Former special counsel Jack Smith’s investigative team reviewed White House records of text messages involving 44 current and former members of Congress after apparently bypassing a team established to screen potentially privileged material, according to newly released Justice Department records.
The communications reviewed under the Biden administration’s DOJ involved mostly Republicans and a handful of Democrats, including Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), Ron Johnson (R-WI), Cory Booker (D-NJ), the late Lindsey Graham (R-SC), and Josh Hawley (R-MO). House members included Reps. Jim Jordan (R-OH), Adam Smith (D-WA), and Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ), as well as former Rep. Karen Bass, now the Democratic mayor of Los Angeles.
“I received records [from] DOJ confirming Jack Smith’s investigative team reviewed the contents of text [messages] sent by 44 members of Congress,” Grassley wrote on X. “I’m one of the 44.”
Grassley, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, released the records Tuesday with Johnson, who leads the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. The senators obtained the material following whistleblower disclosures about the federal investigation known as Arctic Frost.
Unlike previously disclosed subpoenas for lawmakers’ telephone metadata, the latest records concern the contents of messages stored on phones used by officials in the first Trump White House. Investigators acquired the messages from the National Archives and Records Administration, not directly from lawmakers’ devices or telephone carriers.
Smith’s office requested messages sent between October 2020 and Jan. 20, 2021, from phones associated with President Donald Trump and numerous senior advisers, including former chief of staff Mark Meadows, former deputy chief of staff Dan Scavino, daughter Ivanka Trump, deputy chief of staff for policy Stephen Miller, counselor Peter Navarro, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, FBI Director Kash Patel, former lawyer Rudy Giuliani, former senior counselor Kellyanne Conway, and former Vice President Mike Pence.
At 12:19 p.m. on Aug. 21, 2023, National Archives General Counsel Gary Stern informed senior prosecutor Thomas Windom that the agency had identified 54 spreadsheets containing the requested custodians’ messages.
By 12:45 p.m., Windom told colleagues, “I already have downloaded.” At 1:02 p.m., he circulated two specific messages copied from the production. Other emails show members of the investigative team directing that the files be transferred to shared storage and uploaded to the team’s document-review system.
In a four-page summary of the DOJ’s findings, the department said Smith’s investigative team “apparently bypassed the Filter Team and directly accessed these text messages.”
Written filter-team protocols included in the production stated that investigators could not access any material without a filter attorney’s approval. However, a separate June 11, 2023, email shows DOJ personnel discovered that software permissions could allow investigators to access certain search-warrant material before its review was complete. Correcting those permissions was described as “the top priority item,” raising concerns that Smith’s team may have decided to bypass those clearly stated protocols.
“Jack Smith’s criminal investigation of President Trump was a runaway train that had no brakes,” Grassley said. Johnson called the episode “yet another grotesque example of the Biden administration’s weaponization of the Justice Department.”
The records do not publicly reproduce or identify every message involving each of the 44 lawmakers. Many telephone numbers, names, and portions of the underlying communications remain redacted. The list of affected lawmakers comes from the DOJ’s review of the material.
The disclosure is also likely to renew scrutiny of Smith’s Dec. 17, 2025, deposition before the House Judiciary Committee, during which Smith denied that his team ever read the contents of text messages involving members of Congress.
Asked whether his office sought a warrant for the contents of lawmakers’ text messages, Smith answered, “No, I don’t recall that.” He agreed that investigators had obtained “just toll records.”
Later, Smith was asked whether toll records obtained from members of Congress included text-message content. “No,” he answered, explaining that toll records contain non-content information such as the numbers involved and the timing and duration of calls.
The Washington Examiner contacted an attorney for Smith, but did not receive a response.