New disclosures released as former Special Counsel Jack Smith testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee show his election investigation obtained 4,782 checks from Trump donors containing sensitive financial information and separately received records containing communications between Trump administration officials and nearly 50 journalists.
By yourNEWS Media Newsroom
Former Special Counsel Jack Smith faced new scrutiny before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday after disclosures showed his federal election investigation obtained at least 4,782 personal checks from Americans who donated to President Donald Trump and Trump-aligned Republican organizations while also receiving records containing communications between Trump administration officials and nearly 50 journalists.
The two disclosures broaden the known scope of the federal investigation known as Arctic Frost, which ultimately developed into Smith’s criminal investigation of Trump over efforts to challenge the results of the 2020 presidential election.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, released information Tuesday that he said was obtained through legally protected whistleblowers. According to the committee’s disclosure, Smith’s team acquired at least 4,782 checks belonging to donors from all 50 states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico.
The checks included donations as small as $1 and covered transactions between September 2019 and August 2023, according to the committee.
Because personal checks contain more information than simply the amount and recipient of a contribution, the records provided federal investigators with access to donors’ names, home addresses, bank account numbers, routing numbers and signatures.
Grassley’s office said additional subpoena returns could contain more donor checks, meaning the 4,782 identified so far may not represent the final total.
The committee said the records were acquired as part of Arctic Frost and routed to then-FBI Special Agent Walter Giardina.
The disclosure does not establish that the individual donors themselves were targets or suspects in Smith’s investigation. Rather, their checks were among the financial records obtained during the broader investigation of Trump and organizations associated with him.
Grassley challenged Smith directly over the records during Tuesday’s Judiciary Committee hearing.
“There’s no legitimate basis for what you did. Especially since your staff killed an investigation into the Clinton campaign,” Grassley said.
“Donations to Republican groups wasn’t necessary to your investigation, which is proved out by the fact it wasn’t mentioned in your public report.
“Now, the Justice Department and FBI will forever possess thousands of people’s addresses, phone numbers, banks, bank account numbers, bank routing numbers and copies of their true signatures. Every member on this committee ought to be outraged for what happened to their constituents.
“Which one of my Democratic colleagues will join me in that outrage?”
Smith defended his investigations during Tuesday’s hearing and rejected Republican accusations that his decisions were politically motivated. He has maintained that investigative steps taken by his office were based on evidence and carried out through lawful Justice Department procedures.
A separate disclosure Tuesday raised questions about communications involving journalists.
Investigators working for Smith obtained records that contained exchanges between nearly 50 journalists and officials in Trump’s first administration, according to a Fox News report citing a spokesperson for Grassley and whistleblower disclosures provided to the committee.
The records did not result from subpoenas directed at the journalists themselves, according to the information disclosed Tuesday.
Instead, Smith’s investigators subpoenaed records held by the National Archives associated with 87 White House phones from Trump’s first administration. Communications involving journalists appeared among the material returned in response to that subpoena.
That distinction means the journalists’ communications were swept into the investigation through government records associated with White House devices rather than through a direct demand to the news organizations for reporters’ records.
The material nevertheless gave investigators access to communications involving reporters from a wide range of national news organizations.
Fox News personnel were included, along with journalists affiliated with CNN, CBS News and “60 Minutes,” NBC News and CNBC.
The records also contained communications involving journalists from The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Bloomberg, the Los Angeles Times, New York Magazine, Reuters, The Associated Press, NPR, The Federalist and The Washington Times.
Grassley questioned the breadth of the collection and its implications for communications between government officials and members of the press.
The Senate Judiciary Committee Republicans also highlighted the disclosure publicly as Smith appeared before lawmakers.
The disclosures involving journalists follow earlier congressional revelations showing that Arctic Frost investigators obtained communications and telephone-related records involving Republican lawmakers and other figures connected to Trump.
Those previous findings have led Republican lawmakers to investigate how Smith’s office, the FBI and telecommunications companies handled records belonging to members of Congress and whether appropriate procedures were followed before investigators reviewed potentially protected communications.
Tuesday’s donor-check disclosure raises a different privacy question because the affected Americans were primarily individual political contributors rather than elected officials or people publicly identified as subjects of the investigation.
According to Grassley’s committee, the nearly 5,000 checks gave federal investigators access to financial and personal identifiers belonging to people whose connection to the investigation was that they had contributed money to Trump or Republican organizations.
The committee has not alleged that all of those donors were individually investigated for criminal conduct.
That distinction was central to Grassley’s criticism of Smith.
The Iowa Republican argued that obtaining records from thousands of contributors went beyond what was necessary to investigate alleged attempts to interfere with certification of the 2020 election results.
Smith and his defenders have rejected the broader Republican characterization of Arctic Frost as a politically motivated operation. Smith has said throughout congressional scrutiny of his work that his team pursued evidence relevant to the federal investigation and that politics did not determine whom prosecutors investigated or what evidence they sought.
The Arctic Frost investigation began before Smith was appointed special counsel.
Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Smith in November 2022 to oversee the Justice Department’s investigations involving Trump, including the federal investigation of efforts to overturn the 2020 election and a separate investigation involving classified documents retained at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago property.
The election investigation eventually resulted in a federal indictment accusing Trump of participating in a conspiracy to overturn his 2020 election defeat.
Trump pleaded not guilty and repeatedly characterized Smith’s prosecution as politically motivated.
The case never went to trial.
After Trump won the 2024 presidential election, Smith moved to dismiss the federal prosecutions under longstanding Justice Department policy against criminally prosecuting a sitting president.
Congressional investigations have continued examining how Smith and the FBI conducted the underlying investigations, particularly the collection of communications, telephone metadata and other records involving lawmakers, political organizations and Trump associates.
Tuesday’s revelations extend those questions to two additional groups: political donors and journalists.
For the donors, the issue involves thousands of physical checks that potentially exposed bank account information, routing numbers, residential addresses and signatures.
For journalists, the concern centers on government investigators receiving records containing communications with officials inside the White House while examining Trump and his associates.
The presence of journalist communications in subpoenaed White House records does not by itself establish that Smith’s prosecutors were investigating reporters or targeting them because of their reporting.
It does establish, according to Fox News and Grassley’s office, that communications involving nearly 50 journalists were contained in records obtained by the special counsel’s investigation.
Likewise, federal investigators obtaining a donor’s check does not establish that the donor was suspected of a crime.
Grassley’s objection is that the government acquired sensitive financial information belonging to thousands of political contributors who were not identified in Smith’s public report as participants in alleged criminal conduct.
The chairman said the disclosure raises questions about why such a broad collection was necessary and what will happen to the financial information now that Smith’s prosecution has ended.
The extent of that collection could grow.
Grassley’s office said investigators acquired “at least” 4,782 checks and cautioned that additional subpoena returns could contain further donor records.
The disclosed checks span almost four years, from September 2019 through August 2023, covering periods before and after the 2020 presidential election as well as the opening of Smith’s special counsel investigation.
With Smith appearing publicly before the Judiciary Committee Tuesday, Republicans used the new records to press him on whether the scope of Arctic Frost exceeded legitimate investigative requirements.
Smith, meanwhile, maintained his broader defense that his team’s work was evidence-driven and conducted within the law.
The confrontation leaves Congress examining not only Smith’s ultimately dismissed prosecution of Trump but the investigative methods used to build it — including how prosecutors came to possess the private financial details of nearly 5,000 political donors and government records containing communications involving dozens of journalists.
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