Politics

Jack Smith Collected Banking Information On Thousands Of Trump Supporters

former Special Counsel Jack Smith (Screen Capture/CSPAN)

Special Counsel Jack Smith’s sweeping investigation into President Donald Trump included the financial data of everyday supporters across 50 states who gave as little as $1 to the president and allied groups, new documents reveal.

Smith’s team obtained at least 4,782 checks from everyday Americans making mainly small-dollar donations. Smith’s sweep — though ostensibly focused on the events of Jan. 6, 2020 — hoovered up checks from September 2019 to August 2023.

The Biden administration wielded the country’s most powerful law enforcement tools to spy on Republicans with little concern for whether it violated the Constitution, Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Chuck Grassley said.

Grassley released the documents as part of an ongoing probe into the investigation the FBI codenamed “Arctic Frost” that formally began in April 2022 into a 2020 fake elector scheme. Arctic Frost and two other FBI investigations — one relating to Jan. 6 codenamed “Project Coconut” and one related to Mar-a-Lago documents codenamed “Project Cranberry” — mired Trump’s return to the White House and ensnared hundreds of conservative individuals and entities.

Smith testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee Tuesday, where Grassley pressed Smith on the apparent overreach.

“Did you obtain possession of donor data, to include financial information, yes or no?” he asked.

After a pause, Smith said, “our investigation was focused on investigating matters under my mandate including whether any person or entity violated the law with attempts to block the peaceful transfers of power.”

“Let me ask the question again. Did your special counsel operation obtain possession of donor data, to include financial information, yes or no?” Grassley pressed.

“Yes we acquired financial information. As I sit here right now I cannot recite to you every subpoena we issued. I can tell you why we issued subpoenas,” Smith said. “It was to conduct a criminal investigation into one of the most serious crimes in our nation’s history. I had a duty to collect facts.”

“You answered yes … The list includes checks from constituents in every state of every single member of this committee, both Republicans and Democrats,” Grassley replied. “Every member on this committee ought to be outraged for what happened to their constituents. Which one of my Democratic colleagues will join me in that outrage?”

Smith did not include any reference to this data in his public report, Grassley pointed out.

The intrusion may still jeopardize these Americans’ privacy, as the Department of Justice and FBI continue to possess these donors’ home addresses, bank account and routing numbers, and signatures, Grassley said.

In his opening statement, Grassley lambasted Smith for casting as wide a net as possible in his Jan. 6 probe, appearing to map out the entire Republican Party as complicit in the “crime” of supporting Trump.

Among the targets of the probe: The toll records of 16 members of Congress, the records of hundreds of Republican groups and individuals, and intrusions into 87 Trump White House phones. The White House records included communications with a further 44 members of Congress and dozens of media outlets.

The outlets include 60 Minutes, Associated Press, Bloomberg, CBS, CNBC, CNN, Fox News, LA Times, Mark Levin Show, Media Research Center, NBC, NPR, NY Magazine, Reuters, The Federalist, The Washington Post, Washington Times and the Wall Street Journal.

Grassley also pointed to an apparent double standard: The FBI never conducted a fulsome investigation of possible criminal activity related to donors to the Clinton Foundation and the Hillary Clinton campaign.

For instance, the FBI recorded a conversation between Clinton and Indian hotel magnate Sant Singh Chatwal in which Clinton discussed donations to the foundation and her remaining 2008 campaign debt.

But when Clinton arrived to the FBI in July 2016 to answer questions about her use of a private email server in a separate investigation codenamed “Midyear Exam,” D.C. agents asked nothing about the allegations of pay-to-play with foreign governments or use of the global charity as a slush fund.