Former special counsel Jack Smith will be called before the Senate Judiciary Committee after newly released Justice Department records showed his investigative team accessed text messages involving 44 members of Congress during its criminal investigation into Trump, Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA) announced Tuesday.
The records, released jointly by Grassley and Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations Chairman Ron Johnson (R-WI), indicate Smith’s investigators bypassed a Justice Department “Filter Team” that had been established to review potentially privileged communications before investigators could access them.
The records show messages involving 44 current and former members of Congress were accessed, including Republicans such as Grassley, Johnson, the late Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO), Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC), Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR), former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA), Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA), and Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY).
Several Democratic lawmakers were also included, among them Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ), Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA), former Rep. Karen Bass (D-CA), and Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ).
According to a letter from Assistant Attorney General Patrick Davis provided to the committee, Smith’s investigative team “apparently bypassed the Filter 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. “Based on the information that’s been produced to me and Senator Johnson, 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.”
Tuesday’s revelations build on earlier scrutiny of Smith’s investigation. Senate Republicans previously disclosed that Smith subpoenaed phone records belonging to multiple Republican lawmakers during Operation Arctic Frost, prompting hearings into how telecommunications companies handled those requests. The newly released DOJ records go further, indicating investigators accessed the contents of text messages involving 44 members of Congress after allegedly bypassing the department’s normal privilege-screening procedures.
Grassley added that Smith “has answering to do,” saying he intends to bring the former special counsel before the Senate Judiciary Committee “in the coming months to hold him accountable.”
The communications were obtained after Smith’s office subpoenaed the National Archives in June 2023 for text messages sent between October 2020 and January 20, 2021, from phones used by numerous Trump White House officials, including Mark Meadows, Dan Scavino, Ivanka Trump, Stephen Miller, Peter Navarro, John Ratcliffe, Kash Patel, Rudy Giuliani, Kellyanne Conway, and then-Vice President Mike Pence.
According to documents released by Grassley, the National Archives delivered the records to Smith’s office on August 21, 2023. Internal DOJ emails show members of Smith’s investigative team began downloading and reviewing the files within an hour of receiving them, before the designated Filter Team had completed its review.
The Filter Team exists to screen records for potentially privileged material, including attorney-client communications and communications protected under the Constitution’s Speech or Debate Clause, which shields members of Congress from executive branch interference involving their legislative work. Grassley and Johnson argue Smith’s team circumvented those safeguards by directly reviewing lawmakers’ communications.
Stefanik, whose messages were among those reviewed, said the newly revealed records prove Jack Smith’s team “unlawfully and unconstitutionally accessed my private text messages, along with 43 other Members of Congress, in clear violation of the Constitution.”
Johnson called the revelations “yet another grotesque example of the Biden administration’s weaponization of the Justice Department.”
The newly released records also appear to complicate Smith’s previous congressional testimony. During a December 2025 deposition, Smith answered “no” when asked whether his investigation had obtained the content of text messages from members of Congress.
Smith has not publicly responded to Grassley’s announcement or the newly released documents.
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