Grassley says he has records showing Jack Smith team reviewed 44 lawmakers’ text messages
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said Tuesday that he received notice from the Department of Justice (DOJ) that former special counsel Jack Smith’s team had “secretly obtained” information from lawmakers as part of an investigation into President Trump.
Grassley said he was one of 44 lawmakers whose communications with White House staff were examined during investigations under former President Biden into Trump’s alleged role in the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and classified documents found at the president’s Mar-a-Lago estate.
Smith oversaw both cases and later dropped the lawsuit following Trump’s election victory in 2024.
Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations chairman Sen. In a joint report with Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.), Grassley said lawmakers requested those DOJ records after receiving tips from whistleblowers.
Deputy Attorney General Patrick Davis said: letter He told Grassley that Smith’s investigative team “apparently bypassed” a document filtering team and “directly accessed these text messages.”
“Jack Smith’s criminal investigation of President Trump was an out-of-control trend with no brakes,” Grassley said in a statement.
“According to information provided to me and Senator Johnson, Biden Justice Department and FBI investigators disregarded their routine investigative protocols to receive and review work-related messages from me and dozens of my Republican and Democratic colleagues who were outside the scope of the government’s investigation,” the president continued.
Grassley and Johnson released a list of all MPs whose communications were allegedly examined in this investigation; these include current and former Republican and Democratic members of Congress.
In his statement, Johnson called this report “yet another bizarre example of the Biden administration weaponizing the Justice Department.”
“Jack Smith’s team acted with impunity, ignoring their own protocols to receive and access White House text messages, including messages to and from 44 Members of Congress,” he continued. “At this point no one should be surprised by Jack Smith’s recklessness and blatant abuse of power, but they should be outraged.”
Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), one of the lawmakers whose communications were allegedly examined in Smith’s investigation, called the news “outrageous” but “not too surprising.” expression shared on social media.
“The fact that Jack Smith wiped out dozens of lawmakers in his witch hunt is just the latest in a long chain of abuses we’ve seen in Democrats’ weaponization of government over decades,” he said.
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