Sen. Chuck Grassley revealed Wednesday that former President Joe Biden’s corrupt Department of Justice (DOJ) and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) compiled what’s being described as an “enemies list” of Republicans to target, including through wiretapping the phones of several high-ranking Republicans as part of their “get-Trump” lawfare.
Grassley revealed more than 1,700 pages of documents provided by whistleblowers, shining further light on the “Arctic-Frost” inquiry. Arctic Frost was an investigation led by the Biden administration to, as The Federalist’s Margot Cleveland explained, “target Republicans in key battleground states.” Then FBI Director Christopher Wray sent a memorandum to then-Attorney General Merrick Garland claiming that “fraudulent certificates of electors’ votes were submitted to the Archivist of the United States” for Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, and Wisconsin. Wray also asserted that these votes were part of a grand conspiracy to obstruct the certification of the 2020 election.
Jack Smith relied on this investigation as the basis for his anti-Trump lawfare, through which he attempted to both put the then-former president in jail and spy on the entire Republican political apparatus.
Grassley made public the 197 subpoenas sought by Smith.
Biden DOJ/FBI Wiretapped Ted Cruz’s Landline
According to Grassley, “Smith secretly obtained phone record data from at least eight senators and one congressman.”
“I’ve recently been informed by Verizon that at least 11 members with Verizon accounts were affected. That includes a hardline for Sen. Cruz’s office and a staffer’s cellphone for former Sen. Loeffler,” Grassey continued, adding that Smith “backed down” from subpoena requests placed to AT&T for Cruz’s cellphone records after the company “challenged” the legality of the subpoenas.
Cruz said that AT&T’s counsel advised the company not to comply with the subpoena because it violated the “speech and debate clause of the Constitution.” Cruz said that the subpoena was accompanied by an order from Judge James E. Boasberg. Boasberg has been issuing nationwide injunctions to stop Trump from implementing the mandate given to him by voters.
“Judge Boasberg issued an order to AT&T and signed that order prohibiting AT&T from informing me of this subpoena for at least one year. And Judge Boasberg gave the basis for that order, and I’m going to quote from the order Judge Boasberg signed: ‘The court finds reasonable grounds to believe that such disclosure will result in destruction of, or tampering with evidence, intimidation of potential witnesses, and serious jeopardy to the investigation.’”
Cruz says there is “precisely zero evidence to conclude that I am likely to destroy or tamper with evidence or to intimidate potential witnesses. Zero evidentiary basis for that. This order is an abuse of power. This order is a weaponized legal system.”
Cruz said that he did not have access to the subpoenas issued for the other senators’ information. Sen. Marsha Blackburn said her records were successfully subpoenaed from Verizon, and Verizon complied.
Kash and Bondi ‘Being Sabotaged From Within’
Sen. Ron Johnson said there is concern that FBI Director Kash Patel and Attorney General Pam Bondi are being “sabotaged from within” but did not elaborate further.
“The records we are now making public … were not obtained from the agency. They were obtained through a whistleblower. So my first point is: We need more whistleblowers. We need people, men and women inside these agencies, who have integrity, who want to see the integrity and credibility of the Department of Justice, of the FBI, restored. Come forward. Because right now I think Kash Patel [and] Pam Bondi are overwhelmed by all the mess they’re trying to clean up. … There’s still partisan actors burrowed in, trying to sabotage their efforts.”
Biden’s FBI and DOJ Sought to Spy on Entire GOP
The whistleblower documents also show that Biden’s FBI subpoenaed bank records, donor lists, and emails of numerous major conservative organizations and leaders, including Trump’s campaign, the RNC, Save America PAC, America First Policy Institute, the Conservative Partnership Institute, and MyPillow.
According to Cruz, “Twenty percent of the Republicans in the United States Senate were the target of this fishing expedition.”
“They did so in complete contravention of the Constitution, of separation of powers, of the speech and debate clause, of free speech, of basic rights of privacy,” Cruz continued.
Brianna Lyman is an elections correspondent at The Federalist. Brianna graduated from Fordham University with a degree in International Political Economy. Her work has been featured on Newsmax, Fox News, Fox Business and RealClearPolitics. Follow Brianna on X: @briannalyman2
