Congressional Texts RAIDED — Judges Kept Dark

Senator Richard Blumenthal told CNN there was “no evidence” of wrongdoing by Special Counsel Jack Smith — just as new documents showed Smith’s team secretly read the text messages of 44 members of Congress without following required legal safeguards.

Story Snapshot

Jack Smith’s team obtained and read text messages from 44 members of Congress, bypassing a required filter review process meant to protect lawmakers’ constitutional rights.
Emails show Department of Justice lawyers warned Smith’s team the congressional subpoenas could be unconstitutional — and the team pressed forward anyway.
Smith admitted in testimony that judges were not told his team was seizing Republican lawmakers’ phone records when asked to sign off on non-disclosure orders.
Senator Blumenthal defended Smith on CNN, calling the investigation legitimate and saying there was no evidence of wrongdoing — a claim directly contradicted by newly released records.

What Smith’s Team Actually Did

Special Counsel Jack Smith’s investigative team used court orders in 2023 to obtain phone records from nine Republican lawmakers. Later, records released to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley showed Smith’s team also read text messages exchanged between 44 members of Congress and officials from the first Trump administration. Investigators bypassed a required filter team review process designed to protect lawmakers’ communications from improper government access.

Smith defended his actions in closed-door testimony before the House Judiciary Committee, saying the methods were “entirely lawful, proper and consistent with established Department of Justice policy.” But a key admission came out of that same testimony. Smith acknowledged that judges who signed off on non-disclosure orders were never told his team was seizing Republican lawmakers’ phone records at the time they approved those orders.

DOJ Lawyers Raised Red Flags — and Were Ignored

Emails released by Senators Grassley and Ron Johnson showed that Department of Justice lawyers warned Smith’s team about the legal risks before the subpoenas went out. Those lawyers said the subpoenas could violate the Constitution’s Speech or Debate Clause, which is meant to protect lawmakers from executive branch interference in their legislative work. Despite those warnings, Smith’s team moved forward with the subpoenas anyway.

The Speech or Debate Clause is not a technicality. It is a foundational protection written into the Constitution to keep the executive branch from using criminal investigations to intimidate or spy on the legislative branch. When a prosecutor presses ahead after his own department’s lawyers flag a possible constitutional violation, that raises serious questions — regardless of what the underlying investigation was about.

Blumenthal’s Claim Runs Into the Facts

Senator Blumenthal appeared on CNN and insisted there was no evidence of wrongdoing by Smith. CNN itself had just reported on the phone records story. The timing was striking. The records showing Smith’s team bypassed filter review requirements and ignored internal constitutional warnings were not a rumor or a partisan accusation — they came from Department of Justice documents turned over to Congress.

Smith’s January 2025 final report argued his team “upheld the rule of law” and that sufficient evidence existed to convict Trump of election interference had the case gone to trial. Smith stood by his decisions publicly and in testimony. But standing by a decision is different from that decision being above scrutiny. The question of whether investigators crossed legal and constitutional lines is separate from whether Trump committed crimes — and both questions deserve honest answers.

Why This Goes Beyond Party Lines

Americans on both the left and the right have long worried about government power being used against political opponents. That concern does not belong to one party. When a special counsel’s team secretly reads lawmakers’ texts, bypasses its own filter process, ignores internal legal warnings, and then withholds key facts from judges — those are process failures that should concern everyone. Oversight of law enforcement is not obstruction. It is how a free country keeps its institutions honest.