Sen. Bill Hagerty filed a professional conduct complaint against former special counsel Jack Smith following contentious Senate testimony over subpoenas and congressional communications obtained during the federal investigation into President Donald Trump.
By yourNEWS Media Newsroom
Sen. Bill Hagerty, R-Tenn., filed a professional misconduct complaint Wednesday against former special counsel Jack Smith, escalating Republican scrutiny of the prosecutor one day after Smith defended his investigations of President Donald Trump before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Hagerty said he submitted the complaint to the Board of Professional Responsibility of the Supreme Court of Tennessee, which oversees attorney discipline in the state where Smith is licensed to practice law.
“I filed a bar complaint against Jack Smith this morning. He’s a blatantly partisan actor and his prosecutorial misconduct damaged our constitutional order. He should never be able to practice law again,” Hagerty said Wednesday.
Those accusations represent Hagerty’s allegations. Filing a bar complaint does not establish professional misconduct, and the Tennessee disciplinary process will determine whether further action is warranted.
The complaint focuses heavily on records obtained during the federal investigation known as Arctic Frost, which preceded and became part of Smith’s investigation into Trump’s efforts to challenge the results of the 2020 presidential election.
Republican senators have accused Smith and investigators working under him of improperly obtaining telephone records and communications involving members of Congress.
Records released by the Senate Judiciary Committee in July showed that investigators obtained text messages involving 44 members of the House and Senate through records acquired from the National Archives.
The committee said the communications included messages sent between members of Congress and White House officials during Trump’s first term and alleged investigators reviewed some material before it underwent a separate filter process intended to identify privileged communications.
Republicans have argued that some of those communications may have been protected by the Constitution’s Speech or Debate Clause, which shields lawmakers from questioning over legitimate legislative activity.
Smith has disputed allegations that his investigation improperly targeted members of Congress because of their political affiliation.
During Tuesday’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Smith said his prosecutors were investigating potential criminal conduct surrounding efforts to overturn the 2020 election and sought records they considered relevant to determining who Trump and people around him were communicating with during the period leading to and including Jan. 6, 2021.
Smith acknowledged that his team possessed communications involving members of Congress but rejected Republican assertions that lawmakers themselves were necessarily targets of the investigation.
The hearing became a broader examination of Smith’s two federal prosecutions of Trump — one involving the 2020 election and Jan. 6 and another involving classified documents retained at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence after he left office.
Smith repeatedly denied that partisan politics influenced either prosecution.
According to Reuters’ account of the hearing, Smith told senators that he would have pursued the cases against any former president if presented with the same evidence and defended his office’s investigative decisions as consistent with Justice Department practices.
Republican senators rejected that explanation.
Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, questioned Smith about congressional communications, financial records and other information gathered during the investigation.
Grassley said records provided to Congress indicated that Smith’s team obtained communications involving lawmakers and argued investigators did not properly protect material that could have been privileged.
Smith responded that investigators had legal authority for their actions and said subpoenas and warrants used during the investigation were subject to judicial oversight where required.
The dispute over congressional communications has been developing for months.
Earlier disclosures showed that Smith’s investigation sought telephone metadata associated with several Republican lawmakers, including information identifying the time, recipient and duration of calls.
Such toll records generally do not contain the spoken contents of a telephone conversation.
Hagerty was among the Republican lawmakers whose records were obtained.
In February, he filed a separate complaint with the Federal Communications Commission against Verizon, accusing the telecommunications company of improperly providing his records to federal investigators.
Hagerty argued that Verizon should have challenged the government’s demand rather than complying with it.
Republicans subsequently focused on another category of information: actual text-message content involving lawmakers that investigators obtained through the National Archives rather than directly from their personal phones.
That distinction became a major subject during Smith’s Tuesday testimony.
Smith previously testified that his prosecutors did not obtain the contents of lawmakers’ messages through certain telecommunications subpoenas. Republican senators contend later disclosures show his office nevertheless acquired congressional message content through other investigative channels.
Smith said Tuesday that the two issues were being conflated and maintained that his earlier answers concerned specific requests for telephone records.
He also acknowledged that a search warrant involving the phone of Rep. Scott Perry, R-Pa., had been obtained before Smith became special counsel.
Smith was appointed special counsel in November 2022 by then-Attorney General Merrick Garland to oversee federal investigations involving Trump.
His office ultimately brought two criminal cases.
A Washington case charged Trump with conspiring to overturn the 2020 election and obstructing the certification of electoral votes.
A separate Florida prosecution charged Trump with unlawfully retaining classified national defense documents after leaving office and obstructing government efforts to recover them.
Trump denied wrongdoing in both cases and repeatedly described Smith’s investigations as politically motivated.
Neither case resulted in a trial.
The classified documents case was dismissed in 2024 by U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, who ruled Smith’s appointment violated the Constitution. Smith appealed that decision before later withdrawing the prosecution after Trump won the 2024 presidential election.
The election-related case was also dismissed after Trump’s victory because longstanding Justice Department policy prohibits the federal prosecution of a sitting president.
Smith resigned from the Justice Department in January 2025 after completing his work as special counsel.
Republican lawmakers have continued investigating his office’s conduct since returning to congressional majorities.
In 2025, Hagerty and several other Republicans asked the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility to investigate Smith over the collection of lawmakers’ telephone records and urged authorities in Tennessee and New York to consider professional discipline.
Hagerty’s new filing goes directly to the Tennessee attorney disciplinary authority.
The Tennessee Rules of Professional Conduct prohibit attorneys from knowingly using evidence-gathering methods that violate another person’s legal rights and establish broader professional standards governing lawyer conduct.
Hagerty alleges Smith crossed those boundaries while directing the Trump investigation.
Smith has maintained that his team acted lawfully and followed established Justice Department procedures.
Tuesday’s Senate hearing demonstrated how sharply the two sides continue to disagree.
Republicans accused Smith of abusing prosecutorial authority, violating constitutional protections and using federal investigative powers against Trump and his political allies.
Democrats defended the former special counsel and argued that prosecutors were investigating an unprecedented attempt to interfere with the lawful transfer of presidential power following the 2020 election.
Smith told senators that politics did not determine his prosecutorial decisions.
The Tennessee disciplinary board will now have the opportunity to review Hagerty’s allegations separately from the congressional investigation.
Possible attorney-discipline proceedings can range from dismissal of a complaint to private or public sanctions and, in the most serious cases, suspension or disbarment.
No disciplinary finding against Smith has been announced in connection with Hagerty’s filing.
The complaint nevertheless opens another front in the continuing dispute over Smith’s investigations, shifting part of the fight from congressional oversight to the professional licensing system governing Smith’s ability to practice law.
Original article
Comments