Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) disclosed Tuesday that the Justice Department notified him that former special counsel Jack Smith’s investigative team “secretly obtained” text messages from 44 members of Congress without following the department’s own filtering protocols, sweeping up communications from lawmakers who had nothing to do with any criminal investigation.
Grassley, chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said he was among those 44 lawmakers. His communications, along with those of dozens of other current and former Republican and Democratic members, were reviewed during Smith’s probes into former President Donald Trump’s alleged role in the January 6 Capitol riot and the classified documents case centered on Mar-a-Lago.
Both cases were ultimately dropped after Trump won the 2024 presidential election.
In a joint report with Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), chair of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, Grassley said the inquiry began after whistleblower tips led the two senators to request DOJ records. Assistant Attorney General Patrick Davis confirmed in a letter to Grassley that Smith’s team “apparently bypassed” a designated document filtering team and “directly accessed these text messages.”
“Jack Smith’s criminal investigation of President Trump was a runaway train that had no brakes,” Grassley said in a statement. “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.”
Johnson was more pointed. “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,” he said. “At this point, no one should be shocked by Jack Smith’s recklessness and blatant abuse of power, but they should be outraged.”
Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL), whose communications were among those reviewed, called the disclosure “outrageous” but said it was “not remotely surprising.” Scott said the action was “just the latest addition to a long train of abuses that we’ve seen from Democrats’ decades-long weaponization of government.”
Grassley and Johnson published the full list of lawmakers whose messages were accessed as part of the investigation. The list includes members from both parties, though the probes were directed at Trump and his allies.
Smith oversaw both federal cases against Trump. The Justice Department closed both investigations following Trump’s November 2024 election victory, consistent with longstanding DOJ policy against prosecuting a sitting president.
The filtering team that Smith’s investigators bypassed is a standard safeguard inside the DOJ intended to prevent investigators from reviewing privileged or irrelevant communications. Bypassing it raises questions about how broadly the investigation reached into congressional communications and whether any of that information shaped prosecutorial decisions.
