by Steven Richards
House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, on Monday renewed his calls for former Special Counsel Jack Smith to be prosecuted for allegedly lying to Congress following revelations that the prosecutor’s team monitored the phone records of future Trump administration Chief of Staff Susie Wiles. Jordan first brought the matter of Smith’s possible perjury to the fore in July of this year.
Things are looking worse every week for Smith.
Smith’s team used a pen register device to track phone calls coming to and from Wiles’ phone in 2023, while the special prosecutor was probing President Donald Trump for allegedly mishandling classified documents, as revealed by new documents declassified by the president and released by the White House Government Transparency Task Force on Monday.
GOP lawmakers deprived of constitutional rights, and a judge kept in the dark
As he did in the past, Smith stands accused of legal legerdemain to not only hide the snooping from the lawmakers — a likely violation of the Speech and Debate Clause of the Constitution — but also failing to inform the judge he coaxed into signing a gag order that he was tracking communications from lawmakers. Lawmakers enjoy the right to be informed of subpoenas regarding their privileged communications, allowing them an opportunity to challenge (or “quash”) the subpoenas. Wiles and other lawmakers never got that chance.
Smith was already in the crosshairs for spying on the communications of members of Congress. A House Judiciary Committee review of Smith’s investigations showed that the prosecutor’s team collected phone toll records from 17 GOP members of Congress and text messages from as many as 44 lawmakers, some including information privileged to Congress. Among those targeted were former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., Jordan and others.
One of those lawmakers, Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., filed a lawsuit against Smith arguing his spying constituted an unauthorized intrusion into her civil rights.
“[I]t’s getting almost redundant here. We keep saying it every time. The only thing we get wrong is that it’s always worse than we thought,” Jordan told the Just the News, No Noise TV show on Monday.
“And now we see Jack Smith not only getting the phone records of members of Congress, not only getting the phone records of the top top Republican legislative committee, not only getting the phone records of the Speaker of the House 16 days after he becomes Speaker of the House, second in line to the President. Now we find out he’s getting the communication records of the President’s Chief of Staff before she’s Chief of Staff, but everyone knew that she was going to be, and she’s one of the key people,” he continued.
The latest memos, released by the White House Government Transparency Task Force on Monday, show FBI agents assigned to Smith’s team in a probe codenamed Plasmic Echo used a dragnet of data gathering tactics in the midst of the 2024 election to monitor phone calls, social media, political endorsements and other constitutionally protected activities in the name of determining whether Trump broke any laws when he purportedly brought classified documents to Mar-a-Lago after his first term.
Spying on lawyers a possible breach of attorney/client privilege
As a result of the dragnet, FBI agents traced phone calls and text messages between Wiles and at least 21 lawyers affiliated with Trump, numerous campaign staff, political advisors, and at least five journalists from about February to May 2023. The lawyers’ names and the journalists’ identities were redacted except for current FBI Director Kash Patel and Just the News founder John Solomon.
Jordan told Just the News that the implication of Wiles’ communications with attorneys raises concerns that the dragnet could have breached attorney/client privilege.
“It sure raises concerns because, again, remember, they’re looking at ‘okay so this call happened at this time […] what was his action later?’ So, it’s like they’re trying to piece all that together, and you can, as we’ve said before about what they did to members of Congress you can pattern a person’s life,” Jordan said.
“It underscores just how committed these guys were, just how focused they were on stopping President Trump from being president, stopping the guy that we, the people, elected as commander in chief,” he added.
Smith defended his conduct at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing last week, arguing that he and his team “took our obligations seriously” to avoid trampling on the rights of lawmakers. But, Smith’s other answers in front of the panel may draw further scrutiny based on further revelations contained in the White House document release.
Judiciary Committee says Smith’s team “disregarded the separation of powers to spy on their political opposition”
The records also show that Smith’s prosecution team secretly met at the CIA in late 2023 with former Director John Brennan to discuss “expert testimony” in the classified documents prosecution of President Donald Trump. However, Smith specifically told Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley he never met John Brennan when he was asked whether he “ever received any consultation or counsel” from the former director during his time as special counsel.
“This meeting occurred during Jack Smith’s time as Special Counsel and constitutes ‘consultation or counsel’ from John Brennan to Smith and his team. Smith’s response before the Senate Judiciary Committee was highly evasive and misleading, at minimum,” Senator Grassley told Just the News in a statement.
The Judiciary Committee concluded last month that Smith’s team “disregarded the separation of powers to spy on their political opposition” by collecting toll records on members of Congress, officers of a co-equal branch of government with Constitutional protections.
In obtaining the phone records, without notice and ability to challenge in a court of law, “the Biden-Harris Administration violated the Constitution’s Speech or Debate Clause, a core provision that protects the official actions and communications of Members of Congress and immunizes them from prosecution for legislative acts,” the committee alleged in a September 23 report.
Jordan said after the latest revelations that it would be appropriate for the Justice Department to explore charges against Smith. In July, Jordan’s Judiciary Committee referred Smith for criminal prosecution, specifically alleging he lied to Congress about his team’s access to the contents of private text messages of lawmakers. The referral alleged that Smith lied when he said that the “toll records” collected by his team did not include the content of messages.
“It sounds like the evidence is pretty damning,” says Article III Project boss
“The remedy is when people do wrong, they’re held accountable, and it’s again why we referred Jack Smith for possible indictment,” Jordan told Just the News. “We think prosecution is warranted because he lied to us, and you’re not allowed to do that. That’s against the law. So that’s the best way to stop this.”
Other lawmakers have added their voices to the chorus calling for a reckoning for Smith. Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., tore into Smith during the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing last Tuesday, alleging his investigations into President Donald Trump were “all about politics from Day 1.”
“Your investigation, so-called, your prosecution, so-called, was nothing other than an attempt to interfere, politically, in a presidential election in the United States of America,” Hawley said to Smith during the hearing. Later that week, Hawley called for Smith’s disbarment, according to The Washington Examiner.
Mike Davis, Founder and President of the Article III Project, told Just the News that there would be other avenues to hold Smith accountable for what he believes are constitutional violations by the special prosecutor. “There are certainly serious constitutional violations if they can prove this, and it sounds like the evidence is pretty damning,” Davis told the John Solomon Reports podcast.
“When you weaponize federal law enforcement to go after your political enemies, you’re violating […] the First, the Fourth, the Fifth, the Sixth, the 14th Amendments to the Constitution. When you have constitutional violations like that, you have conspiracy against rights under 18 U.S.C. Section 241 and deprivation of rights under color of law under Section 18 U.S.C. Section 242,” Davis explained.
Justice Department officials previously told the media that the agency is reviewing Jordan’s referral, but have not made a decision on whether to charge Smith.
Smith has repeatedly defended his conduct as the special prosecutor that pursued a dual-pronged prosecution of President Trump after he left office in 2021. Those two investigations, one into the former president’s alleged mishandling of classified documents and another into his alleged efforts to change the outcome of the 2020 election, resulted in criminal charges. Smith later dropped the criminal charges after Trump returned to the Oval Office in 2025.
Smith told lawmakers in January that he stands by his decisions as special counsel, including to bring charges against the then-former president. “If asked whether to prosecute a former President based on the same facts today, I would do so regardless of whether that President was a Republican or a Democrat. No one should be above the law in our country and the law required that he be held to account. So that is what I did,” Smith claimed.
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Steven Richards is a reporter for Just the News.
