Newly released documents reveal that former Special Counsel Jack Smith authorized the FBI to surveil the private phone communications of nearly a dozen Republican senators during his hyper-partisan January 6 investigation. This is a blatant abuse of power that underscores the relentless lawfare campaign waged by Biden-era legal activists against Donald Trump and his allies.
“Jack Smith was not only unconstitutionally appointed as we argued; He engaged in unlawful surveillance of GOP senators that should be subject to possible prosecution,” said NLPC counsel Paul Kamenar.
According to FBI records obtained by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), agents under Smith’s direction used court orders in 2023 to seize and analyze call records from key GOP lawmakers, including Sens. Ron Johnson (R-WI), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Mike Lee (R-UT), and others.
The surveillance zeroed in on their communications with Trump on the evening of January 6, 2021, as the Capitol riot unfolded. FBI analysts pored over these logs, mapping out who spoke to whom and when, all in pursuit of charges against the former president.
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) didn’t mince words, blasting it as “Biden’s Stasi” tactics—evoking the East German secret police’s infamous eavesdropping on political foes. “This is abuse of power beyond Watergate,” Hawley fumed, highlighting how the “Arctic Frost” sub-investigation (tied to Smith’s elector scheme case) ensnared innocent senators in a dragnet.
This revelation is the latest chapter in a sordid saga of weaponized justice. Smith, purportedly a career prosecutor, has a history of partisanship. He filed two indictments against the former president: the classified documents case, dismissed on presidential immunity grounds, and the January 6 “insurrection” probe, now mired in delays and appeals. These weren’t impartial inquiries. They were timed to hobble Trump’s 2024 campaign, filed just months before the election. And who can forget Smith’s push for a gag order, stifling the former president’s free speech during his campaign.
Recall the FBI’s raid on Rudy Giuliani’s home, or the indictments of Trump aides like Jeff Clark— all orchestrated by the same network of Justice Department holdovers and activist judges. Smith’s team even subpoenaed journalists and tech giants. It’s not hyperbole to call it a soft coup: unelected prosecutors wielding surveillance like a cudgel against elected Republicans. As Hawley notes, if this happened to Democrats, the media outrage would be deafening. Yet crickets from the likes of CNN and MSNBC who deride Trump daily as an “authoritarian.”
From the outset of Smith’s probe, we maintained that his appointment was unconstitutional under the Appointments Clause. We asserted that Attorney General Merrick Garland‘s selection of him as special counsel bypassed Senate confirmation requirements, much like the flawed Mueller probe we legally challenged years earlier. In July 2024, Judge Aileen Cannon vindicated our long-held view.
In November 2024, we demanded that Smith “close shop” and drop his dual indictments against Trump, as they were nothing more than “lawfare” designed to kneecap Republican candidacies and erode fair elections. After Trump’s 2024 victory, we blasted Smith’s January 2025 report on election interference as a “final potshot”—a weak, evidence-light parting shot from a discredited operative, timed to smear the incoming president.
And now we learn that Smith’s abuses went even deeper.
