Grassley Aims To Stay in Office Until Age 101 — and Could Haunt Jack Smith to His Final Days

Senator Charles Grassley, 93, has filed his paperwork with the Federal Election Commission to run for reelection in 2028, raising the possibility that the man who is third in line for the presidency could serve past his 101st birthday.Mr. Grassley’s decision to preserve the possibility of running for reelection in 2028 comes as he escalates his clashes with Special Counsel Jack Smith, whose investigation into January 6 obtained telephone records involving more than a dozen members of the senator’s caucus. On Thursday, Mr. Grassley wrote a letter to Senate Democrats accusing them of “falling over themselves defending unlawful and unconstitutional actions by Jack Smith.”As chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Mr. Grassley has been at the forefront of disclosing details of Mr. Smith’s work, which resulted in criminal charges against President Trump in cases relating to January 6 and the retention of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago.This latest flare-up was provoked by Mr. Smith’s testimony before the Senate last month. Mr. Grassley declared that “ultimately, the public still awaits a full accounting of Jack Smith and his Special Counsel staff’s conduct. The investigation is active.”Democrats paint Mr. Grassley’s relentless focus on Mr. Smith in a more negative light. A spokesman for Senator Dick Durbin, who serves on the same committee as Mr. Grassley, accuses the older solon of “spinning conspiracy theories without ever addressing the fact that Republicans continue to violate Senate Rules by withholding from Democrats the documents that were the basis for the false accusations of perjury against Jack Smith.”Special Counsel Jack Smith arrives to testify during a hearing before the House Judiciary Committee on January 22, 2026 at Washington, DC. Alex Wong/Getty ImagesAccusations that Mr. Smith lied under oath have become more frequent. During last month’s hearing, Senator Eric Schmitt, sometimes mentioned as a possible vice-presidential contender, reckoned that Mr. Smith had “perjured” himself with respect to claims that he never visited Atlanta to meet with Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis. That accusation, though, appears to have been built on confusing the NBA’s Atlanta Hawks with college basketball’s Iowa Hawkeyes, for whom Caitlin Clark played.Mr. Smith is also accused of lying under oath by Congressman Jim Jordan, who chairs the House Judiciary Committee. That allegation stems from separate testimony the prosecutor delivered in December, when he appeared to suggest that his investigation, codenamed “Operation Arctic Frost,” was limited to telephone metadata. In July, though, Mr. Grassley disclosed information indicating that Mr. Smith had gathered text messages involving 44 lawmakers, including Mr. Grassley.Mr. Grassley’s effort to bring to light the details of Mr. Smith’s work has resulted in the release of some 2,200 pages of documents. That tranche has disclosed not only the surveillance of lawmakers but also the FBI’s tracking, in 2022, of the physical whereabouts of First Lady Melania Trump, Barron Trump, and Susie Wiles. That information was used to plan the search of Mar-a-Lago in August 2022, which turned up hundreds of classified documents. Both the January 6 and Mar-a-Lago cases were dismissed after Mr. Trump was reelected in 2024.Mr. Grassley, who has held elected office since 1958 and entered the Senate in 1981, appears especially piqued by the extent to which Mr. Smith’s work touched the upper chamber. Last week, in a “Year in Review” statement, Mr. Grassley contended that “In all my years of oversight, I’ve never before witnessed the level of corruption, misconduct, and abuse of power that Jack Smith wielded. My oversight has shown Jack Smith’s prosecution was rotten from the start, used by the Biden administration to try to keep President Trump from returning to office.”Mr. Durbin’s office, though, insists that “Republicans remain laser focused on attacking Mr. Smith because they don’t want to talk about President Trump’s disgraceful and un-American crimes that Mr. Smith was investigating.” Democrats on Mr. Grassley’s committee accuse his party of creating “an embarrassing stain on one of the most important committees in Congress” through its handling of Mr. Smith.Mr. Grassley’s legacy appears set to outlive the nonagenarian. His grandson, Patrick Grassley, 43, serves as speaker of the Iowa House of Representatives. Last year, when the younger Mr. Grassley was asked about succeeding his grandfather in the Senate, he explained to Iowa’s KTIV-TV, “My grandfather and I don’t ever talk about those things. And that’s the truth. And we don’t really talk about what that would look like.”

Grassley Aims To Stay in Office Until Age 101 — and Could Haunt Jack Smith to His Final Days

Grassley Aims To Stay in Office Until Age 101 — and Could Haunt Jack Smith to His Final Days

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