Records Show Jack Smith's Team Reviewed Text Messages From 44 Members of Congress, Senate GOP Probe Finds

Text messages belonging to 44 members of Congress were obtained and reviewed by former special counsel Jack Smith's investigative team without going through a required filter process first, according to findings released Tuesday by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley and Senate Investigations Subcommittee Chairman Ron Johnson.

The records come from a Senate Republican investigation into what Grassley and Johnson call Operation Arctic Frost, the internal code name for Smith's probe into President Donald Trump over alleged 2020 election interference. The two chairmen, both Republicans, jointly released the underlying documents, which they say were turned over by the Trump Justice Department.

Prosecutors handling sensitive material, especially anything touching attorney-client privilege or protected legislative communications, are typically required to route it through a separate 'filter team' before the main investigative team ever sees it. That team's job is to screen out material the prosecutors shouldn't have access to before it reaches them.

Grassley and Johnson say the records show Smith's team 'circumvented its own filter review process' when it came to congressional communications, meaning investigators may have seen lawmakers' texts before anyone checked whether they were legally off-limits.

What Stefanik Is Alleging

Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., one of the 44 lawmakers whose messages were reviewed, said in a statement that Smith's team 'unlawfully and unconstitutionally accessed my private text messages, along with 43 other Members of Congress, in clear violation of the Constitution.'

Stefanik pointed to the Constitution's speech and debate clause, which shields members of Congress from being questioned 'in any other place' for legislative acts performed in Congress. Courts have extended that protection over time to cover internal communications, including electronic records, as technology evolved.

Stefanik said she had long suspected lawmakers were being surveilled and views the new documents as confirmation.

What's Proven, What's Alleged

It is documented, according to Grassley and Johnson's release, that Smith's team obtained text records from 44 members of Congress and that the standard filter-team review did not happen first for that material. That part is a paper trail, not a theory.

What remains an allegation, not a court finding, is whether that bypass amounts to a "constitutional violation" as Stefanik describes it. No court has ruled on the question in this case. No charges have been filed against Smith or anyone on his team over this specific conduct. No indictment, no bar complaint outcome, no judicial finding currently exists establishing that a speech-or-debate violation occurred.

That doesn't make Stefanik's concern illegitimate. The speech and debate clause exists precisely to stop the executive branch from using investigative power to chill or punish legislative activity, and a filter-team bypass, if it happened the way Grassley and Johnson describe, is exactly the kind of process failure the clause's protections are designed to catch early. Whether it rises to a constitutional violation, or was an internal procedural lapse that gets sorted out through DOJ review, is genuinely unresolved.

Grassley called the episode further proof that Smith's probe was a "runaway train" of abuses of power. Senate Republicans on the investigations subcommittee have described Operation Arctic Frost overall as "worse than Watergate," a characterization that is itself a political judgment, not an established legal fact.

The Other Side of the Filter-Team Question

Filter teams exist because investigators routinely have to sift enormous volumes of digital evidence quickly, and courts have long recognized that some incidental exposure to privileged material is difficult to avoid entirely in large document productions. Smith's team was reviewing what Grassley and Johnson's own release describes as millions of documents. A process breakdown in a haystack that large doesn't automatically prove intent to target lawmakers specifically. Smith has not issued a response addressing this specific 44-lawmaker filter-team claim, and neither the Fox News report nor the Grassley-Johnson release includes one.

What Happens Next

The Senate Judiciary Committee and the Investigations Subcommittee are continuing to dig through the Arctic Frost documents. Smith appeared for a closed-door deposition before the House Judiciary Committee on Dec. 17, 2025, and has faced ongoing congressional scrutiny since.

Whether any of this results in a referral to the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility, a bar complaint, or simply more hearings depends on what the rest of the document production shows. For now, the concrete fact is 44 lawmakers had their texts reviewed outside the normal safeguard process. Everything beyond that, including whether it was deliberate targeting or a large-scale review process that broke down under its own volume, is still an open question Congress has not resolved.