Senate Republicans used Todd Blanche’s attorney general confirmation hearing on Wednesday to amplify the fresh revelation that former special counsel Jack Smith’s team accessed text messages involving 44 members of Congress during its investigation into President Donald Trump.
“Did Jack Smith read my emails?” Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) asked Blanche, who is serving as acting attorney general.
“I’m not sure, senator. I don’t know,” Blanche replied.
Kennedy pressed Blanche to determine whether Smith obtained his emails, how they were obtained, what communications involving Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA) were collected, and whether they were shared with former Attorney General Merrick Garland, the former Justice Department head under the Biden administration who appointed Smith to handle two federal prosecutions involving Trump.
“There are checks in place that should make it extraordinarily difficult for a prosecutor to collect and review a senator’s emails,” Blanche said, adding that those safeguards “should always be used.” When Kennedy said Smith “just ignored them,” Blanche, who represented Trump during Smith’s criminal cases against the then-former president, responded that he could not speak for the former special counsel.
The exchange followed Grassley’s Tuesday disclosure that Smith’s office obtained White House text messages involving 44 lawmakers, including 20 senators, as part of a subpoena to the National Archives for records from the final months of Trump’s first term.
Grassley said Smith’s team bypassed a filter process intended to identify potentially privileged congressional communications before investigators reviewed the records. He said the Trump DOJ acknowledged in a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee that the special counsel’s investigative team “apparently bypassed the filter team and directly accessed these text messages.”
The Iowa Republican argued the records included material covered by the Constitution’s speech-or-debate protections, including communications relating to legislation, resolutions, and investigative work. He called Smith’s operation a “runaway political train” and asked Blanche what the DOJ had done to ensure similar conduct did not recur.
“The biggest thing we can do … is be transparent about what happened,” Blanche said, pledging to provide records to Congress and disclose prior department misconduct.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) broadened the attack, asking Blanche to confirm that Garland, then-Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco, and then-FBI Director Christopher Wray personally approved the opening of Operation Arctic Frost. Blanche said they did.
Cruz recounted that the investigation involved nearly 200 subpoenas and targeted more than 400 Republican-aligned groups and individuals. Blanche agreed. He also confirmed Cruz’s assertion that the FBI obtained phone data belonging to roughly 20% of Senate Republicans, including Cruz, several Judiciary Committee members, FBI Director Kash Patel, and White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, without their knowledge.
Cruz said the Biden DOJ’s focus on Trump and his supporters meant it was not focused enough on crime and border security, citing the Biden administration’s estimated 12 million southern border encounters and 2 million known “gotaways.” Blanche agreed with the figures.
Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) called the reported access to lawmakers’ text-message content “un-American” and said it came “uncomfortably close to spying on a coequal, coordinate branch” of government.
Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-MO) went further, saying Smith should face prosecution for allegedly lying to Congress about whether investigators had obtained more than phone logs.
Likewise, Schmitt colleague Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) asked Blanche whether he had thought about investigating Smith for “perjury,” referring to Smith’s comments to the House Judiciary Committee last year about his pursuit of phone toll records for several lawmakers related to the text messages he received.
“We take testimony in front of this body very seriously. Yes,” Blanche said, signaling openness to a criminal false statements investigation.
Democrats pushed back. Ranking member Dick Durbin (D-IL) said Smith had volunteered to testify under oath before the committee and accused Republicans of declining to call him.
JACK SMITH TEAM REVIEWED CONTENTS OF TEXTS INVOLVING 44 MEMBERS OF CONGRESS, DOJ RECORDS SHOW
But Grassley has said since October that he wants to call Smith before the committee after more information emerges about the former special counsel’s handling of the controversial Trump prosecutions during the Biden administration.
“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,” Grassley said Tuesday.