Senate Judiciary Committee releases records alleging Smith team accessed lawmakers' texts

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Smith team accessed lawmakers' texts

Highlights

Records released by Senate Judiciary Committee allege Jack Smith’s team bypassed required Filter Team review for congressional texts in Trump probe.
Special Counsel subpoenaed and accessed messages involving 44 lawmakers from October 2020 to Jan. 20, 2021, with material delivered by NARA on Aug. 21, 2023.
Grassley and Johnson claim DOJ review disregarded privileged safeguards, intensifying constitutional disputes over congressional oversight and investigatory protocols.

Records detail text message review process

As reported by Senate Committee on the Judiciary, records released by Chairman Chuck Grassley and Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations Chairman Ron Johnson allege Smith’s investigative team bypassed a required Filter Team review when handling congressional communications gathered in the Trump-related probe.

The committee says the Justice Department’s cover letter and related records show the Special Counsel’s Office accessed messages involving Republican and Democratic lawmakers that were sent to or from White House officials during Trump’s first term. The Filter Team process was established to screen out privileged material before investigators review evidence, including communications potentially protected under the Constitution’s Speech or Debate Clause and other legal privileges.

The records trace the timeline to a June 2023 subpoena from the Special Counsel’s Office to the National Archives and Records Administration for text messages from October 2020 through Jan. 20, 2021, tied to a range of Trump administration officials. NARA provided the material on Aug. 21, 2023, and the committee says one of Smith’s senior lawyers, Thomas Windom, downloaded the texts within 30 minutes, with other investigators beginning review within an hour.

Oversight fight intensifies over DOJ protocols

Grassley says the disclosures suggest Biden DOJ and FBI investigators ignored standard safeguards while reviewing work-related messages from lawmakers outside the core scope of the criminal investigation. Johnson calls the episode another example of what he describes as the Biden administration’s weaponization of the Justice Department.

Both senators say their own text messages were included among the material reviewed. The list released by the committee names 44 current and former senators and House members, including Chuck Grassley, Ron Johnson, Lindsey Graham, Cory Booker, Kevin McCarthy, Steve Scalise, Jim Jordan, Adam Smith and Karen Bass.

The committee frames the issue as a constitutional and procedural dispute with potential implications for congressional privilege, executive branch investigative practices and future Senate oversight of DOJ conduct. Grassley says he intends to bring Smith before the Senate Judiciary Committee in the coming months.

Our earlier article covered a U.S. House task force hearing that argued diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs can operate as pretexts for unlawful discrimination, citing Title VII and the Supreme Court’s 2023 equal-protection ruling on college admissions. The piece outlined how lawmakers and witnesses framed those legal arguments as justification for broader federal policy changes aimed at rolling back DEI initiatives across agencies and federally funded institutions in the coming years.

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