Jack Smith spent a lot of time trying to put Donald Trump behind bars. Now, the former special prosecutor has found himself in some legal doo-doo.

At issue is what Jack Smith testified to while under oath to the House Judiciary Committee, and the investigation kicked off by the Biden-Harris DOJ code named “Arctic Frost.” That investigation was a gigantic fishing expedition by the Biden-Harris DOJ, which began sometime in 2022, and involved getting the phone data – also known as “toll records” – of multiple elected officials, ostensibly related to January 6th. “Arctic Frost,” however, took on a life of its own, expanding to check out Republican organizations like Turning Point USA and other political groups.

The first subpoena requests were made before Jack Smith took over the case, but by the time he was testifying in front of the House Judiciary Committee in December of 2025, he knew about them. And the fact that the phone service providers were then put under a one year gag order that prevented them from disclosing the subpoenas to the people who were using their services (signed off by the left’s favorite judge, James Boasberg) meant that these congresspeople had no idea that their records were being handed over to the DOJ. And when they found out, they were less than pleased, and demanded answers.

According to materials released by Senate investigators, Arctic Frost was the internal codename used for a broad federal inquiry into efforts to challenge the 2020 election results. Under Smith, the investigation issued at least 197 grand jury subpoenas and sought information from more than 400 individuals, organizations and lawmakers connected to post-election activities.

That scale is not a minor detail. It reflects an investigation that moved beyond specific alleged crimes and into a systematic mapping of political actors and associations. One of the most consequential disclosures involves an intrusive investigation into Kash Patel, the current FBI director, who at that time was a private citizen.

According to Senate materials, investigators subpoenaed Verizon, Patel’s phone carrier, for his phone records spanning multiple years, between 2020 and 2023. These demands included not just basic call and text message logs (whom he contacted, when and for how long — metadata that paints an intimate portrait of personal and professional associations), but also residential and mailing addresses, email addresses, IP addresses, usernames, screen names and, crucially, payment information, including credit card numbers and bank details tied to his phone account.

These subpoenas came with court-authorized gag orders lasting up to a year, meaning Verizon was legally barred from telling Patel he was being spied on. As a result, he had no chance to challenge the requests in court. So here we have raw, unaccountable surveillance of an American citizen that went unimpeded for years.

So Jack Smith was called in to testify to the House Judiciary Committee, where Chairman Jim Jordan questioned him specifically about what happened. According to Jordan’s letter to Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, this was the exchange in question:

During the deposition on December 17, the Committee advised Mr. Smith that he was obliged to provide all necessary information that would make his responses truthful and to avoid half-truths or incomplete answers. The Committee questioned Mr. Smith about the toll records subpoenas relating to the private records of Members of Congress. The Committee sought to understand, in particular, whether Mr. Smith, or members of his team, ever received or reviewed the content of Members’ communications. During his deposition, Mr. Smith testified that he did not receive the content of Members’ text messages. He testified:
Q. Did you seek a search warrant for the content of any text messages from Members?

A. From Members?

Q. Yes.

A. No, I don’t recall that.

Q. Okay. It was just toll records?

A. Correct.
* * *
Q. Did the toll records that you requested from the Senators, did they include the content of the phone calls?

A. No.

Q. Did the records that you requested, the toll records from the Member of Congress, include the content of text messages?

A. No.

The responses provided by Mr. Smith gave the impression that neither Mr. Smith nor his team had access to the content of Members’ privileged text messages. We now know this to be false.

The text messages were seen by Jack Smith and his team.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, released documents last week showing Smith’s team read the text messages of 44 members of Congress from both parties and White House staff during its investigation.

Targeted lawmakers included Jordan and Grassley in addition to the late Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.; Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine; House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La.; and Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J.

Trump officials affected included former Vice President Mike Pence, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, FBI Director Kash Patel and Ivanka Trump, among others in the president’s orbit during his first term.

The hair that Jack Smith’s legal counsel is trying to split is that they got the text messages through ALTERNATIVE means, not through the DOJ subpoenas. As in, they got them via the National Archives.

Smith’s legal team noted that lawmakers “voluntarily” sent texts to an executive branch mandated to preserve all records and said Smith disclosed the existence of the text messages to Trump’s legal team who never contested them in court.

“The referral is made not because Mr. Smith made a false statement—the letter concedes he did not—but because he did not proactively disclose information that was not responsive to a question asked,” attorneys Lanny Breuer and Peter Koski wrote in a letter to Jordan and Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche.

So, because the text messages in question were preserved by the executive branch, Jack Smith and his team did an end run and compelled the National Archives to hand them over. So the toll records didn’t have the texts, but they WERE read by Jack Smith, who DID get his hands on them – and then did not disclose that to the House Judiciary Committee when asked. So, is this prosecutable? Chairman Jordan thinks that Blanche should at least investigate and has sent over a criminal referral.

“While Mr. Smith testified that he did not seek a search warrant from telecommunications carriers for the content of Members’ text messages, he failed to disclose that his office received text message content from NARA relating to White House personnel phone records,” Jordan wrote, accusing Smith of having “excluded information that was highly relevant to the Committee’s examination.”

#BREAKING: Chairman @Jim_Jordan referred former Special Counsel Jack Smith to the Department of Justice for criminal prosecution.

The evidence appears to show that Jack Smith knowingly made false statements while testifying under oath before the Committee.

Read the letter ⬇️ pic.twitter.com/yxz5rF6d48

— House Judiciary GOP 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸 (@JudiciaryGOP) July 23, 2026

Obviously, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, Jamie Raskin, disagrees.

Raskin described the GOP as being bitter they did not do a better job asking questions, nothing that Smith is “not telepathic.”

“Wishing that you had asked different questions while you had the opportunity to examine a witness is not a proper basis for a referral of a witness for criminal prosecution. Congressional Republicans never asked Jack Smith about presidential records,” Raskin wrote in his statement.

Is there enough for Blanche to move forward? That will depend on the manner of how Jack Smith and his team got the records from the National Archives. Did they have to subpoena for those records? Or did the National Archives just hand them over when asked?

My guess is that because no one asked Jack Smith directly “did you read these text messages” or “did you get these text messages by other means and read them,” Todd Blanche will likely not have much to go on. Jack Smith is a weasel, but like all weasels, he probably left himself enough wiggle room to lawyer his way out of this one.

Featured image: Jack Smith via Wikimedia Commons, cropped, public domain