Two Republican senators are revealing that former Special Counsel Jack Smith’s investigative team obtained and reviewed text messages belonging to 44 members of Congress — both Republicans and Democrats — as part of his probe into President Donald Trump’s efforts to reverse the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.
The text messages were gathered through subpoenas directed at the National Archives and Records Administration. Those subpoenas targeted communications sent from government-issued phones used by Trump and several of his top advisers and officials during a period stretching from October 2020 through the end of his first term in January 2021.
According to Republican Senators Chuck Grassley — who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee — and Ron Johnson — who leads a Senate investigative panel — the records Smith’s team obtained included texts that 40 Republican lawmakers and four Democratic lawmakers had exchanged with Trump administration officials.
Among the officials whose communications were swept up in the investigation were Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows and then-Vice President Mike Pence. Pence notably refused Trump’s pressure to block Congress from certifying the 2020 election results.
The revelations highlight just how broadly Smith’s team cast its net while investigating both Trump’s attempts to reverse his loss to Democrat Joe Biden and alleged mishandling of classified documents at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort during the Biden administration. Both of those cases were dismissed after Trump secured victory in the 2024 election.
Grassley made the records public the day before Todd Blanche — who served as Trump’s defense attorney in both of Smith’s cases — was scheduled to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee for a hearing on his nomination to serve as attorney general.
Trump administration Justice Department officials have been sharing a range of documents with Grassley as the president’s allies push the argument that Smith’s investigations were politically motivated and captured sensitive information that had no bearing on the cases.
“Jack Smith has answering to do, and I intend to have him before the Senate Judiciary Committee in the coming months to hold him accountable,” Grassley said in a written statement.
A spokesperson for Smith did not respond to a request for comment on the disclosures. Smith has previously argued — both in court documents and in public testimony — that his investigations followed Justice Department guidelines and were free from political influence.
Grassley also alleged that one of Smith’s prosecutors may have violated internal Justice Department protocol by reviewing the congressional records before a separate screening team could evaluate them for potential legal privileges. That filter team was established to flag materials covered by attorney-client privilege, not to protect communications involving members of Congress.
This is not the first disclosure of its kind from Grassley. He previously revealed that Smith had obtained call logs from certain Republican senators around the time of the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. Reuters has also reported that FBI Director Kash Patel and White House chief of staff Susie Wiles had their phone records subpoenaed as part of the classified documents investigation.
Subpoenaing phone records is a routine step in federal criminal investigations. Smith previously told a House committee that obtaining lawmakers’ phone records was necessary to fully investigate Trump’s campaign to block certification of his 2020 election defeat.
