Preparing for Jack Smith’s testimony requires a roadmap made from history of Arctic Frost scandals

As former Special Counsel Jack Smith prepares to testify before Congress Tuesday morning, the scandals resulting from his investigation into President Donald Trump and Trump’s supporters are still being untangled. Politicians and pundits alike — as well as the public — are retracing the steps that may land Smith in hot water. 

Secretly obtaining phone records for members of Congress

Records released in July 2025 showed that Smith’s team accessed the private text messages of more than 40 lawmakers from Jan. 6, 2021, leading to questions about whether Smith lied when testifying to Congress the previous year, Just the News previously reported. At that July hearing, Smith answered "no" when asked by congressional investigators whether he included the content of text messages when requesting toll records from members of Congress he secretly surveilled.

The records released this summer showed that the Biden DOJ created a “Filter Team” to evaluate materials obtained during Smith’s investigations, including a probe codenamed “Project Coconut” relating to January 6 and another called Project “Cranberry,” relating to Trump’s handling of classified documents. All were under the umbrella of “Arctic Frost,” a large-scale probe of Trump’s efforts to challenge the 2020 election.

“Communications from Members of Congress pertaining to their official legislative duties are protected from criminal prosecution under the Constitution’s Speech or Debate Clause,” the Senate Judiciary Committee said in a press release when the new documents were released. “Bypassing a Filter Team evades consideration of additional privileges, such as attorney-client privilege.”

In July 2026, Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., queried on social media whether the Department of Justice (DOJ) should investigate whether Smith misled Congress, a crime punishable by up to five years in prison.

Smith's actions may have represented an "abuse of power," Paul says

The revelations in the emails also raised constitutional concerns, with Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., stating on X that Smith’s actions were “a blatant abuse of power, and exactly what our Founders warned about.”

On June 26 of this year, a federal agent, Brian Burnett, formerly assigned to Smith’s team, told House Judiciary Committee members that he was not told that the phone data he gathered under grand jury subpoenas belonged to members of Congress, adding that he would have had reservations if he had known.

"I would've subpoenaed the number, but I did not know who the phone number belonged to, who the actual subscriber was," said Brian Burnett, who retired from the Justice Department's Inspector General office, in testimony released last week by the committee.

"It was not until I had been retired and this was on the news and there was conversation about Mr. Jordan's toll records being subpoenaed and then there was a subpoena that came up on the internet," he added. "So, I was only assuming — that had my name on it — that that was his number. But I do not know, as we sit here today, if that was his number or not.”

In December 2025, it was revealed that the lawmakers whose phone records were seized were looking into the DOJ’s conduct in the January 6 prosecutions.

Potentially mishandling classified information

Before the latest scandal of allegedly bypassing the "Filter Team," Smith earlier faced allegations of mishandling classified information while investigating Trump for mishandling classified documents, leading to the Center to Advance Security in America (CASA), on July 24 of this year to call for an investigation into whether members of the Smith team should have their security clearances revoked.

The call came after Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, released documents questioning whether Smith’s team inappropriately provided access to classified materials without the required “need to know” authorization, Just the News reported in July. 

“Messages involving personnel in Jack Smith’s Special Counsel Office (SCO) raise serious concerns about the Biden administration’s failure to properly secure classified materials,” Grassley wrote in a short letter to then-Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche.

Ironically, Smith’s own classified documents case against Trump was dismissed in July 2024 by a judge who ruled that Smith’s very appointment was a violation of the Appointments Clause of the U.S. Constitution.

Setting up Trump for possible future prosecution

Memos released in May show Smith’s team may have set Trump up to be indicted after he leaves office, Just the News previously reported. Smith’s team secretly arranged to preserve the evidence they collected until 2030, even after the charges against Trump for allegedly mishandling classified information were dismissed. 

FBI emails and memos obtained by Just the News showed that Smith’s team apparently left the door open to further prosecute Trump after he leaves office, if and when a new Democrat becomes President. Smith’s office also approved a $20,000 payment in 2023 to at least one confidential human source to provide evidence that could be used against the president, Just the News reported in January. 

The information was revealed in memos Kash Patel turned over to Congress, and the FBI director told Just the News that paying a snitch was simply the latest evidence that Arctic Frost was an “egregious abuse of power and violation of the law.”

Normally, DOJ rules favor the disposal or return of seized evidence once a criminal case is closed or dismissed, provided the evidence is no longer needed for official purposes. That did not happen here, and there has been no public filing showing Smith asking for permission to hang onto the evidence — possibly including the snitch's statements — based on one of the enumerated exceptions. 

“The American people deserve to know how this egregious weaponization of power to target political opponents and President Trump happened inside an institution meant to protect them,” Patel told Just the News in May. “We shut down the weaponized CR-15 squad, and we are going to keep following the facts until there is full accountability. The FBI exists to protect the country, not to preserve political prosecutions for a future administration.”

Garland signed off on snatching Trump communications after Smith's team informed him

In March, Just the News reported that former Attorney General Merrick Garland was informed via memo by Smith’s team that prosecutors were obtaining the communications of Trump’s private attorneys and allies, as well as members of Congress. 

Garland had previously signed off on Smith’s “Arctic Frost” inquiry and said he “personally approved the decision to seek a search warrant” for the unprecedented raid of Mar-a-Lago in 2022.

PBS News reported that in a letter to Jordan and Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, Smith's lawyers called his answers "unimpeachably truthful" and noted that he was responding explicitly to questions about toll records, which did not include the contents of any text messages.