‘Not in My Entire 30 Years’: Agent Calls Jack Smith’s Trump Probe ‘Unique’ as Special Counsel Faces Grilling Under Oath

The release of a new batch of documents relating to Special Counsel Jack Smith’s prosecution of President Trump shines a light on the prosecutor’s “unique” pursuit of the 47th president.The six transcripts disclosed by House Republicans come a week before Mr. Smith is slated to testify under oath before the Senate Judiciary Committee. The transcripts capture the reflections of five members of Mr. Smith’s inner circle — J.P. Cooney, Molly Gaston, Ray Hulser, Tad Duree, and Thomas Windom — as well as an agent for the Office of Inspector General, Brian Burnett.The clutch of transcripts, which record conversations between Mr. Smith’s team and the House Judiciary Committee, relate to the seizure of the phone of Congressman Scott Perry, a Pennsylvania Republican. He was the only solon to have his device confiscated as part of Mr. Smith’s “Operation Arctic Frost.”Arctic Frost was the investigation into the aftermath of the 2020 election that resulted in criminal charges being handed up against Mr. Trump. The investigation surveilled telephone metadata from 14 Republican lawmakers and reviewed text messages from 44 legislators. Subpoenas for that information were accompanied by “non-disclosure” orders that prevented the subjects from knowing they were being followed. Mr. Perry was of particular interest to prosecutors because of his closeness to Mr. Trump, as well as to the lawyer Jeffrey Clark, who was a crucial figure in the effort to stop the certification of the 2020 presidential vote. Mr. Clark was an unindicted co-conspirator in Mr. Smith’s case against Mr. Trump and was criminally charged by the district attorney of Fulton County, Georgia, Fani Willis.Mr. Perry’s phone was pinpointed with a “location warrant,” which tracked him on vacation. Mr. Windom explained that the “whole team wanted to image the phone and get it back to Congressman Perry as quickly as possible. We were trying real hard to do this in a way that was minimally disruptive, it was as respectful as it could be, and it didn’t put Congressman Perry in an awkward spot where we’re seizing a phone right out on Independence Avenue in front of the Rayburn Building or it’s some big hubbub.”The transcripts also disclose that Mr. Smith’s team was concerned that their investigation could impinge on the Constitution’s Speech or Debate Clause, which ordains that lawmakers “be privileged from Arrest during their Attendance at the Session of their respective Houses, and in going to and returning from the same; and for any Speech or Debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other Place.”In Gravel v. United States, decided in 1972, the Supreme Court held that the Speech or Debate Clause applies when a lawmaker is engaged in “legislative acts.” Mr. Duree, a prosecutor who worked under Mr. Smith, told the Judiciary Committee in a March deposition, “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.” He adds that it is “a common thing, particularly in complex investigations, to run into the corners of the law that aren’t fully built out.”Mr. Burnett, an agent who has worked at the Department of Justice for some three decades, reflects in the transcript that Mr. Smith’s investigation was “unique, as far as the over 30 years of law enforcement experience I have.” “Not in my entire 30 years of law enforcement” has he ever seen a probe that was undertaken in such a “top down” manner, Mr. Burnett is quoted saying. Mr. Burnett explains that when an agent received the results of a subpoena, they would go back to the prosecutor — not to the agent who had subpoenaed the records.Mr. Smith is himself facing a criminal referral to the Department of Justice from Congressman Jim Jordan, who alleges that the prosecutor lied under oath during a deposition in December when he was asked, “Did you seek a search warrant for the content of any text messages from Members?” He answered, “No, I don’t recall that.” When asked if he stopped short of searching texts, he responded, “Correct.”Mr. Smith’s lawyers have disputed Mr. Jordan’s allegation, arguing that the special counsel’s answers concerned the toll records, or data on numbers called and duration of conversations, sought from telecommunications companies rather than separate text messages preserved as official correspondence by the National Archives. The lawyers contend that the Judiciary Committee’s questioners did not ask Mr. Smith a precise enough question with respect to the text messages. In any prosecution for perjury, the burden rests on the interrogator, not on the person being deposed. When Mr. Smith last testified before Congress, in January, he declared that he had gathered evidence “beyond a reasonable doubt” that Mr. Trump was guilty of a “criminal scheme” to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. The case, though, was dismissed in the wake of Mr. Trump’s victory in the 2024 presidential election.

‘Not in My Entire 30 Years’: Agent Calls Jack Smith’s Trump Probe ‘Unique’ as Special Counsel Faces Grilling Under Oath

‘Not in My Entire 30 Years’: Agent Calls Jack Smith’s Trump Probe ‘Unique’ as Special Counsel Faces Grilling Under Oath

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