Jack Smith built a taxpayer-funded operation to spy on the entire Republican Party.
Now Grassley just found a name on that list that will leave you speechless.
A document obtained this week just revealed exactly how far outside Trump's circle Smith was willing to reach — and the answer will make your blood boil.
Jack Smith Subpoenaed His Phone Records in Secret
Documents obtained by The Tennessee Star reveal Smith secretly subpoenaed the phone records of Phill Kline – a Liberty University law professor whose only crime was filing legal challenges to the 2020 election.
He led the Amistad Project of the Thomas More Society – a legal group that raised serious questions about private funding of public election offices and ballot procedure changes made without legislative approval.
He was doing what lawyers do: challenging government conduct in court.
Jack Smith's team didn't care.
In August 2023, Smith's office sent Verizon a grand jury subpoena demanding everything tied to Kline's account — every call, every text, every voicemail, the credit card he used to pay his bill, and the IP addresses from his connected devices.
The window covered October 2020 through January 31, 2021 — the precise months when post-election legal battles were being fought in courtrooms across the country.
Verizon handed it all over. Kline found out only last month, when Verizon notified his family that the U.S. Senate had now subpoenaed those same records as part of its oversight investigation.
The family had no idea his phone data had been vacuumed up two years earlier.
The Arctic Frost Dragnet Reached 430 Republicans and No One Was Safe
Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley has spent months pulling back the curtain on Arctic Frost, and the picture is the same every time: this wasn't a targeted investigation into specific criminal conduct.
It was a fishing expedition against the entire Republican political apparatus.
The numbers tell the story. Smith's team issued 197 subpoenas to 34 individuals and 163 businesses — financial institutions, media companies, conservative organizations — seeking records on at least 430 named Republican individuals and entities.
Eight sitting U.S. senators had their phone metadata seized — along with one House member. Charlie Kirk's Turning Point USA made the list. So did the Republican Attorneys General Association. Smith's team even pulled records connected to Stephen Miller, Dan Scavino, Jared Kushner, and Lara Trump.
Smith's team even demanded communications between Republicans and their own media outlets — Fox News, Newsmax, CBS, and Sinclair all received requests.
Pam Bondi didn't mince words when she sat before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Arctic Frost, she said, was "an unconstitutional, undemocratic abuse of power."
Ted Cruz — whose own Senate office phone was subpoenaed — went further.
"Arctic Frost is Joe Biden's Watergate," Cruz said. "This was an absolute and egregious abuse of power."
Ron Johnson called it something else: a Biden administration enemies list.
What This Actually Means
Phill Kline's case is where the mask comes all the way off.
The men who designed Arctic Frost didn't stop at Trump's inner circle. They didn't stop at senators and congressmen. They went after a law professor in Virginia who led a nonprofit legal project questioning election procedures — and they did it in secret, with a court order preventing Verizon from telling Kline his records had been handed over.
The Biden DOJ used the full machinery of federal law enforcement – grand jury subpoenas, nondisclosure orders signed by an Obama-appointed judge – to secretly collect the private phone data of a man whose offense was filing lawsuits.
They didn't just target the king. They went door to door.
History has a name for what Biden, Garland, Wray, and Smith built. In the 1950s and '60s, J. Edgar Hoover ran COINTELPRO – a program that used the FBI to surveil, disrupt, and intimidate political opponents under the banner of law enforcement. Congress investigated it in 1975 and called it what it was: a "sophisticated vigilante operation aimed squarely at preventing the exercise of First Amendment rights."
They were outraged then. Good.
Same targets, updated technology, identical structure — with one difference. Hoover at least tried to hide what he was doing.
Smith's team put it in writing, got judges to sign off on it, and called it justice.
Arctic Frost has now been formally referred to FBI Director Kash Patel and AG Bondi for criminal investigation. Smith's agents were fired. Grassley is still pulling threads.
The Kline subpoena isn't a footnote — it's the whole story. When the Biden DOJ was willing to secretly seize the phone records of a law professor who filed legal briefs, nobody who pushed back was safe.
Every Republican in America should be asking one question right now: was my name on that list?
Sources:
- Michael Patrick Leahy, "Jack Smith Subpoenaed Phone Records of Former KS AG Who Led Outside Challenge to 2020 Election Results," The Tennessee Star, March 10, 2026.
- Chuck Grassley, "New: Jack Smith Subpoenaed Records for Over 400 Republican Targets as Part of Arctic Frost," U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, October 29, 2025.
- "Grassley Questions Bondi at DOJ Oversight Committee Hearing," U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, October 7, 2025.
- "Biden FBI Spied on Eight Republican Senators as Part of Arctic Frost Investigation," U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, October 6, 2025.
- Caleb Parke, "Jack Smith Seized Trump's Government Phone in Arctic Frost Probe: Bondi," NTD, November 5, 2025.
- John Solomon, "Jack Smith Team Approved $20K Payment to Informant to Snitch on Trump Team During Arctic Frost Probe," Just the News, January 10, 2026.
