The facts
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) sent an Oct. 8 letter to Ranking Member Dick Durbin and the committee’s Democrats, answering Durbin’s Oct. 7 letter complaining about Grassley’s office. The subject: Arctic Frost, and the nearly 2,200 pages of records Grassley has released since January 2025 on Jack Smith’s Special Counsel team.
According to the letter, those records show Smith’s team secretly subpoenaed bank records from nearly 5,000 Americans in all 50 states, secretly obtained phone data on members of the Judiciary Committee, sent far-reaching preservation requests to Apple for Member of Congress accounts, and ran a fishing expedition seeking records and communications from more than 430 Republican individuals, donors, and organizations. One core member of Smith’s staff described himself as an “advocate for repealing the” Speech or Debate clause. Smith has also withheld more than 800 pages of emails at the center of the committee’s investigation.
Grassley notes that zero Judiciary Committee Democrats have condemned any of this, despite 914 of their own constituents being swept up in the bank-record dragnet. He is calling on Democrats to “demand an apology from Smith” for his “abuse of authority and invasion of Americans’ privacy,” and to join his effort to hold Smith accountable instead of undermining it.
Our take
The comedy of this letter is the reply-all energy. Durbin wrote to Grassley on Oct. 7 to complain about Grassley’s office, and Grassley’s answer is essentially: you want to talk about my office? Then let’s talk about the special counsel who secretly vacuumed up the bank records of nearly 5,000 Americans. That is not oversight. That is mopping the crime scene and billing the victim for the mop.
The buffet had sides. The same team pulled phone data on sitting members of the Judiciary Committee, asked Apple to preserve Member of Congress accounts, and went fishing through more than 430 Republicans, donors, and organizations. One of Smith’s own core staffers called himself an “advocate for repealing the” Speech or Debate clause, the constitutional provision that exists precisely because prosecutors cannot be trusted to restrain themselves. Grassley’s question: “where is the outrage from your side about these clearly abnormal investigative tactics?” Per Grassley, the answer at the hearing was “Democrats falling over themselves defending unlawful and unconstitutional actions by Jack Smith.”
Nine hundred fourteen of their own constituents got caught in the dragnet, and not one Judiciary Democrat condemned a word of it. So Grassley’s counteroffer stands: quit defending Smith and “demand an apology from Smith” instead, for the “abuse of authority and invasion of Americans’ privacy”. Somewhere in America tonight, one of those nearly 5,000 people is wondering why a special counsel’s office holds their bank records, while their senator’s contribution to the story is defending the guy who ordered it. Start the apologies with the 914.
