❓WHAT HAPPENED: Phone records of sitting members of Congress were secretly obtained under subpoenas, accompanied by gag orders that prevented lawmakers from being notified, according to Senator Chuck Grassley.
👤WHO WAS INVOLVED: Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA), former special counsel Jack Smith, Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, and the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section.
📍WHEN & WHERE: Allegations were made at a hearing on Tuesday, February 10, 2026, on Capitol Hill.
💬KEY QUOTE: “Smith’s deceitful conduct was a substantial intrusion into the core constitutional activity of constitutional officers.” – Sen. Chuck Grassley
🎯IMPACT: Sen. Grassley alleges that Smith and his team appear to have purposefully circumvented constitutional safeguards to obtain the phone records of senators.
Republican senators are seeking explanations from several major phone carriers at a Senate hearing on Tuesday as to their internal decisions to comply with subpoenas issued by former Biden government special counsel Jack Smith as part of the Arctic Frost investigation. In his opening remarks, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA) revealed that Smith and his team appear to have purposefully circumvented constitutional safeguards to obtain the phone records.
Notably, several statutes require senators to be notified of subpoenas seeking certain records—including phone data—and these notifications can be waived only if the senator is the specific target of an investigation. In the case of Arctic Frost, the 20 Republican lawmakers whose phone toll records were subpoenaed by Smith were not specific investigatory targets, which Grassley says should have meant the lawmakers were to have been notified of the subpoenas.
“Smith and his team irresponsibly steamrolled ahead while intentionally hiding their activity from Members of Congress,” Sen. Grassley said at the start of the hearing, adding, “Smith’s deceitful conduct was a substantial intrusion into the core constitutional activity of constitutional officers.”
Instead of following the legal avenues and notification requirements, Grassley stated that Smith and his team instead sought gag orders from federal judges—mainly U.S. District Court Judges James Boasberg and Beryl Howell—to prevent the lawmakers from being appropriately notified. The Tuesday hearing seeks to understand the internal procedures used by Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile to handle subpoena requests—especially since, in the case of Verizon, the company was under a separate agreement that required it to notify the Senate Sergeant at Arms of subpoena requests pertaining to senators.
The National Pulse has previously reported that the sprawling Arctic Frost scandal saw Smith abuse the powers of the special counsel’s office in an apparent attempt to interfere in the 2024 presidential election, targeting hundreds of figures in the Republican party—some appearing entirely unconnected to the January 6 Capitol riots.
Importantly, Smith was warned by the Biden Department of Justice’s (DOJ) Public Integrity Section that the subpoenas could open the agency and investigation to litigation on constitutional grounds. Still, the Biden DOJ approved Smith’s subpoenas.
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