Sen. Chuck Grassley says Jack Smith's Arctic Frost probe seized journalist texts and donor bank records from thousands of Americans, moves he claims undermined the rule of law.
The New York Post reported that Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) charged Tuesday that former special counsel Jack Smith and his investigators obtained communications from reporters at more than a dozen media outlets and financial information from thousands of Americans.
Grassley said the haul came through Smith’s “Arctic Frost” probe, the same investigation that produced a four-count indictment of President Trump for allegedly trying to overturn the 2020 election.
Whistleblower disclosures reaching the Senate Judiciary Committee chairman’s office underpinned the claims. Grassley made additional whistleblower material public during the Tuesday hearing in Washington.
In his opening statement, Grassley said Smith’s work “undermined the rule of law and threatened our very political institutions.”
Grassley said almost 50 journalists had their messages with government sources swept up. The list of outlets touched stretched across the media map: Fox News, CNN, CBS News, NBC News, CNBC, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, Bloomberg, the Los Angeles Times, New York Magazine, The Federalist, the Washington Times, the Associated Press, Reuters, National Public Radio, Mark Levin’s syndicated program, and the Media Research Center.
The mechanism was a June 2023 subpoena from Smith’s office. It sought text messages from the phones of officials who served in the first Trump administration. At least 87 White House phone numbers appeared in the request.
That same digital pull seized messages between Trump White House officials and 44 lawmakers from both parties. The window ran from October 2020 through Jan. 20, 2021.
Prosecutors put a filter team in place to sort which materials were legally privileged. Grassley and Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) later demanded related records from the National Archives in May after learning Smith’s team had received the digital communications.
The financial side reached further into ordinary Americans’ lives. Grassley said Smith’s team obtained at least 4,782 checks written by people funding Trump’s political campaigns between September 2019 and August 2023.
Prosecutors reviewed bank account numbers and home addresses of those Republican donors. Grassley framed the total as financial information taken from thousands of Americans.
Republicans also raised possible Speech and Debate Clause problems with the lawmaker message seizures. Smith rejected that allegation at the Tuesday hearing.
Smith used his opening statement to defend the entire body of work.
"I stand by my decisions as special counsel, including my decision to bring charges against President Trump,"
he said. He added:
"I made these decisions without regard to President Trump’s political association, activities, beliefs, or candidacy in the 2024 presidential election."
Lawmakers did not press him Tuesday about the reporter communications. In earlier testimony, Smith said he could not “recall” whether he sought the content of text messages from lawmakers.
Arctic Frost did not stop at the former president. It pulled in journalists talking to sources, lawmakers of both parties texting White House officials, and thousands of private citizens who simply wrote campaign checks.
The subpoena list alone covered dozens of White House lines. The donor records stretched across nearly four years of political giving. The journalist messages landed in the same net as official traffic.
Grassley presented the whistleblower picture as evidence of a special counsel operation that treated wide circles of political speech, press contact, and lawful donations as fair game for collection and review.
Smith insisted the charging decisions were clean of politics. Grassley insisted the methods themselves damaged the institutions they were supposed to protect.
When a special counsel’s digital net catches nearly 50 journalists and the bank details of thousands of lawful donors, voters are right to ask who is watching the watchers.
