Jack Smith “Spied” on Lawmakers’ Private Texts

Former Special Counsel Jack Smith has just been exposed for obtaining the text messages of 44 Members of Congress during his Arctic Frost investigation into President Donald Trump. Senator Chuck Grassley (IA) released the records, which showed he was one of the Biden DOJ’s targets. Now the ACLJ is taking direct action.

According to the official release from the office of Senator Chuck Grassley:

Special Counsel Jack Smith’s investigative team obtained and reviewed text messages from 44 Members of Congress as part of the Biden Department of Justice’s (DOJ) criminal investigation into President Trump. Evidence shows the investigators bypassed a required Filter Team review process, violating investigative protocols and potentially infringing on constitutional guardrails.

The bombshell discovery comes in new records released today by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations Chairman Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) as part of their ongoing Arctic Frost oversight. Grassley and Johnson requested the records from DOJ after receiving legally protected whistleblower disclosures.

The Justice Department’s letter to the chairmen and the provided records indicate Smith’s investigative team circumvented its own filter review process, which was established to protect privileged materials from being swept up in a criminal prosecution, and directly accessed the content of texts sent by Republican and Democrat senators and members of the House of Representatives to White House officials during Trump’s first term. Communications from Members of Congress pertaining to their official legislative duties are protected from criminal prosecution under the Constitution’s Speech or Debate Clause. Bypassing a Filter Team evades consideration of additional privileges, such as attorney-client privilege.

Both Grassley and Johnson’s text messages were obtained by Smith’s team.

“Jack Smith’s criminal investigation of President Trump was a runaway train that had no brakes. 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,” Grassley said. “I hope my Democrat colleagues, several of whom had their own texts swept up, finally put partisanship aside and recognize the severity of these actions. Smith’s team ran roughshod over the Constitution even after repeated warnings. 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.”

“This is yet another grotesque example of the Biden administration’s weaponization of the Justice Department,” Johnson said. “Jack Smith’s team acted with impunity as they disregarded their own protocols to obtain and access White House text messages, including messages to and from 44 Members of Congress. At this point, no one should be shocked by Jack Smith’s recklessness and blatant abuse of power, but they should be outraged.”

So Jack Smith obtained text messages from 44 Members of Congress amid his shadowy probe. And this letter, sent from the office of the Assistant Attorney General Patrick Davis to Senator Grassley, says that the files are saved directly to the Special Counsel’s team shared drive.

Thus, the Special Counsel’s investigative team apparently bypassed the filter team and directly accessed these text messages. The filter team was in place by the DOJ to mitigate these issues and ensure they weren’t accessing text messages from sitting Members of Congress that they weren’t supposed to.

The FBI then identified the people whose phone numbers sent or received the text messages, including 20 U.S. Senators and 24 Members of the House of Representatives.

ACLJ Chief Counsel Jay Sekulow joined the broadcast and broke it down for us, explaining:

I think what Senator Johnson said is exactly correct. No  one’s shocked. Although it is shocking that he did this, it’s not shocking because we saw the abuses taking place by the Department of Justice with Jack Smith, in particular. The outrage is palpable. And that is when you sit back and see a list of 40-something U.S. Senators and House of Representatives, Members who have now had their text messages reviewed by a Special Counsel from the Department of Justice.

So you have the Executive branch spying basically on the Legislative branch. You’re talking about constitutional violations of which we have not seen in our lifetime. This is the quintessential example of not just government overreach, but government run amok with no moorings, with no guideposts, and with no kind of influence that would stop it. They were on a runway that was never-ending to violate the Constitution here, and they did. Now the question is going to be: How do you hold them accountable? And we’re looking at that as well. But this is beyond the pale. It is beyond the scope of legitimate prosecutorial inquiry.

This was the Executive branch, as I said, spying on Members of the United States House and Senate and the people whom they were talking to. So you may have had news media people. I could think of First Amendment violations, Fourteenth Amendment violations. You could write a – when we used to have phone books – this could be a phone book full of violations. We’ll see what the Department of Justice does, but I will tell you this: At the ACLJ, we’re looking at it, and we will take action.

At the end of the day, we still need to know more about the filter team the Biden DOJ bypassed and what all it obtained. That’s a big, glaring question that must be answered. And as Jay said, the ACLJ is looking into it.

Today’s Sekulow broadcast included more discussion of this revelation about Jack Smith’s unscrupulous investigation and what happens now.

Watch the full broadcast below: