Quote:Former Special Counsel Jack Smith appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee Tuesday morning, and Chairman Chuck Grassley wasted little time revealing new details about the extraordinary reach of the investigation that eventually became Smith's election case against President Donald Trump.

The biggest revelation may be just how far investigators reached beyond Trump himself.

Grassley said investigators subpoenaed 87 phones belonging to Trump White House officials and obtained records containing communications with journalists at major news organizations, including CBS News, CNN, Fox News, the Associated Press, Bloomberg, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Washington Times and The Federalist. CBS News reported the disclosure live from Tuesday's hearing.

That comes on top of the previously disclosed collection of phone records belonging to Republican members of Congress.

"In the end, Mr. Smith indicted one person," Grassley said Tuesday. "That one person was President Trump, but in the process, [he] successfully mapped out the Republican apparatus."





Grassley said the Justice Department and FBI ended up possessing "reams" of personal information involving "thousands" of Republicans, material he said was not disclosed in Smith's final report.

The revelations add a new dimension to a controversy that has been building for months over Operation Arctic Frost, the federal investigation into Trump's efforts surrounding the 2020 election that eventually became the basis for Smith's election case.

Smith was appointed special counsel in November 2022, but the investigation predated him. Grassley's committee has been digging into its origins and has released thousands of pages of documents obtained through whistleblowers and government records.

The Federalist's Margot Cleveland has been closely tracking those records and the constitutional questions raised by the investigation.

Cleveland reported last week that newly released documents indicated senior Biden Justice Department officials knew investigators planned to subpoena records belonging to Republican members of Congress before Smith was even appointed. According to Cleveland, Justice Department officials instructed Arctic Frost investigators to notify the deputy attorney general's office when investigators sought toll records belonging to Reps. Jim Jordan and Chip Roy.

The congressional records issue is particularly significant because of the Constitution's Speech or Debate Clause, which protects legislative activity from executive and judicial intrusion.

Cleveland has argued that Smith's collection of congressional records violated those protections. She previously reported that internal records showed Smith's office analyzed text messages from more than 40 members of Congress while investigators failed to use an established filtering process designed to screen potentially privileged communications.

Grassley's committee previously revealed that investigators obtained tolling data for Republican senators covering Jan. 4 through Jan. 7, 2021. Those records showed information such as who called whom, when calls occurred and their duration, rather than the contents of the calls.

But Grassley indicates that hundreds of subpoenas swept up Republican organizations, congressional records and communications involving the press.

According to Fox News, Smith's investigators obtained records containing communications between nearly 50 journalists and Trump administration officials after subpoenaing text-message records associated with dozens of White House phones.

That means journalists weren't necessarily the direct targets of subpoenas. Their communications were caught when investigators obtained material from government officials with whom those reporters had communicated.

Grassley specifically named CBS News, CNN, Fox News, the AP, The Federalist, The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, The Washington Post and The Washington Times while discussing the records Tuesday.

"Now, what will partisan media say about this disgraceful government overreach?" Grassley asked.

The Judiciary Committee's previous investigation found that telecommunications companies received at least 84 subpoenas connected to Arctic Frost or Smith's investigation, with at least 10 seeking toll records involving 20 current or former Republican members of Congress.

Quote:BREAKING: New records prove disgraced Special Counsel Jack Smith not only obtained FINANCIAL RECORDS from EVERY DAY AMERICANS donating to Republicans — but Smith spied on communications between JOURNALISTS and GOP or Trump-aligned officials, per Fox

JACK SMITH HAS TO BE LOCKED UP!!

SEN. CHUCK GRASSLEY RAGES: "Every member of this committee ought to be OUTRAGED for what happened to their constituents!"

Apparently, some of the donations were as little as $5...THAT'S who Jack Smith was worried about

Per Grassley, the feds will "forever possess" thousands of people's bank information as part of this sham investigation

Quote:Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) announced a lawsuit against Former Special Counsel Jack Smith over his accessing of phone records secretly obtained during his investigation of President Donald Trump.

The Senator is suing Smith in his personal capacity, arguing he was never lawfully empowered to wield the authority behind the Arctic Frost investigation.

A report released by House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan confirms that Smith coordinated with the Biden DOJ to spy on their political opposition.

The Gateway Pundit reported that Republicans released documents that revealed investigators improperly subpoenaed phone records that belonged to 44 GOP lawmakers during Smith’s Arctic Frost investigation.

Smith’s team also secured gag orders to prevent the GOP lawmakers from learning that Biden’s DOJ obtained their phone records.

Fox News reports that the lawsuit, Senator Marsha Blackburn v. John L. Smith, “argues the prosecutor lacked lawful authority to serve as special counsel and violated the lawmaker’s rights by obtaining the records.”

The Senator is asking a federal court to provide several things: declare Smith’s appointment unconstitutional, order the records destroyed, and award nominal damages in the amount of $1.

Per Fox News:

The case therefore seeks to test not only Smith’s tactics, but the legitimacy of the authority he claims to have exercised as special counsel appointed by then-Attorney General Merrick Garland during the Biden administration.

“This lawsuit is solely about holding Mr. Smith accountable and ensuring that our nation’s justice system can never again be weaponized against the American people,” Blackburn, R-Tenn., told Fox News Digital.

“Through his Arctic Frost witch-hunt that targeted conservatives across America and even the president of the United States, Jack Smith perpetrated one of the worst abuses of government power in our nation’s history,” she said.

On Tuesday, Smith testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on his federal criminal investigation into President Trump.

During the testimony, Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) noted Smith’s actions represent “the most egregious abuse of power in the history of the Department of Justice.”

(09-30-2026 06:41 PM)shere khan Wrote:  In before the dei lawyer

Quote:Disgraced Biden-era special counsel Jack Smith’s team secretly monitored the phone activity of Susie Wiles while she was running President Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign, newly released documents show.

The memos, released Monday by the White House Government Transparency Task Force and first reported by Just the News, show FBI agents assigned to a probe codenamed Plasmic Echo slapped a pen register and trap-and-trace device on Wiles’ phone. From at least February through May 2023, analysts logged who called her, whom she called back, and how long the calls lasted.

That dragnet swept up her contacts with at least 21 Trump-affiliated defense lawyers, campaign staff, political advisers, and at least five journalists. Most names are redacted. Two are not: current FBI Director Kash Patel, and Just the News founder John Solomon.

A pen register does not record what was said. It records the metadata, numbers, times, and duration. In the hands of a prosecutor already hunting Trump, that is still a map of the defense.

They logged the calls down to the second.

On March 24, 2023, an FBI employee in the Washington Field Office wrote: “Good afternoon, WFO is continuing to review the PR/TT on Wiles’s phone number and observed that [Lawyer 7] called Wiles at 2:04pm this afternoon for 41 seconds. [Lawyer 7] first called Wiles at 2:10pm EST on March 21, and Wiles returned his call for 1 minute and 34 seconds later that day at 2:59pm. These are the only contacts we have observed between the two of them since the PR/TT’s inception.”

In late February, an intelligence analyst had even less to report, and still wrote it down: “There is nothing significant to report on the PR/TT. Today, an ABC News reporter called her at 8:48 AM for 2 minutes and 36 seconds.”

A March 10 FBI memo ran three pages of Wiles’ phone contacts. On April 7, 2023, agents interviewed her. Three days later they went right back to the pen register.

“On 10 April 2023, WFO reviewed WILES’s telephonic activity to determine contacts of interest on the date of her FBI interview,” the records state.

Veteran investigative reporter Catherine Herridge, reviewing the same declassified file, called it a classic FBI “tickle the wire” move: contact the target, then watch who she calls next.

Herridge reported the tracked contacts also included the First Lady and political advisers, and that an administration official described the tactics as “intrusive.” The probe, she noted, laid the groundwork for the classified-documents case against Trump.

Herridge wrote:

Pen Register Trap and Trace or PRTT
– Surveillance tool collects non-content routing data
– Phone numbers dialed or received
– Call times and duration

Two Scenarios
– Used for criminal and national security investigations
– lower standard than probable-cause warrant

Potential Violations
– First (Freedom of Speech) and Fourth Amendments (unreasonable search and seizure)

NOTE: Former Senior FBI agent says it looks like a classic FBI “tickle the wire” operation.

After FBI agents contact Wiles, the bureau tracks phone calls to identify who she immediately contacts

“On 10 April 2023, FBI WFO (Washington Field Office) reviewed WILES’s telephonic activity to determine contacts of interest on the date of her FBI interview.”

The memos, detailed by John Solomon, read like a stakeout log.

WATCH:

This is not a one-off. It is the next document drop in a pattern The Gateway Pundit has been reporting since winter.

In February, The Gateway Pundit reported that Biden’s FBI secretly obtained the phone records of Kash Patel and Susie Wiles in 2022 and 2023, while both were private citizens, and buried the files in “prohibited” case folders designed to hide them from ordinary searches. Patel called it “outrageous and deeply alarming.”

Days later, The Gateway Pundit reported that Wiles’ lawyer flatly denied the FBI’s claim that he consented to a recorded call with his client. “If I ever pulled a stunt like that I wouldn’t – and shouldn’t – have a license to practice law,” he told Axios. “I’m as shocked as Susie.”

In March, The Gateway Pundit reported on the Arctic Frost hearing in which that privileged-call allegation was laid out in public, along with evidence the records were parked in prohibited files. Grassley had already released Smith subpoenas for roughly two years of Patel’s private records — text and call logs, home address, even a credit card number.

The congressional side of the same operation is worse. The Gateway Pundit reported in July that Chairman Chuck Grassley revealed Smith’s team reviewed the contents of text messages sent by 44 members of Congress, after Smith testified he had not read the content. Arctic Frost produced 197 subpoenas sweeping up hundreds of Republican individuals and organizations.

Last week, The Gateway Pundit reported that Sen. Bill Hagerty asked the Tennessee bar to disbar Smith for hiding facts from a federal judge so he could secretly seize senators’ call logs under a nondisclosure order signed by Chief Judge James Boasberg. Sen. Marsha Blackburn has sued Smith personally.

In September, The Gateway Pundit reported that Smith’s investigators collected 4,782 personal checks from Trump donors and seized records of communications involving nearly 50 journalists.

Trump attorney Alina Habba has said Smith sent the FBI to her New Jersey home and subpoenaed her as a lawyer.

Now the same operation’s paperwork shows agents watching the campaign chief’s phone to see which defense lawyer she dialed after they interviewed her.

(09-30-2026 01:02 PM)banker Wrote:  Listened to all the testimony. He broke the law and withheld info from the court to do it. He acted in direct contradiction to internal DOJ guidance that said he could not subpoena congressional phone records without advice and consent as set forth in federal law. The gag orders he got from Boasberg intentionally omitted the fact that the orders covered congressional members.

Please Tanq, defend the breaking of federal law and the omission of critical info to the court.

Quote:Newly-released documents revealed Biden’s FBI tracked Melania Trump and Barron Trump’s travel.

The probe, dubbed “Plasmic Echo,” was later led by disgraced Special Counsel Jack Smith during the classified documents investigation.

Fox News reported:

The Biden-era FBI tracked First Lady Melania Trump and Barron Trump’s travel, while surveilling President Trump’s future Chief of Staff Susie Wiles’ phone, as officials worked the classified documents investigation reaching deep into Trump’s inner circle, newly declassified records show.

Documents released Monday by the White House detail “Plasmic Echo,” the probe later led by special counsel Jack Smith into whether Trump improperly retained classified documents after leaving office.

The declassified documents show agents tracked the First Lady and First Son’s travel while planning the Mar-a-Lago search, then monitored Susie Wiles’ calls involving defense lawyers, campaign advisers and journalists.

The surveillance collected call details rather than conversation contents, according to the documents.

“Jack Smith’s surveillance operation was a disgraceful abuse of government power. Spying on political opponents is weaponization of law enforcement, plain and simple,” White House spokesperson Lauren Bis told Fox News Digital. “Those responsible must be held accountable.”

Earlier Monday it was reported that Jack Smith’s team secretly monitored the phone activity of Susie Wiles while she was running President Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign,

The investigation swept up Susie Wiles’ contacts with at least 21 Trump-affiliated defense lawyers, campaign staff, political advisers, and at least five journalists. Most names are redacted. Two are not: current FBI Director Kash Patel, and Just the News founder John Solomon.

Earlier this year, The Gateway Pundit reported that Biden’s FBI secretly obtained the phone records of Kash Patel and Susie Wiles in 2022 and 2023, while both were private citizens, and buried the files in “prohibited” case folders designed to hide them from ordinary searches. Patel called it “outrageous and deeply alarming.”