated with Donald J. Trump for President, Inc. (the 'Trump Campaign') engaged in activity that violated federal law." The memo went on to assert that Trump "resorted to crimes to try to stay in office" after losing the 2020 election, listing alleged conspiracies in seven states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
But the probe's reach extended far beyond Trump himself. House Judiciary Committee documents reported by the New York Post indicate that more than 160 Republicans, including Trump administration officials, allies, and conservative organizations, may have been swept into the Arctic Frost investigation. The probe reportedly involved FBI field offices nationwide, subpoenas, device warrants, metadata collection, and requests to surreptitiously record subjects.
Sen. Chuck Grassley has released records showing that subpoena targets included Republican-affiliated groups and individuals such as Turning Point USA, Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, and the Republican Attorneys General Association. As Fox News reported, Grassley said the probe "wasn't just a case to politically investigate Trump. It was a vehicle by which partisan FBI agents and Department of Justice prosecutors could achieve their partisan ends and improperly investigate the entire Republican political apparatus."
The investigation's origins also raise questions. A Washington Examiner report described a declassified April 2022 FBI memo showing that then-FBI Director Christopher Wray sought Garland's approval to open the full Sensitive Investigative Matter. Garland approved. Then-Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco endorsed the request with a handwritten note: "Merrick, I recommend you approve." The memo reportedly relied on open-source reporting, podcasts, media reports, and public statements rather than confidential sources or independent corroboration.
That the Biden-era FBI opened probes into Republican lawmakers even after prosecutors privately dismissed underlying allegations adds another layer to the institutional pattern.
FBI Director Kash Patel told Just the News that the revelations confirmed what the current administration has been investigating internally. He framed the memos as evidence of institutional abuse.
"The American people deserve to know how this egregious weaponization of power to target political opponents and President Trump happened inside an institution meant to protect them."
Patel added: "We shut down the weaponized CR-15 squad, and we are going to keep following the facts until there is full accountability. The FBI exists to protect the country, not to preserve political prosecutions for a future administration."
The CR-15 team, housed in the Washington Field Office, originated the key closing and retention documents. An FBI memo dated September 30, 2025, confirmed that Acting Director Daniel J. Bongino and Attorney General Pamela Bondi formally approved closing the investigation, though the evidence-retention order remained in place.
Patel's broader review of FBI conduct under the prior administration has already surfaced other troubling findings. He has previously said the bureau lied to obtain FISA warrants used to surveil Trump's 2016 campaign, and Trump himself has publicly demanded that Patel remove agents tied to what he views as politically motivated investigations.
According to Breitbart, Trump posted on Truth Social calling for Patel to act immediately, while Sen. Josh Hawley described the alleged data-gathering operation as "an abuse of power beyond Watergate."
Former U.S. Attorney Bud Cummins, who served in the Eastern District of Arkansas, offered a blunt assessment of what the memos describe. He told Just the News that the normal obligation of a prosecutor is straightforward.
"A prosecutor's job is to gather facts discreetly, apply the law fairly, and decide whether a case should be brought. If the case cannot or should not be prosecuted, the prosecutor should close the file, not write a political narrative, preserve a roadmap, and leave behind a prosecution kit for future use."
Cummins went further, calling the approach a fundamental inversion of how federal law enforcement is supposed to work: "The Jack Smith model turns prosecutorial discretion upside down: When the courtroom is unavailable, the report becomes the weapon." He added: "That is not neutral law enforcement; it is yet another in a long line of blows to the credibility of the Department of Justice."
The allegations of anti-Trump sentiment inside prior FBI investigations have been a recurring theme, from the Mueller probe forward. Arctic Frost now appears to be the latest, and perhaps most methodical, chapter.
Several questions remain. Who specifically authorized the litigation hold and freeze list? Was it standard DOJ procedure or a deliberate choice to preserve a future prosecution path? Did any officials outside the Special Counsel's Office participate in the decision to set the February 2030 retention date? And does the current Justice Department intend to lift the hold early, or will the evidence sit in FBI custody for the full duration?
The memos themselves are silent on these points. What they do make clear is that the Biden-era FBI and the Special Counsel's Office acted in concert to ensure that the case against Trump did not die when the indictments were dismissed. They closed the file. They kept the evidence. And they wrote, in black and white, that the prosecution stood on its merits and that no one was exonerated.
If that isn't a prosecution in waiting, it's hard to imagine what would be.
