A shocking new wave of documents from Senator Chuck Grassley’s Judiciary Committee has ripped back the curtain on former Special Counsel Jack Smith’s “Arctic Frost” investigation, revealing a chilling campaign of political weaponization. The Biden administration, through Smith’s actions, twisted justice in the name of politics, and the resulting damage demands an anti-weaponization fund to compensate the numerous victims of a far-reaching Department of Justice.
Last week, Senator Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, unveiled a tranche of documents confirming that Smith — the unconstitutionally-named former special counsel — and his team brazenly seized communications from no fewer than 17 news outlets, including The Federalist. This corrupt investigation, clearly aimed at dismantling then-former President Donald Trump, also targeted nearly 50 journalists, including The Federalist’s Editor-In-Chief Mollie Hemingway.
The Arctic Frost investigators didn't stop there. They also sought subpoenas to obtain nearly 5,000 checks written by Trump donors, a revelation Grassley made public ahead of a Judiciary Committee hearing where Smith himself testified.
In his powerful opening statement, Senator Grassley declared that Smith’s operation “blew through constitutional stop signs.” Shockingly, the prosecutor’s team secretly seized text messages from more than 40 members of Congress — including Grassley himself.
“Jack Smith’s operation was a runaway political train that improperly obtained congressional information,” Grassley stated, exposing the blatant disregard for fundamental rights.
Senator Ron Johnson, R-Wis., chairman of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, rightly called Smith’s probe “another grotesque example of the Biden administration’s weaponization of the Justice Department.” Senator Johnson, too, found himself a target of this invasive surveillance.
Further compounding the scandal, Senator Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., recently filed a lawsuit alleging that the disgraced former prosecutor unlawfully seized her cell phone records. Smith also issued a non-disclosure order, preventing Blackburn and her congressional colleagues from discovering the extent of the spying. Blackburn’s lawsuit charges that Smith and his operatives deliberately withheld from the presiding judge the crucial fact that their subpoenas targeted a sitting senator’s records.
Blackburn’s legal challenge mirrors Federal Judge Aileen Cannon’s earlier ruling, which deemed Smith’s appointment by then-Attorney General Merrick Garland unconstitutional. Judge Cannon concluded that Smith was illegally appointed as special counsel to pursue a bogus classified documents case against President Trump, reinforcing the pattern of overreach.
“He subpoenaed a sitting senator’s tolling records in secret, a blatant violation of the Speech or Debate Clause,” explained Margaret Harker, senior Litigation Counsel at the New Civil Liberties Alliance, the public-interest law firm representing Blackburn. “He obtained a nondisclosure order to ensure Sen. Blackburn would never find out about it — he did not disclose the relevant facts of the NDO.
During the hearing, Smith, with an utterly straight face, claimed he stood by his decisions, including bringing four federal counts against Trump for allegedly attempting to overturn the results of the rigged 2020 election. “I made these decisions without regard to President Trump’s political association, activities, beliefs, or candidacy in the 2024 presidential election,” Smith asserted — a statement that will undoubtedly elicit a knowing chuckle from anyone observing the unfolding lawfare.
The documents uncovered in these congressional investigations paint a clear picture of an overzealous, partisan actor who abused power he legally did not possess. Smith relentlessly pursued the Democrats' number one political enemy and his allies, bastardizing laws and exploiting a phony “insurrection” narrative to achieve his ends.
Sean Davis, co-founder and CEO of The Federalist, emphasized that these shocking revelations prove Smith wasn’t merely attempting to bankrupt and imprison Donald Trump for life. He wasn’t just doing the bidding of the Democratic Party in their relentless quest to rig the 2024 election through weaponization.
“It turns out he was also spying on us,” Davis revealed. “And [Smith] in trying to roll up the entire conservative movement was also Hoovering up communications from journalists.”
Mollie Hemingway expressed her outrage on her X account, stating she was “sickened by this news that my journalistic communications were obtained as part of Jack Smith’s egregious misconduct.” She added, “Proud to have been one of the only journalists who debunked his agency’s role in perpetrating the Russia collusion lie against the American people.”
Davis noted that it remains unclear how deeply the corrupt federal investigation delved into The Federalist’s communications, whether the access was incidental or a targeted operation. “Was he spying on all of our phones? Was he in our text messages? Was he getting meta data? Was he in our email? We don’t know,” Davis lamented.
The Federalist has unfortunately traveled this road before. The Biden administration previously colluded with Big Tech to censor The Federalist and The Daily Wire for their inconvenient coverage of Covid, vaccine mandates, election integrity, and their exposure of the harassment of pro-life protesters. Earlier this year, these news outlets, alongside Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, secured a landmark First Amendment victory when a federal district court ordered government entities to cease their efforts to “knowingly censor constitutionally protected speech or lead third parties to do so.”
Davis has confirmed he is “exploring all legal options” in response to Smith and his investigators spying on The Federalist. He unequivocally stated that Smith cannot be permitted to evade accountability for his assault on the Constitution and the fundamental rights of Americans.
“Somebody has to pay a price to make sure this isn’t done again,” Davis insisted. “I’m trying to get all the facts, find out the exact nature of what and who he was spying on and what he got, but I am absolutely exploring all options to make sure this never happens to us — or anyone else — again.”
The expanding scope of Smith’s abuse of power urgently underscores the critical need for an anti-weaponization fund for victims of federal prosecutorial abuse. Attorney General Todd Blanche had initiated such a settlement fund, only to have it politically sidelined by Democrats who cheered on Biden administration witch hunts against conservatives, and by weak-kneed Republicans perpetually outmaneuvered by Democrats and their allies in the accomplice media.
A Clinton-appointed federal district court judge and an appeals court led by two Obama appointees have sided with critics of the approximately $1.8 billion fund, arguing that Trump and the Justice Department colluded in its creation. These lawsuits and rulings conveniently disregard crucial facts: Americans were systematically crushed under the machinery of weaponized justice, all in the name of politics. This includes parents harassed and intimidated by law enforcement officials for speaking out at school board meetings against Covid-era and woke policies, or pro-life Americans sentenced to lengthy prison terms for merely praying outside abortion facilities, and brave government whistleblowers who dared to expose Smith's and other corruption.
Davis highlighted the hypocrisy, noting that the radical left, particularly during the Obama and Biden administrations, has routinely established substantial payouts to their political allies through “sue and settle” actions. These lawsuits, initiated by special interest groups against federal agencies (often with a quiet nod from the agencies themselves), are designed to dictate policies and funnel taxpayer funding. Obama-era sue and settle actions were accurately described as “engineered windfall(s) for special interests masquerading and a settlement.” Leftist groups have been funded for decades through these cynical schemes.
“So I found it fascinating that after we all watched the government target and victimize innocent people, this was an instance [Smith’s abuses] where restitution was absolutely necessary, where victims needed to be made whole, and instead you had a bunch of Democrats and completely worthless, feckless Republicans stop it and say, ‘Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! We can’t have that right now.’”
“I think the weaponization fund absolutely needs to come back,” Davis concluded. “People who have been victimized by an overly tyrannical government doing illegal things to victimize them, those victims need to be made whole and they deserve restitution.” The fight for this fund is not just about compensation; it is about restoring justice, holding a weaponized government accountable, and reaffirming the fundamental American value that no citizen should be targeted for their political beliefs.
