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Floor Speech
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Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, if you hear the term ``Arctic Frost,'' for most of us in Washington, DC, it is not a meteorological term. It is a name that the Biden administration put on the efforts through Special Counsel Jack Smith to put then-citizen Trump in prison so he could never run for President again.
I have been trying to make as much of this information that we discover public. So I come to the Senate floor now to discuss this now- infamous Arctic Frost investigation that I and Senator Johnson of Wisconsin have exposed.
As we have shown through our investigation, Arctic Frost was not just about putting President Trump in prison, but it was a means to an end. That end that the Arctic Frost investigation sought was a vehicle by which partisan FBI agents and partisan Department of Justice prosecutors could improperly investigate the entire Republican political apparatus.
As Arctic Frost became Special Counsel Jack Smith's election case, it also targeted over 400 Republican groups and individuals. Recently, Senator Johnson and I have exposed that the Special Counsel's office obtained phone records of at least 11 Senators and 6 Members of the House of Representatives--all of them Republican. I expect there will be more Members of Congress added to that list. Each of these subpoenas included a court-issued nondisclosure order.
Recently, I made public Department of Justice documents, including emails. These documents showed that Special Counsel Smith's office knew of the constitutional implications of issuing a subpoena for congressional data.
A May 17, 2023, email shows that Molly Gaston from Special Counsel Smith's office emailed John Keller, one of the heads of Biden's Department of Justice Public Integrity Section. In that email, Gaston consulted Keller about issuing subpoenas for Members' phone records. Keller, from the Department of Justice, told her that there might be litigation risk if you do that.
So Smith's staff was warned.
And the reason why? Keller said subpoenaing congressional information could violate the speech or debate clause of the Constitution.
As we all know, the speech or debate clause protects Members of Congress from any retaliation or civil action for what is said right here on the floor of the House and Senate.
Well, no kidding--they were warned.
Of course, the Department of Justice knows that core constitutional activity of constitutional officers is protected in the Constitution.
Keller's email to Gaston also notes case law saying legislators asserting an invasion of speech or debate may intervene and oppose subpoenas. So it is a constitutionally based opposition. However, affected Members--remember they are all Republicans--weren't afforded the opportunity to challenge the subpoenas, as the law would give them the right to do.
It is all about the subpoenas having a nondisclosure order in it.
Now, these nondisclosure orders, rubberstamped by a judge named Boasberg and others on the same court, kept secret Jack Smith's action against the Republican Members. So far, almost all of the nondisclosure orders for Members' own records were signed by Judge Boasberg.
On November 20, 2025, I, along with Chairman Johnson and Mr. Jordan, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, wrote to Judge Boasberg. We asked what information Special Counsel Smith's office presented, if any, to the court that led to the approval of the nondisclosure orders of Members' phone records, in violation of Federal law.
We also asked Mr. Boasberg if he ever denied any Department of Justice nondisclosure order requests.
Now, Judge Boasberg never answered our letter. He had Judge Robert Conrad, the Director of the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, responding on his behalf. Judge Conrad failed to fully answer our questions. The letter claimed that responding to our letter fully would ``encroach upon the separation of powers.''
Now, the court ought to have raised that concern when Special Counsel Smith requested the nondisclosure orders for the legislative branch phone records--not after it became public as a result of our getting these documents.
But the limited response by the judge shows that the Federal court, including Judge Boasberg, essentially acted as a rubberstamp in approving Special Counsel Smith's nondisclosure orders.
Judge Conrad's letter stated that the Department of Justice typically doesn't include a subpoena with a nondisclosure order request and only provides a signifier, like a phone number, to the court. Thus, the information before the court would reveal that a phone number belonged to a Member of Congress.
Judge Conrad's response appears to indicate that Special Counsel Smith's office failed to disclose to the court that any subpoenas sought phone records for Members of Congress. Jack Smith took this egregious action even though Smith and his team knew case law was clear that legislators could challenge the grand jury subpoena on grounds it violated the speech or debate clause of the Constitution. The letter from Judge Conrad raises serious questions about Special Counsel Smith's candor--or lack thereof--before the court.
But the volume of subpoenas issued by the special counsel's office should have raised alarms with Judge Boasberg and any other judges involved in issuing those subpoenas--alarms that maybe congressional records could have been swept up by the government's conduct.
So there are some questions: Did Judge Boasberg and others even ask the question? Was even a small amount of due diligence done? Boasberg and others won't say. Not asking these simple questions appears to be a clear dereliction of duty.
The actions by the Biden Justice Department and the Federal court raise more questions that Congress and the American people deserve answers to.
These things are very important because when the power of the Federal Government, particularly through the Department of Justice prosecutors and the FBI to be politically weaponized to put anybody in prison--and if they can attempt to do it to a former President then and now President Trump for 4 years, it could be done to anybody. And we need to know that this should never happen again in the United States of America.
So I am giving you this update. Accordingly, my oversight will continue.
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