The office of former special counsel Jack Smith sought to create a vast web of contacts between President Donald Trump’s most vocal Republican allies and key players in his bid to overturn the results of the 2020 election. newly released records About the investigation led by Smith.
Emails circulated among Smith’s representatives from January 2023 show how top GOP lawmakers communicated directly with individuals Smith later identified as his co-conspirators in Trump’s election interference conspiracy, including lawyers Rudy Giuliani and John Eastman.
Those contacts became the justification for Smith’s office to pursue subpoenas of phone logs for more than a dozen Republican officials. This includes former President Kevin McCarthy and South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham – previously considered of interest to Smith’s investigators – as well as then-Rep. Lee Zeldin of New York, now the head of Trump’s EPA, and other lawmakers who were previously not known were under Smith’s microscope.
A spokesman for Zeldin did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
These Republicans and others are featured in materials released Tuesday by Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley, who is leading the investigation into Smith’s work. The Iowa Republican declassified the documents to help support the party’s widely held position that Smith was politically motivated in pursuing criminal charges against Trump during the Biden administration — for efforts to overturn the election and mishandling of classified documents.
Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas), whose data Smith’s office sought to obtain via subpoena, said Tuesday, “They weren’t aiming low. They were trying to take everyone out on the other side.”
Cruz made the comments while chairing a Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing, comparing Smith’s investigation into Trump to the Watergate scandal that ousted former President Richard Nixon from office and led to new rules to crack down on government corruption.
But the newly public documents also paint a more detailed picture of how Smith’s team believes they may have information that could boost their investigation into the campaign to undermine the 2020 election results that culminated in a deadly riot.
The special counsel’s office found that Representative Brian Babin (R-Texas) had communicated with Trump’s then-chief of staff Mark Meadows and then-Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe, now director of the CIA. A spokesman for Ratcliffe did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Zeldin corresponded with Meadows and Pennsylvania Representative Scott Perry, a close Trump ally in this effort. Cruz called Meadows, Eastman and Ratcliffe and was one of several senators who received a call from Giuliani on January 6.
Those contacts explain Smith’s interest in obtaining subpoenas for the phone logs of a dozen current and former Republican members of Congress, which his team said would be used “to establish logical evidentiary conclusions about the actions and intentions of Trump and his surrogates.”
The list of potential subpoena targets also includes Arizona Republican Representatives Andy Biggs and Paul Gosar. Spokespeople for Biggs, Gosar and Perry did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
According to the documents, Smith’s team systematically reviewed information provided in a report prepared by the Democratic-led House committee investigating the January 6 attacks that suggested collusion between the two parallel investigations.
New documents released Tuesday by Grassley also revealed the scale and scope of Smith’s investigation into Kash Patel, a longtime Trump aide who now serves as FBI director. It was previously established that Patel was the target of the special counsel’s investigation, but it was not known that Smith had sought to obtain two years of Patel’s phone and text message logs.
The FBI spokesman pointed to a comment by earlier FBI spokesman Ben Williamson gave to reutersIn which he said, “Under former leadership the FBI was weaponized in ways that the American people are only now beginning to fully understand.”
The materials also provide new details about backchanneling between former Vice President Mike Pence and Smith’s team in connection with Pence’s grand jury testimony, and the efforts investigators made to sift through privileged information before accessing devices seized from the targets of their investigations.
At a Judiciary subcommittee hearing Tuesday, Democrats continued to defend Smith’s work and urged Republicans to schedule a public hearing with the former special counsel.
“Obviously when the Trump DOJ does this, it’s nothing new; when Jack Smith does this, it’s a modern-day Watergate,” said Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Federal Courts, Oversight, Agency Actions and Federal Powers. “With Patel, it’s clear why Jack Smith was watching him.”
Following the lawyer’s testimony to the House Judiciary Committee late last year, Grassley has said Smith will receive an invitation to address the full Judiciary panel in the coming months.
A spokesman for Smith declined to comment.
