Jack Smith defends subpoenas for Republican lawmakers’ phone records

Former special counsel Jack Smith stands by his 2023 decision to subpoena the phone records of several Republican lawmakers, calling the move “entirely appropriate” and consistent with Justice Department policy.

The requested data, known as charge records, belonging to eight senators and one House member, was carefully targeted to support his investigation into President Donald Trump’s alleged subversion of the 2020 election, Smith said through his attorney in a letter obtained by Fox News Digital.

“As several senators have described, the death toll data collection was narrowly designed and limited to the four days from January 4, 2021, to January 7, 2021, focusing on telephone activity during the period immediately surrounding the January 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol,” Smith’s lawyers wrote Tuesday to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa.

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Phone call logs do not reveal the contents of phone calls, but instead reveal when the calls were made and to whom.

Smith’s lawyers said that although Grassley, who unsealed the subpoenas, had not reached out to Smith, they felt compelled to write to the president to address Republican allegations that Smith improperly spied on lawmakers.

Grassley responded to the letter, saying he would continue an impartial investigation into Arctic Frost, the name of the FBI investigation that led to Smith’s election-related prosecution of Trump.

“I’m making an objective assessment of the facts and the law as he says he wants. So far we’ve uncovered an anti-Trump FBI agent who started the investigation/violated FBI rules and only Republicans were targeted that smelled like politics,” Grassley wrote on X.

Among the senators targeted were Republican Senators Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, Josh Hawley of Missouri, and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.

In addition to the eight senators, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, told Fox News’ Sean Hannity on Tuesday that he recently discovered that Smith had also tried to subpoena his toll records, but his phone company, AT&T, would not turn them over.

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Republicans widely claimed they were improperly spied on, and compared the Arctic to the Watergate scandal.

Smith’s lawyers stressed the naturalness of the search for phone records and said government officials are not immune from investigation.

Smith brought four criminal charges against Trump alleging he illegally tried to overturn the results of the 2020 election, but dismissed the charges after Trump won the 2024 election, citing a Justice Department policy that discourages the prosecution of sitting presidents.

Former special counsel Robert Hoare sought toll records during his investigation into former President Joe Biden’s handling of classified documents. The Justice Department has subpoenaed the phone records of former Democratic Sen. Robert Menendez, who is serving a prison sentence after being convicted in 2024 on corruption charges.

The first Trump administration requested phone records of then-Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif. Adam Schiff, Democrat of California, and dozens of congressional staffers from both parties as part of the investigation into the leak.

Former Inspector General of the Ministry of Justice Michael Horowitz He warned in a report on the leak investigation that lawmakers’ records should only be subpoenaed in narrow circumstances because doing so “risks undermining Congress’ ability to exercise oversight over the executive branch.”

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Smith’s lawyers also disputed FBI Director Kash Patel’s accusations that he tried to hide the subpoenas “in a safe deposit box in a vault,” noting that the former special counsel mentioned senators’ subpoena records in a footnote to the special counsel’s latest report.

“Furthermore, the precise records in question were provided to President Trump’s personal attorneys, some of whom now hold senior positions within the Department of Justice,” Smith’s lawyers said.

Read Smith’s letter below. App users click here.