Rep. Jim Jordan told Fox News on Wednesday that former special counsel Jack Smith's investigators obtained and read private text messages belonging to 44 members of Congress, and did so without the screening required to protect constitutionally privileged communications. Jordan, an Ohio Republican, said Congress is now weighing whether to refer Smith to Attorney General Blanche for criminal prosecution.
The disclosure lands as Senate Republicans release Department of Justice records they say prove Smith's team bypassed its own internal filter protocols during its federal investigation of former President Donald Trump. The records, obtained by the Senate Judiciary Committee, have turned what began as an oversight inquiry into a full-blown constitutional confrontation between the legislative and executive branches.
Jordan laid out the scope of the alleged breach during an appearance on Sean Hannity's program. When Hannity asked whether the surveillance amounted to a violation of constitutional rights, Jordan answered with a single word: "Yes." He then confirmed he was personally caught up in it.
"They got my phone logs. There were 44 members of the United States Congress, me, senators, members of the House, even some Democrats, a handful of Democrats were caught up in this. And again, this, you can't do that. As Senator Hawley just said, this is a separation of powers issue. There's a speech or debate clause. It was supposed to be filtered and screened. It wasn't. It was just given from the National Archives to Jack Smith's team."
The Speech or Debate Clause, Article I, Section 6 of the Constitution, shields members of Congress from being questioned by the executive branch about their legislative acts. It exists precisely to prevent the kind of intrusion Jordan described: a prosecutor rooting through a lawmaker's private communications without constitutional guardrails.
The investigation in question, known internally as "Operation Arctic Frost," relied on subpoenas to the National Archives for White House phone records spanning October 2020 through January 20, 2022. Those records included text messages from phones used by senior Trump administration officials, including former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, former Vice President Mike Pence, Rudy Giuliani, and others, as the Washington Examiner reported.
Smith's office had established its own internal "Filter Team", a standard DOJ mechanism designed to screen out privileged material before prosecutors could review it. The newly released records show that team was bypassed. Smith's investigators directly accessed 54 Excel files of text messages from White House phones, according to DOJ documents released to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley and Senate Investigations Subcommittee Chairman Ron Johnson.
Grassley did not mince words. He and Johnson jointly characterized the findings in stark terms.
As Fox News reported, Grassley stated:
"Jack Smith's criminal investigation of President Trump was a runaway train that had no brakes."
Johnson called it "yet another grotesque example of the Biden administration's weaponization of the Justice Department."
The pattern of classified material lapses inside Smith's office is not new to Grassley, who has previously flagged security failures within the special counsel's operation itself.
Perhaps the most politically dangerous element for Smith is the gap between what the DOJ records show and what he told Congress under oath. Jordan pointed directly at the contradiction on Hannity's program:
"Jack Smith under oath says, 'No, no, we didn't get any contents.' Well, shazam, it looks like they did. And it looks like he wasn't square with us when he testified in front of our committee."
Smith sat for a deposition before the House Judiciary Committee in December 2025. When asked whether the records his team requested from members of Congress included text message contents, he answered "no," Just The News reported. The newly released DOJ documents tell a different story, one in which Smith's team not only obtained but reviewed the contents of those messages.
If Smith's sworn denial is contradicted by his own department's records, the question moves from political embarrassment to potential criminal liability. Jordan made clear that Congress is not treating this as a theoretical problem.
"Do we need to refer him to the Justice Department, to Attorney General Blanche for them to go ahead and move forward with prosecution? We're looking at that as we speak," Jordan said.
The prospect of a former special counsel facing a criminal referral from the very lawmakers whose communications he allegedly surveilled without authorization is extraordinary, but so is the underlying conduct, if the DOJ records are accurate.
Jordan also raised a separate but related matter involving former Speaker Kevin McCarthy. He alleged that just 16 days after McCarthy became Speaker of the House, Smith obtained McCarthy's phone records directly from his carrier, without a warrant.
"Jack Smith knew who he called, who called him, when the call took place, how long the call lasted. He can pattern someone's life. Who's the speaker of the House talking to before big votes, after big votes? Well, that is just wrong."
The implications are not subtle. A federal prosecutor building a case against a former president simultaneously obtained the call records of the highest-ranking Republican in government, the official second in the line of presidential succession. Jordan framed this as a direct violation of separation of powers, not merely a procedural misstep.
The broader pattern of legal misconduct tied to the Smith probe continues to widen as more records surface.
The 44 lawmakers whose texts were accessed include 40 Republicans and four Democrats, according to DOJ records released to the Senate. Among the Republican members identified in the records are senior figures: Grassley himself, Sen. Susan Collins, Sen. Tom Cotton, Rep. Steve Scalise, and Rep. Elise Stefanik.
Stefanik, now the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, responded sharply. She said Smith's team "unlawfully and unconstitutionally accessed my private text messages, along with 43 other Members of Congress, in clear violation of the Constitution," as the New York Post reported.
Sen. Josh Hawley was blunter. "Joe Biden's DOJ not only tapped my phone; I just learned they ILLEGALLY obtained my texts with members of President Trump's administration. Everyone involved needs to be PROSECUTED," Hawley said.
Sen. Rand Paul called it "a blatant abuse of power, and exactly what our Founders warned about."
That a handful of Democrats were also caught in the net has complicated any effort to dismiss the revelations as partisan overreach. When a prosecutor's surveillance sweeps up members of both parties without constitutional safeguards, the problem belongs to the institution of Congress itself, not to one caucus.
Jordan's statement that Congress is actively considering a criminal referral to Attorney General Blanche places the matter squarely in the executive branch's hands. A referral is not a charge, but it carries political weight, particularly when the underlying allegation involves a former prosecutor who may have misled Congress under oath.
Grassley has announced plans to subpoena Smith before the Senate Judiciary Committee to answer for the surveillance. Whether Smith cooperates, invokes privilege, or fights the subpoena will shape the next phase of the confrontation.
Several questions remain unanswered. Neither Smith nor his representatives have publicly responded to the allegations. The National Archives has not addressed Jordan's claim that it transferred materials to Smith's team without filtering. And no formal perjury finding has been issued, Jordan's language was careful, saying it "looks like" Smith was not truthful, stopping short of a definitive accusation.
But the DOJ's own records, now in congressional hands, appear to contradict Smith's sworn testimony. That is not a matter of interpretation. It is a matter of documentary evidence versus a statement made under oath.
The investigation also raises questions about the broader apparatus of federal law enforcement during the Biden era. The same period saw grand jury subpoenas targeting senior intelligence officials and a string of legal proceedings involving former officials who mishandled sensitive government material, a pattern that suggests institutional accountability failures far beyond any single prosecutor's office.
Jordan, for his part, offered a maxim he said applies to every investigation he has conducted: "The one thing we always get wrong is that it's always worse than we thought."
If the DOJ records hold up under further scrutiny, this may prove to be one more case where that rule applies. A special counsel charged with upholding the law appears to have trampled the constitutional protections of the very branch of government responsible for writing it.
When prosecutors start reading lawmakers' private messages and then deny it under oath, the country doesn't have a legal dispute. It has a accountability crisis, and the people who created it should not be the last ones to face consequences.
