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Phone records of sitting members of Congress were secretly obtained in a way that blocked lawmakers from invoking constitutional protections, Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, alleged Tuesday during a hearing.
Grassley, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., who is leading the hearing, signaled that their panel planned to grill hearing witnesses, who included executives from Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile, about the disclosure of the phone data.
Grassley noted in his opening remarks that the three companies received a total of 10 subpoenas for 20 current or former Republican Congress members related to Arctic Frost, the FBI probe that led to Smith bringing charges against President Donald Trump over the 2020 election.
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Blackburn, in her opening remarks, called the disclosures an “invasion of privacy and violation of our constitutional rights.” Blackburn pointed to the speech or debate clause, which gives Congress members an added layer of protection from prosecution.
“It’s critical that each of these carriers go on the record about the decisions they made and why — or why not — they enabled with Jack Smith’s weaponization of government,” Blackburn said.
The hearing will offer the first public opportunity for Republican committee members, several of whom had a narrow set of their phone data turned over to Smith’s team, to seek answers from each of the phone carriers on how they handled the subpoenas upon receiving them.
Grassley noted that a federal statute said phone carriers cannot be barred from giving notice to a Senate office about a subpoena unless the member is the target of an investigation. He also said Verizon, in particular, was under a contract that required it to notify the Senate Sergeant at Arms about subpoenas related to senators.
The subpoenas were accompanied by court-authorized gag orders, which ordered the phone companies not to alert the senators to the records request. Blackburn, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, are among those on the committee who had their records subpoenaed as part of Arctic Frost.
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While the phone companies come under scrutiny, Grassley also blamed Smith. Smith received the greenlight from DOJ’s Public Integrity Section to seek the senators’ records as part of his investigation, according to emails, but an official from the section also floated that the subpoenas could expose the DOJ to constitutional challenges.
“Smith and his team irresponsibly steam0rolled ahead while intentionally hiding their activity from Members of Congress. … Smith’s deceitful conduct was a substantial intrusion into the core constitutional activity of constitutional officers,” Grassley said.
Smith, meanwhile, has repeatedly defended the subpoenas, pointing out that they aligned with DOJ policies at the time.
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