Former Special Counsel Jack Smith appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee Tuesday morning, and Chairman Chuck Grassley wasted little time revealing new details about the extraordinary reach of the investigation that eventually became Smith's election case against President Donald Trump.
The biggest revelation may be just how far investigators reached beyond Trump himself.
Grassley said investigators subpoenaed 87 phones belonging to Trump White House officials and obtained records containing communications with journalists at major news organizations, including CBS News, CNN, Fox News, the Associated Press, Bloomberg, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Washington Times and The Federalist. CBS News reported the disclosure live from Tuesday's hearing.
That comes on top of the previously disclosed collection of phone records belonging to Republican members of Congress.
"In the end, Mr. Smith indicted one person," Grassley said Tuesday. "That one person was President Trump, but in the process, [he] successfully mapped out the Republican apparatus."
Grassley said the Justice Department and FBI ended up possessing "reams" of personal information involving "thousands" of Republicans, material he said was not disclosed in Smith's final report.
The revelations add a new dimension to a controversy that has been building for months over Operation Arctic Frost, the federal investigation into Trump's efforts surrounding the 2020 election that eventually became the basis for Smith's election case.
Smith was appointed special counsel in November 2022, but the investigation predated him. Grassley's committee has been digging into its origins and has released thousands of pages of documents obtained through whistleblowers and government records.
The Federalist's Margot Cleveland has been closely tracking those records and the constitutional questions raised by the investigation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNc5VMPSuHg
5/ Toll records of members of Congress. Subpoenas targeted hundreds of groups, including media and legislative. subpoenaed 87 trump white house phones. Failed to filter out speech and debate info. Smith also obtained comm w/ media, 60 minutes, ap, bloomberg, cbs, foxnews, la…
— Margot Cleveland (@ProfMJCleveland) September 29, 2026
Cleveland reported last week that newly released documents indicated senior Biden Justice Department officials knew investigators planned to subpoena records belonging to Republican members of Congress before Smith was even appointed. According to Cleveland, Justice Department officials instructed Arctic Frost investigators to notify the deputy attorney general's office when investigators sought toll records belonging to Reps. Jim Jordan and Chip Roy.
The congressional records issue is particularly significant because of the Constitution's Speech or Debate Clause, which protects legislative activity from executive and judicial intrusion.
Cleveland has argued that Smith's collection of congressional records violated those protections. She previously reported that internal records showed Smith's office analyzed text messages from more than 40 members of Congress while investigators failed to use an established filtering process designed to screen potentially privileged communications.
Grassley's committee previously revealed that investigators obtained tolling data for Republican senators covering Jan. 4 through Jan. 7, 2021. Those records showed information such as who called whom, when calls occurred and their duration, rather than the contents of the calls.
But Grassley indicates that hundreds of subpoenas swept up Republican organizations, congressional records and communications involving the press.
According to Fox News, Smith's investigators obtained records containing communications between nearly 50 journalists and Trump administration officials after subpoenaing text-message records associated with dozens of White House phones.
That means journalists weren't necessarily the direct targets of subpoenas. Their communications were caught when investigators obtained material from government officials with whom those reporters had communicated.
Grassley specifically named CBS News, CNN, Fox News, the AP, The Federalist, The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, The Washington Post and The Washington Times while discussing the records Tuesday.
"Now, what will partisan media say about this disgraceful government overreach?" Grassley asked.
The Judiciary Committee's previous investigation found that telecommunications companies received at least 84 subpoenas connected to Arctic Frost or Smith's investigation, with at least 10 seeking toll records involving 20 current or former Republican members of Congress.
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