Grassley Memo Says Jack Smith's Office Obtained Data on 639,000 Republicans, Including MAGA Hat Buyers

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said in a memo to committee colleagues on Wednesday, Oct. 14, that former special counsel Jack Smith's office and the Biden Justice Department obtained personal data on at least 639,000 Republican donors, voters and supporters.

The figure is Grassley's. Smith has not answered it. His lawyers did not respond to requests for comment, and Fox News Digital said it also reached out to his newly launched law firm.

What the memo describes

Grassley wrote that Smith's office and the Justice Department "obtained spreadsheets containing Republican campaign donors, supporters, and detailed personal voter information in various formats, totaling over 639,000 individuals, at minimum."

Of those, "over 148,000 rows are identified in the spreadsheets as donors," Grassley wrote. "The donors generally contributed small-dollar amounts."

The records carry names, dates of birth, home addresses and email addresses. They also list occupations and employers, whether the person is registered as a Republican, donation amounts, credit card information and what Grassley called donor analysis data. Grassley said sample entries included retirees, pool technicians, drivers and loggers.

The data runs from 2005 to 2021. Grassley called that "well outside Smith's scope of purported review." Smith was investigating efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

The memo also says the office obtained names of Trump campaign personnel, possibly including volunteers. And it says investigators got information on "sales of red MAGA hats, including individual buyers, their purchases and their shipping addresses for home delivery." Grassley added that Smith collected a catalog of Trump campaign products, including red hats, T-shirts, mugs and door mats.

Grassley said the records "were shared with FBI agents."

Grassley's charge

"This update shows that Jack Smith and the Biden Justice Department collected incredibly invasive donor data, and voter data, beyond what could conceivably be necessary for Smith or his team to fulfill the Special Counsel's mandate," Grassley wrote.

He went further, saying the findings "corroborate that Smith and his partisan team aimed to map out the entire Republican Party apparatus." He also called on Democrats to "join my oversight work instead of trying to defend Smith and sweep his abuse of authority under the rug." The memo was addressed to Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the committee's ranking Democrat.

The Republican National Committee echoed the complaint. "Targeting hundreds of thousands of Republican donors and supporters is a chilling abuse of power," said RNC Election Integrity Communications Director Ally Triolo.

Smith's stated rationale

The memo has no on-record response from Smith. His testimony to the same committee on Sept. 29 shows how he has defended his methods.

Smith told senators he was investigating Trump and his allies' efforts to feed false information to lawmakers in an attempt to delay certification of the 2020 election on Jan. 6, 2021. Pressed on why he asked phone companies not to tell lawmakers about subpoenas for their records, Smith said he feared Trump and allies would obstruct the investigation, including by threatening witnesses. He said Trump had already done so.

Smith also told the panel his investigation proved "beyond reasonable doubt" that Trump engaged in "serious crimes," and said, "I will not be silenced."

That testimony addressed the phone records. It did not address the donor spreadsheets, which Grassley's memo brought out afterward.

A widening paper trail

The probe began as an FBI investigation codenamed Arctic Frost. Grassley has released whistleblower material on it since last year.

In September he disclosed that Smith's team subpoenaed roughly 5,000 checks from Americans who donated to Trump and Trump-aligned Republican entities. The new memo puts the data far above that: 639,000 people at a minimum, against 5,000 checks.

The sourcing for the new numbers differs by account. Grassley's committee reviewed records produced in response to his own subpoenas, and whistleblower disclosures have fed his earlier releases. The memo's totals are his staff's count of the spreadsheets, and nobody outside his office has verified them.

What is still unanswered

A spreadsheet with someone's name and a $1 donation in it is not proof of wrongdoing by itself. The memo leaves open which companies or organizations handed over the data, under what legal process, and whether a court reviewed the demands.

It also leaves open how much of the data Smith's prosecutors actually used. Grassley says it was shared with FBI agents. He has not shown that it went into any charging decision.

Smith's side has the next move. Its response to the memo, and to Grassley's call for Democrats to join the oversight work, will show whether the dispute turns on the legal process behind the subpoenas or on the scale of what was collected.