House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan has referred former special counsel Jack Smith to the Justice Department for criminal investigation, alleging Smith lied under oath about whether his team accessed the text messages of dozens of members of Congress.
Jordan sent the referral letter to acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, citing what the Ohio Republican called "strong evidence" that Smith "knowingly made false statements" during a December 17, 2025, closed-door deposition before the committee. The dispute centers on whether Smith's office obtained, and concealed, the contents of text messages belonging to 44 sitting lawmakers, most of them Republicans, while investigating President Donald Trump.
The referral marks a sharp reversal in the legal dynamics surrounding Smith's now-shuttered prosecutions. The former special counsel, appointed by the Biden administration in November 2022 to pursue two federal criminal cases against Trump, resigned in January 2025 after winding down both cases following Trump's re-election. Neither case went to trial. Now Smith himself faces the prospect of a criminal probe, for what he told Congress about how those investigations were conducted.
At the heart of Jordan's referral is a gap between what Smith said under oath and what Justice Department records later revealed. During his eight-hour deposition, Smith was asked directly whether he and his team sought a search warrant for the content of any text messages from members of Congress. His answer: "No, I don't recall." Asked separately whether the records his team requested included the content of phone calls, Smith said "No." Asked the same about text messages, he again said "No."
But documents the DOJ turned over to the committee on July 14 told a different story, Jordan's letter alleges. Those records showed Smith's team had in fact obtained text-message content involving members of Congress, not through a warrant aimed at lawmakers, but through a subpoena to the National Archives targeting White House personnel phone records.
Jordan wrote to Blanche:
"The responses provided by Mr. Smith gave the impression that neither Mr. Smith nor his team had access to the content of Members' privileged text messages. We now know this to be false."
He added that Smith's testimony "seemingly made willfully and intentionally false statements of material fact that contradict new documents obtained by the Committee from the Department of Justice." Jordan urged the DOJ to determine whether Smith violated 18 U.S.C. § 1001, the federal statute that makes it a crime to knowingly and willfully make materially false statements to Congress, Newsmax reported.
The scope of the communications Smith's team accessed has widened considerably since the referral came to light. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley released data showing Smith's investigators reviewed text messages exchanged between Trump White House officials and 44 members of Congress, 40 Republicans and four Democrats, obtained from the National Archives, Fox News reported. Among those whose messages were accessed: Jordan himself, Grassley, former Vice President Mike Pence, Kash Patel, and Ivanka Trump.
Jordan had been investigating Smith's prosecutorial conduct since at least June 2023. In October, he demanded Smith testify after revelations that Smith's team had obtained non-content toll records and communications metadata belonging to nine Republican members of Congress. The December deposition followed.
The distinction between toll records, which capture metadata like call times and durations, and the actual content of text messages is central to the dispute. Jordan contends Smith drew a misleading line during his testimony, answering narrowly about warrant-based requests while failing to disclose that his office had received message content through a separate channel. The referral letter framed this as deliberate obstruction of congressional oversight.
The Washington Examiner reported that Smith's broader investigation, internally dubbed "Arctic Frost", involved 197 subpoenas to 34 individuals and 163 businesses, with records requested on more than 430 individuals and organizations. The investigation appeared to target Republicans disproportionately.
Sen. Ted Cruz put the scale in blunt terms:
"When you have the Biden Department of Justice subpoenaing 20% of the Republicans in the Senate, it is an egregious abuse of process."
Smith's team bypassed a "Filter Team", a group of DOJ attorneys assigned to screen out privileged communications before investigators could review them, and directly accessed the lawmakers' text messages, according to the documents Grassley released. That detail sharpens the question of whether Smith's deposition answers were carefully evasive or flatly dishonest.
The pattern of criminal charges stemming from the broader Jack Smith investigation continues to grow, now ensnaring the former special counsel's own conduct rather than the targets he once pursued.
Smith pushed back through his legal team at the Covington law firm. In a letter to Jordan and Blanche obtained by Axios, his attorneys called the referral "based on a spurious claim that Mr. Smith provided false testimony during his eight-hour deposition."
They argued Jordan's own letter undercuts its central allegation:
"The referral is made not because Mr. Smith made a false statement, the letter concedes he did not, but because he did not proactively disclose information that was not responsive to a question asked."
The Covington lawyers insisted that the toll-record subpoenas discussed during Smith's testimony "sought communications metadata and did not seek the content of calls or text messages." In other words, they contend Smith answered the questions he was asked, and was not obligated to volunteer information about records obtained through a different legal mechanism.
They went further, casting the referral as an attack on prosecutorial independence:
"This referral reflects a chilling eagerness to weaponize the justice system by attacking a career, nonpartisan public servant who faithfully and fearlessly performed his duties by following the facts and the law."
That characterization, "career, nonpartisan public servant", is itself contested. Smith was appointed by Biden's attorney general specifically to pursue criminal cases against the sitting president's chief political rival. Whether that appointment and its execution were nonpartisan is precisely what Jordan's committee has spent two years examining.
The DOJ has confirmed receipt of the referral. A department spokesperson stated it "will investigate all evidence of criminal conduct," AP News reported. That confirmation moves the matter beyond a political gesture and into the investigative pipeline.
Rep. Jamie Raskin, the Maryland Democrat who serves as ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, issued a statement dismissing the referral outright. Raskin accused Republicans of distorting the facts and faulting Smith for failing to read investigators' minds.
"The Republicans fault Mr. Smith for not reading the minds of congressional investigators and for not volunteering information they didn't ask for. This is absurd. Mr. Smith may be telegenic but he is not telepathic."
Raskin predicted the referral would collapse under judicial scrutiny: "This referral, if ever brought before a judge, will get laughed out of court." He said Jordan and Republicans "embarrassed themselves again in this investigation."
But Raskin's confidence may be premature. The question before the DOJ is not whether Smith gave literally false answers to the precise words of each question. It is whether Smith, who knew his team had accessed the content of 44 lawmakers' text messages, deliberately created a false impression by answering narrowly and withholding material information from Congress. Jordan's referral letter put it directly: Smith's conduct "can only be understood as an effort to thwart the Committee's inquiry by intentionally making false statements and representations before Congress."
The DOJ's willingness to open criminal perjury investigations in cases involving Trump-related figures signals that the department under acting AG Blanche is prepared to follow referrals where the evidence leads.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration has already taken steps that signal how seriously it views Smith's conduct. The administration launched a formal review of Smith and his investigations after Trump returned to the White House and ordered the suspension of security clearances held by lawyers at the firm that represented Smith. Trump himself has continually attacked Smith in public.
Jordan's investigation has been building toward this moment for more than two years. The committee chairman first began scrutinizing Smith's prosecutorial decisions in June 2023. The October demand for testimony, the December deposition, and the July document production form a clear investigative arc, each step revealing more about how Smith's office operated and what it chose to tell Congress.
For Democrats who spent years urging prosecutors to pursue Trump through every available legal channel, the reversal carries a particular sting. The special counsel they championed now faces the same investigative machinery he once wielded. And the broader effort to revisit past Democratic legal and political actions against Trump continues to gain momentum on Capitol Hill.
Strip away the legal jargon and the dispute comes down to something any voter can understand. A federal prosecutor obtained the private text messages of 44 elected members of Congress, overwhelmingly from the opposing party, while investigating the president those lawmakers supported. When Congress asked him about it under oath, he said he didn't recall seeking warrants for that content and denied his team had requested it.
Documents released weeks later showed his team had the messages all along.
Whether that sequence amounts to perjury, obstruction, or merely artful evasion is now a question for the Justice Department. The referral is not a conviction. But it is a formal request, backed by documentary evidence, for the DOJ to determine whether a former special counsel broke the law while testifying about an investigation that Democrats have repeatedly used as a political weapon.
Smith's lawyers want the public to believe their client answered every question truthfully and owed Congress nothing more. Jordan's letter argues the opposite, that Smith knew what his team had done, chose not to say so, and hoped no one would find out.
The man who built his career prosecuting others now gets to find out what it feels like when the system turns its attention to him.
