Jack Smith Faces Senate Grilling Under Oath Over ‘Arctic Frost’ Probe and Alleged Targeting of Republicans

Special Counsel Jack Smith is scheduled to testify on Tuesday before Senate Republicans — an appearance that comes as the Department of Justice weighs whether to criminally charge him. That decision will ultimately be made by Attorney General Todd Blanche.Senator Charles Grassley, who will lead the proceedings, has entitled the hearing “Oversight of Jack Smith’s Abuse of Authority and the Targeting of Republicans.” Mr. Grassley, 93, has been at the forefront of releasing declassified information regarding Mr. Smith’s “Operation Arctic Frost,” his probe into January 6 that resulted in the prosecution of Mr. Trump.Those disclosures brought to light a probe that encompassed the surveillance of telephone toll records from 14 Republican lawmakers, including 10 senators. The release of a second batch of documents disclosed that Mr. Smith also collected text-message data from 44 lawmakers, including some Democrats. Only Mr. Trump, though, was criminally charged. He pleaded “not guilty” to all counts, and the case was dismissed once he won reelection. Mr. Smith resigned days before Mr. Trump’s second inauguration.In Mr. Smith’s final report on the January 6 case, he writes that he would have convicted Mr. Trump “but for” the results of the 2024 election — the Department of Justice has a “categorical” ban against prosecuting a sitting president. It is expected that Mr. Smith will make a similar evaluation in his final report concerning the criminal case brought against Mr. Trump for storing classified documents at Mar-a-Lago. That dossier, though, has been “permanently blocked” by Judge Aileen Cannon, though that ruling is being appealed.Senate Judiciary Democrats wrote on X that “Donald Trump spent months spreading the Big Lie and pressuring election officials & Members of Congress to help overturn the 2020 election. Jack Smith investigated this criminal effort. Finally on Tuesday, Mr. Smith will be able to tell the Senate Judiciary Committee his story.” In January, Mr. Smith told Congress that he had assembled enough evidence to show that Mr. Trump was “beyond a reasonable doubt” guilty of a “criminal scheme” to subvert the vote in 2020.While Mr. Smith has projected certainty in public, at least one lawmaker, Congressman Jim Jordan, asserts that the special counsel acknowledges doubt “privately.” Mr. Jordan writes in his own report, released last week, that Mr. Smith told Attorney General Merrick Garland that “Operation Arctic Frost” could infringe on the constitutional protections in the Speech or Debate Clause. That part of the national parchment grants absolute immunity for what the Supreme Court called in 1972 “legislative activity.”Last week, House Republicans released a tranche of transcripts that recorded conversations between Mr. Smith’s team at the Justice Department and lawmakers’ staff. One prosecutor, Tad Dupree, testified, “I would say we were hypervigilant and extremely aware of the contours of the Speech or Debate Clause. We knew that Speech or Debate was something that we had to navigate. We treated it seriously.” Mr. Dupree explained that it is “a common thing, particularly in complex investigations, to run into the corners of the law that aren’t fully built out.”Another member of Mr. Smith’s team, agent Brian Burnett, declared that “not in my entire 30 years of law enforcement” had he ever seen an investigation that was so tightly controlled by prosecutors, with a top-down structure helmed by Mr. Smith. Mr. Burnett added that the probe into Mr. Trump was “unique, as far as the over 30 years of law enforcement experience I have.”Mr. Smith’s lawyer, Peter Koski, asserts that Mr. Jordan’s report is replete with “mischaracterization of the facts and the law” and that his client “followed the normal DOJ process.” In a fiery speech at Dartmouth last month, Mr. Smith told his Ivy League audience that “people should be running towards the fire, not away from it.” “My experience in my career is that the rule of law and integrity are intertwined. They’re together. You cannot have a functioning rule of law without people with integrity,” he said.Mr. Jordan’s criminal referral of Mr. Smith concerns a deposition that the special counsel sat for in December. He was asked, “Did you seek a search warrant for the content of any text messages from members?” Mr. Smith answered, “No, I don’t recall that.” When asked if he stopped short of searching texts, he responded, “Correct.” Mr. Jordan contends that Mr. Smith lied under oath because text messages were collected from lawmakers.

Jack Smith Faces Senate Grilling Under Oath Over ‘Arctic Frost’ Probe and Alleged Targeting of Republicans

Jack Smith Faces Senate Grilling Under Oath Over ‘Arctic Frost’ Probe and Alleged Targeting of Republicans

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