Grassley Releases Messages Showing Jack Smith's Team May Have Mishandled Classified Materials During the Trump Prosecution

Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, sent a four-page letter to acting Attorney General Todd Blanche on July 8, 2026, attaching internal messages that suggest personnel in Jack Smith's Special Counsel Office may have mishandled classified materials while simultaneously prosecuting Donald Trump for the same category of offense.

The messages were obtained from DOJ through Grassley's oversight process, according to his office's press release.

According to the Senate Judiciary Committee's summary of those messages, three specific problems surfaced inside Smith's operation.

First, at least one individual was granted access to classified materials without confirming they had the required "need to know" — a foundational requirement of classified information handling. Second, classified materials housed in a DOJ sensitive compartmented information facility (SCIF) may have been moved, with that movement going unaccounted for. Third, a SCIF accessible to Special Counsel Office personnel was left open overnight and possibly longer, which the messages themselves describe as "a violation and incident."

The messages name specific personnel by initials. Julie Edelstein and Carli Rodriguez-Feo appear in the exchange about the access and potential movement of materials. William O'Neil and Rodriguez-Feo appear in the exchange about the open SCIF. Stephanie Van Buskirk, identified in the messages as apparently an assistant to Smith, is cited as the person who opened the SCIF the day before the violation was logged. Molly Gaston and Thomas Windom appear in a third exchange.

"Talk about the pot calling the kettle black," Grassley said in his statement. "According to these messages, Biden DOJ personnel may have committed the very offense for which Jack Smith was prosecuting President Trump."

Smith secured a federal grand jury indictment against Trump for allegedly retaining classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate. That case was dismissed on procedural grounds by Judge Aileen Cannon before going to trial. Smith also obtained a separate indictment against Trump in Washington related to the 2020 election. He dropped that case after Trump won the 2024 presidential election.

The timing and institutional irony are significant. The same office running those prosecutions appears, based on these messages, to have had its own compliance problems with classified material security.

Separately, DOJ accidentally released the second volume of Smith's classified documents report in a related case. According to a legal filing reported by The New Republic on July 2, 2026, DOJ lawyers inadvertently sent the sealed report to defense attorneys for Carmen Lineberger, a defendant charged with stealing the report by emailing it to herself disguised as a cake recipe. The accidental disclosure occurred when discovery materials were turned over on flash drives on June 3. Lineberger's attorneys discovered the documents on June 9 and notified prosecutors. Defense counsel said they stopped reviewing the material, deleted the downloaded files, and returned the drives. DOJ filed a notice with Judge Cannon to disclose the incident.

The strongest objection to Grassley's framing deserves a direct hearing. The messages describe internal compliance concerns — the kind that security officers flag in any large office handling classified material. Administrative SCIF violations, while serious, are not automatically criminal, and they do not necessarily represent intentional mishandling of the kind alleged against Trump. Critics of Grassley's investigation would note that Trump was accused of willfully retaining classified documents after repeated requests to return them, whereas these messages reflect what appear to be procedural lapses reported through normal security channels. There is a legal and factual difference between a SCIF door left open overnight and a former president shipping boxes of classified material to a private club.

Grassley has not claimed these are equivalent crimes. His letter frames the matter as a question of institutional hypocrisy and selective enforcement, not identical conduct.

Grassley gave Blanche a July 22 deadline to respond to specific questions: whether the potentially mishandled classified material was used in the prosecution of Trump, whether the Biden Justice Department conducted any internal investigation into Smith's team after these compliance problems were flagged, and the names and positions of all special counsel and Justice Department staff who were granted access to the classified information. The answers to those questions will determine whether this remains a political embarrassment or becomes something with procedural consequence.