Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) accused former Special Counsel Jack Smith of spying on Congress Tuesday after Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley and Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations Chairman Ron Johnson released Department of Justice records showing Smith’s investigative team bypassed a required filter review process to directly access text messages sent by 44 members of Congress — including Paul himself — during Trump’s first term.
“New evidence shows Jack Smith, Biden’s hand-picked prosecutor, not only abused President Trump’s rights but also spied on 44 members of Congress — including myself,” Paul wrote on X. “This is a blatant abuse of power that cannot be ignored.”
“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. I’m alerting my colleagues who were impacted and will release the records with Sen. Johnson so the American people can see the evidence.”
What the Records Show
According to the official Senate Judiciary Committee press release, Smith’s investigative team in June 2023 subpoenaed the National Archives and Records Administration to produce all text messages from October 2020 through January 20, 2021 from phones associated with a long list of Trump White House personnel — including Trump himself, Mark Meadows, Dan Scavino, Ivanka Trump, Stephen Miller, Peter Navarro, John Ratcliffe, Kash Patel, Rudy Giuliani, Kellyanne Conway and Mike Pence.
NARA provided the texts to the Special Counsel’s Office on August 21, 2023. Within half an hour, one of Smith’s senior lawyers, Thomas Windom, downloaded the texts. Within one hour, other members of Smith’s investigative team had also downloaded and begun reviewing them — apparently without waiting for the Filter Team to evaluate and segregate privileged information, according to the DOJ letter to Grassley and Johnson.
Because the White House phones were used by congressional members communicating with White House officials, the texts swept up communications to and from 44 sitting and former members of Congress. Communications by members of Congress pertaining to their official legislative duties are protected from criminal prosecution under the Constitution’s Speech or Debate Clause. The filter review process was specifically designed to prevent investigators from accessing constitutionally privileged materials — but Smith’s team bypassed it, according to the provided records.
Who Was Swept Up
The 44 members whose texts were accessed included both Republicans and Democrats. Among the senators were Grassley, Johnson, John Cornyn, the late Lindsey Graham, Josh Hawley, Mike Lee, Rand Paul, Rick Scott, Susan Collins, Tom Cotton, Tim Scott and — notably — Democrat Cory Booker of New Jersey, according to the Senate Judiciary Committee’s full list.
House members whose texts were accessed included Kevin McCarthy, Steve Scalise, Jim Jordan, Devin Nunes, Elise Stefanik, Scott Perry, Mo Brooks, Thomas Massie, Andy Biggs and — again on the Democratic side — Rep. Adam Smith of Washington, Rep. Joshua Gottheimer of New Jersey and Rep. Karen Bass of California, among others. The full list of all 44 members is included in the Senate Judiciary Committee’s official press release.
What Grassley and Johnson Said
“Jack Smith’s criminal investigation of President Trump was a runaway train that had no brakes,” Grassley said in the official committee release. “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. 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.”
Grassley said he intends to bring Smith before the Senate Judiciary Committee in the coming months to hold him accountable. “Smith’s team ran roughshod over the Constitution even after repeated warnings. Jack Smith has answering to do,” Grassley said.
Johnson called the disclosure “yet another grotesque example of the Biden administration’s weaponization of the Justice Department.” “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,” Johnson said.
The Arctic Frost Investigation
The disclosure is part of the ongoing Arctic Frost oversight investigation by the Senate Judiciary Committee and the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations — a broad inquiry into what Republican senators describe as the Biden DOJ’s weaponization of federal law enforcement against Trump and his allies. Grassley and Johnson received the records after submitting formal requests to DOJ following legally protected whistleblower disclosures.
The DOJ’s own letter to the chairmen confirmed the filter team process that was established to protect privileged materials in both Smith’s January 6 investigation — code-named “Project Coconut” — and his Mar-a-Lago documents investigation — code-named “Project Cranberry.” The letter confirmed the investigative team bypassed that process when it came to the congressional text messages, per the DOJ letter released by Grassley.
Constitutional Concerns
Legal scholars have long identified the Speech or Debate Clause — found in Article I, Section 6 of the Constitution — as a significant protection for congressional communications related to legislative duties. The clause was designed by the Founders to protect the independence of the legislative branch from executive branch prosecution or intimidation. Whether Smith’s team’s review of the texts constitutes a violation of the clause depends on whether the specific messages accessed related to the members’ official legislative activities — a question that would likely require a court to resolve if any prosecution had been brought based on the information, according to legal analysis published by the Cornell Legal Information Institute’s annotation of Article I.
Smith’s office closed after Trump won the 2024 election and dismissed the federal cases against him. Smith has not publicly commented on the Grassley-Johnson disclosure as of Tuesday afternoon. The DOJ under Attorney General Pam Bondi, which provided the records to Grassley and Johnson, did not issue its own public statement on the matter beyond the letter transmitted to the senators.