(DCNF)—Former special counsel Jack Smith sought nearly two years’ worth of Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Kash Patel’s phone records, new documents show.
Smith’s team subpoenaed records of phone calls and text messages — which did not include their content — as well as Patel’s mailing, residential and email addresses, according to documents released by Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley ahead of a hearing Tuesday.
Two subpoenas requested data from October 1, 2020, to February 22, 2023, and January 1, 2021, to November 23, 2022. United States Magistrate Judge James Mazzone and U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia Judge Beryl Howell, an Obama appointee, signed nondisclosure orders keeping the subpoenas secret.
“The American people deserve to know the full extent of Jack Smith’s partisan investigative tactics that unjustly targeted sitting Members of Congress as well as ordinary law-abiding citizens,” Republican Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson said in a statement. “I expect AT&T and Verizon to fully comply with my January 13, 2026 subpoenas for records that will provide Senator Grassley and me with even more evidence of the Biden administration’s efforts to weaponize the federal justice system against President Trump and his allies.”
Other records released Tuesday include a January 2023 list of members of Congress whom Smith’s team hoped to subpoena. Now-Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin, former Republican Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz and Republican Arizona Rep. Paul Gosar were included on the list, along with members whose records were later subpoenaed, like Republican Texas Sen. Ted Cruz.
“It just occurred to me that before we tell Main [main justice] we are going to fire off subpoenas for so many members tolls I should make sure Jack’s aware,” one prosecutor wrote in an email.
Smith sought toll records for more than a dozen Republican members of Congress, including former Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, records previously released by Grassley revealed.
An attorney general briefing from January 2023 also suggested greater reliance on the Jan. 6 committee’s report, noting Smith’s team “went over it page by page” and “incorporated into our investigative plan.” Smith said in his special counsel report that the committee’s work “comprised a small part of the Office’s investigative record.”
Smith admitted during his testimony before the House Judiciary Committee in January that Cassidy Hutchinson, a key witness for the committee, was not ruled out as a witness, though he agreed elements of her testimony were “hearsay.”
Three phone company executives testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee in February about why they turned over records to Smith’s team. Verizon, T-Mobile and AT&T received at least 84 subpoenas during the Arctic Frost probe that became Smith’s case against President Donald Trump, according to Grassley.
AT&T was the only company to question a subpoena, asking Smith’s team to explain if a request for Republican Texas Sen. Ted Cruz’s could implicate constitutional protections.
“The Democrats have criticized us for not bringing Jack Smith before us at the beginning,” Grassley said in his opening statement Tuesday. “If we’d followed the Democrats’ premature and ill-advised strategy, we wouldn’t have had a great deal of information we now have that shows Jack Smith misled Congress and the public, if not outright lied.”
