Biden-era phone spying list grows

Add Rep. Jim Jordan’s name to the growing list of congressional Republicans and top Republican operatives under surveillance by President Biden’s Justice Department.

Mr. Jordan, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, released documents showing that the Justice Department secretly subpoenaed his phone records in April 2022 during its investigation of President Trump’s actions in his first term.

The Justice Department obtained a grand jury subpoena ordering Verizon to turn over Mr. Jordan’s phone records, “including but not limited to records for inbound and outbound calls, text messages, direct-connect communications, voicemail messages, addresses, as well as sources of payments, IP addresses, and location information.”

The broad request sought Mr. Jordan’s phone records dating back to January 2020, a full year before the end of Mr. Trump’s first term and long before the divisive aftermath of the 2020 election that sparked the Biden administration’s Arctic Frost investigation.

Verizon was ordered not to inform Mr. Jordan of the Justice Department’s subpoena.

Mr. Jordan joins a growing list of Republican lawmakers whose phone records were secretly subpoenaed.

Under Arctic Frost, special counsel Jack Smith and his legal team issued an additional 197 subpoenas seeking records and communications of more than 430 people and organizations. All appear to be Republican.

Those targeted included Trump advisers Stephen Miller and Dan Scavino and the president’s son- and daughter-in-law, Jared Kushner and Lara Trump, who all worked for the first Trump administration or the Trump campaign. Subpoenas were issued to people and businesses seeking statistical data and analysis related to Republican fundraising, as well as individual communications with several national media outlets, including CBS and Fox News.

The records of more than a dozen members of Congress were secretly subpoenaed, but not until May 2023.

Among those targeted were Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy of California and Sen. Rick Scott of Florida.

Like Mr. Jordan, the lawmakers had no idea their records were under secret government scrutiny.

Either a grand jury or a judge ordered the phone companies to keep the surveillance hidden from them.

“They spied on President Trump. They spied on Senators. Now, we just learned, they spied on me. If they can do it to us, they can do it to you,” Mr. Jordan said.

All the secretly surveilled lawmakers are vocal Trump supporters and generally supported the president’s efforts after the 2020 election to contest or at least question Mr. Biden’s narrow victories in swing states.

Most of the Biden-era subpoenas that Republicans have uncovered so far sought a narrow time frame of records from lawmakers dating from Jan. 4 to Jan. 7, 2021.

The dates appear to relate specifically to the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol that became a focus of the Arctic Frost investigation.

It’s not clear why the Justice Department sought a much more extensive dragnet of Mr. Jordan’s phone records extending back to January 2020, a full year before the end of Mr. Trump’s first administration.

At the time, Mr. Jordan was the top Republican on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. Later that year, he moved to the Judiciary Committee, where he has served as the top Republican and is now the chairman.

“That’s a whole year unexplained,” aides to Mr. Jordan posted on social media. “Doesn’t make sense.”

Mr. Smith was not assigned to lead the Arctic Frost investigation until November 2022. The subpoena seeking Mr. Jordan’s phone records, dated April 29, 2022, is signed by Kenneth Polite, assistant attorney general in the criminal division, and another attorney in the criminal division, Timothy Duree.

Mr. Duree left the Justice Department in January, and Mr. Polite entered the private sector in 2023. The Washington Times reached out to both men.

On Thursday, Mr. Jordan and two other top senators sent a letter to U.S. District Judge James Boasberg, who had approved 19 of the nondisclosure orders that blocked the phone companies from informing lawmakers about the government’s subpoenas of their data.

They asked Judge Boasberg to answer a series of questions about his signing of the gag orders, including whether he was aware that sitting members of Congress were the subjects of the subpoenas and that two of the phone numbers were issued by the Senate sergeant-at-arms.

“It is absurd on its face to suggest that a non-disclosure order would be required for sitting Senators, who had been accused of no crime, out of fear they would destroy evidence, intimidate witnesses and otherwise damage the investigation,” wrote Mr. Jordan, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles E. Grassley of Iowa and Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, who chairs the permanent subcommittee on investigations.

Senators said the subpoenas were unlawful. They also have asked Attorney General Pam Bondi to unseal the application for the gag orders, which would disclose the Justice Department’s reasoning for keeping the subpoenas hidden from the lawmakers.

“Jack Smith and the Biden DOJ spied on their political opponents, violated the Constitution, and weaponized the justice system to target members of Congress — all in an effort to go after President Trump,” Mr. Scott wrote to Ms. Bondi.

Mr. Smith has offered to testify publicly before the Senate about his oversight of Arctic Frost. His investigation led to Mr. Trump’s criminal indictment on Aug. 1, 2023, for his actions after the 2020 election.

A judge dismissed the charges after Mr. Trump won a second term in November 2024.

In January, Mr. Smith said he stood by his indictment of Mr. Trump and that Mr. Trump would have been convicted of election interference if he had not been elected president a second time. Mr. Smith said Mr. Trump made “knowingly false claims of election fraud” to try to overturn the election results in 2020.

Mr. Trump said he did nothing wrong and was contesting evidence of fraud and mishandling of election results.