If you’re reading this, there is a good chance Joe Biden’s Justice Department tried to throw you in prison.
That is the inescapable conclusion of whistleblower documents from inside the DOJ and FBI about the Biden Administration’s Arctic Frost operation. It turns out Arctic Frost was never the inquiry into Donald Trump and Jan. 6 that Attorney General Merrick Garland and Special Counsel Jack Smith said it was. Rather, it was an unprecedented, illegal conspiracy of partisan prosecutors and FBI agents to surveil, harass, and prosecute “the entire Republican political apparatus” for the crime of being conservative.
There has never been anything like it in American history — a sweeping, open-ended, fishing expedition conducted by the regime against the opposition party. Arctic Frost weaponized the federal criminal justice system not just to defeat Trump in the 2024 presidential election, but to permanently rig the U.S. political system against the GOP.
The details are mind-boggling.
Smith secretly surveilled the telephones of at least eight Republican senators without any reason to believe any of them committed a crime. He issued 197 subpoenas to 430 individuals and organizations, none of whom had anything to do with the J6 trespassers. Indeed, some of targeted groups didn’t even exist, or hadn’t even started operations, on Jan. 6, 2021!
The abuses compound from there. Smith got a left-wing federal judge to gag phone companies from telling senators about the subpoenas — possibly a federal crime in its own right. Nor were Smith’s subpoenas restricted to information relevant to J6. On the contrary, Smith demanded wholesale access to private donor information, banking records, and even contacts with the media. Subpoenaed groups and individuals spent millions of dollars in legal fees just trying to comply.
Never mind that this two-year rectal exam of the conservative movement yielded zero evidence of wrongdoing. The investigation — the harassment, the spying, the legal fees, the intimidation — was the punishment.
Smith insists that his investigative tactics were routine and consistent with DOJ procedure. In this, at least, Republicans should take Smith at his word. This is exactly how Democrat Justice Departments plan to treat Republicans going forward.
Which brings us to the most terrifying part of the Arctic Frost shakedown: how close it came to succeeding. If Donald Trump had not won the presidency last November, Smith’s illegal dragnet would still be trawling the American Right. The individuals and organizations he spied on would be on trial today. Or already behind bars.
If Kamala Harris had won, conservative donors would have been indicted, groups de-banked, and activists arrested. Republican presidential aspirants, members of Congress, and conservative justices would all now be targets of new, secret FBI investigations.
If that sounds far-fetched, remember: Arctic Frost did not almost happen. It happened. And its perpetrators are still at large on the public payroll.
The biased, partisan judges Democrats would need to help them persecute innocent Republicans are already on the bench. The same goes for the FBI agents, DOJ prosecutors, and career bureaucrats who worked on the Arctic Frost witch hunt. They’re still in their jobs, gaining seniority, and waiting for the next Democrat president to let them finish what they started.
To conservatives, Arctic Frost is a scandal. To Democrats, it’s their new baseline. The question is: What are Republicans going to do about it?
The usual answer — fiery press conferences, strongly worded letters, performative congressional hearings — won’t cut it. In case anyone didn’t notice, the left is not chastened by their failure to stop Trump, but emboldened and radicalized.
See their embrace of violent political rhetoric. See the presidential pardons they auto-penned for themselves. Their psychotic reaction to the shootings of President Trump and Charlie Kirk. See their celebration of Jay Jones, Virginia’s new Democrat attorney general, who fantasized about murdering Republican politicians and their children.
Republicans need to understand the Rubicon that Democrats crossed last year — the existential threat they still face from the Arctic Frost left.
There are only three reasons politicos respect norms and abide by the Constitution: duty, religion, and fear. Among Democrat elites today, the first two are obsolete.
First, they see themselves as partisan activists rather than public servants. Their deepest loyalty and interests are not patriotic as such, but ideological.
Nor are secularized, irreligious leftists meaningfully restrained by their oaths of office. The Founders wrote and required the oath to bind public servants to the Constitution on pain of eternal damnation. No one involved in Arctic Frost, no matter how many bright lines they crossed, believes they could go to hell over it.
If duty and religion cannot deter Democrats from abusing power, that leaves only fear. Fear of retribution. Fear of justice. Fear of Republicans.
The only way to stop Democrat abuse of power is to use the law to punish it. The penalties must be swift, severe, and match the scale of the crime. They must put the fear of God into elites who think they are above the law.
The men behind Arctic Frost must be hauled before congressional committees and grand juries. The agents and attorneys who staffed it need to be terminated and disbarred. The judges who enabled it with illegal rulings need to be impeached and defrocked. Everyone on Arctic Frost who broke the law should be prosecuted, imprisoned, and stripped of their pensions. The signal must be sent to professional Democrats that this behavior will not win them elections or promotions, but cost them their careers.
None of this would be revenge or retaliation, whatever the media says. It would be what the law requires. It would be justice.
Arctic Frost was and remains a grave threat to the republic. The Republican Party needs to act like it, or it may be the last mistake it ever makes. Arctic Frost is what Democrats are willing to do. What are Republicans willing to do to stop it?
Rachel Bovard is the vice president of programs at the Conservative Partnership Institute. She served on Capitol Hill for over a decade, including as legislative director to Sen. Rand Paul and the executive director of the Senate Steering Committee.
