Jack Smith spent $23 million of your money hunting Donald Trump.
What his team did while spending that money just became a federal problem.
What Todd Blanche admitted he doesn't know should terrify every senator in that room.
John Kennedy Grills Todd Blanche on Jack Smith Spying on Senator Emails
At Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche's Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing, Senator John Kennedy cut straight to the chase.
"Did Jack Smith read my emails?" Kennedy asked.
Blanche chuckled. "I'm not sure, Senator. I don't know."
Kennedy pressed again. "Would you check for me?"
"We will check, Senator, yes," Blanche said.
That wasn't enough for Kennedy. He wanted Grassley's emails accounted for too – how Smith got them, what was in them, whether Merrick Garland ever saw any of it. Kennedy asked Blanche four separate times whether he could investigate and report back.
Each time, Blanche said he would look into it.
"Yeah, I'd kinda like to know all that," Kennedy said.
Jack Smith Read Text Messages From 44 Members of Congress After Bypassing DOJ Safeguards
Senators Chuck Grassley and Ron Johnson released Justice Department records showing Smith's investigative team accessed the contents of text messages belonging to 44 members of Congress sent between October 2020 and January 20, 2021.
Smith's operation had a Filter Team for exactly this reason. An internal protocol document states that "all communication to/from the Filter Team must go through the Coordinator" – meaning nothing reached investigators without a filter attorney's approval first.
Smith's team bypassed it entirely.
When the National Archives delivered the texts in August 2023, senior attorney Thomas Windom downloaded them within 30 minutes. Other members of Smith's investigative team began reviewing them within the hour.
The subpoena had targeted phones belonging to Trump, Ivanka Trump, Mike Pence, Mark Meadows, Kash Patel, John Ratcliffe, Stephen Miller, Peter Navarro, and others from Trump's first-term White House. The lawmakers' messages were swept up in that haul.
Jack Smith Told Congress Under Oath He Never Read Senator Text Messages
In December 2025, Smith sat before the House Judiciary Committee under oath. A committee lawyer asked him directly: "Did the records that you requested from the Member of Congress include the content of text messages?"
Smith's answer: "No."
He repeated the denial. He described obtaining only "toll records" – bare metadata showing who called whom and when, nothing more.
Grassley posted the discrepancy on X. "December 2025: Jack Smith swore under oath that he didn't spy on text messages belonging to members of Congress. Today: New evidence confirms he spied on dozens of members of Congress, myself included."
Senator Josh Hawley posted three words on X: "Looks like perjury."
Lying under oath to Congress is a federal crime carrying up to five years in prison. Joe Biden's wave of preemptive pardons covered Anthony Fauci, Mark Milley, and the members of the January 6 committee. Jack Smith was not on the list.
Arctic Frost Investigation Exposed DOJ Weaponization on a Massive Scale
Project Coconut – the internal name for Smith's January 6 investigation – deployed more than 200 publicly paid staff across the FBI, DOJ, and National Archives. The Filter Team alone ran more than 50 DOJ staffers for over a year, reviewing some 15 million documents.
The operation issued 197 subpoenas touching more than 430 Republican individuals and organizations, many shielded behind court-approved gag orders that prevented targets from telling anyone what was happening to them.
Internal emails show prosecutors were warned that congressional subpoenas could violate the Constitution's Speech and Debate Clause – the provision that specifically protects lawmakers' communications from executive branch interference. Smith's team got those warnings and kept going anyway.
"Jack Smith's criminal investigation of President Trump was a runaway train that had no brakes," Grassley said. "Smith's team ran roughshod over the Constitution even after repeated warnings."
The Acting Attorney General of the United States sat before the Senate Judiciary Committee and could not say whether a federal prosecutor read a sitting senator's private messages without probable cause.
Grassley is bringing Smith back in to answer for it. Perjury before Congress carries five years. And Jack Smith – conspicuously absent from Biden's pardon list – has nowhere left to hide.
- Chuck Grassley, Senate Judiciary Committee Press Release, "Jack Smith's Investigative Team Secretly Obtained Text Messages from 44 Members of Congress Amid Trump Probe," Senate Judiciary Committee, July 14, 2026.
- Ron Johnson, "Chairmen Johnson, Grassley Release Records," U.S. Senator Ron Johnson, July 14, 2026.
- John Solomon, "Jack Smith Team Viewed Messages Involving 44 Lawmakers," Just the News / Hannity.com, July 14, 2026.
- Paul Bedard, "Jack Smith's Team Spied on 44 Lawmakers' Texts, Built a Case on Them, and Misled Congress," Washington Examiner, July 15, 2026.
- Zachary Leeman, "John Kennedy Asks Blanche Four Times If Jack Smith Spied on Him," Mediaite, July 15, 2026.
- Staff, "New Bombshell Docs Prove Jack Smith Accessed Text Messages to Spy on Dozens of GOP Lawmakers," American Greatness, July 14, 2026.