Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley on Tuesday released subpoenas revealing that then-Special Counsel Jack Smith used Verizon to vacuum up roughly two years' worth of FBI Director Kash Patel's private records, including text and call logs, his residential address, and his credit card number.
That wasn't all. Grassley disclosed that Smith's team compiled what amounts to a target list of sitting lawmakers.
"The records include a wish list created by Smith's team naming 14 members of Congress for whom they wanted to seek tolling data."
Grassley added that some of those members "are senators on this very Committee." The scope of Smith's surveillance appetite, stretching across both chambers and into the personal financial data of a future FBI director, is now a matter of congressional record.
The Senate Judiciary Committee laid out the breadth of the subpoena in plain terms, the Gateway Pundit reported:
"Jack Smith subpoenaed Verizon for roughly TWO YEARS' worth of FBI Director Kash Patel's private records, including his text and call logs, residential address and credit card number."
This was not a narrow, carefully tailored request tied to a specific criminal act. It was a sweeping collection of a private citizen's communications and financial information, executed under the umbrella of Smith's investigation into President Trump's handling of classified documents.
The records were obtained in 2022 and 2023, during the Biden administration. Patel was not charged with any crime. Neither was White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, whose phone records were also swept up in the same effort.
Consider what that means in practice. A special counsel appointed to investigate one man reached into the private lives of people adjacent to that man, collected years of their personal data, and buried the process in case files designed to avoid oversight. This is not how a government constrained by the Fourth Amendment is supposed to operate.
Patel, now leading the very agency that secretly collected his records, did not mince words. He told Fox News:
"It is outrageous and deeply alarming that the previous FBI leadership secretly subpoenaed my own phone records — along with those of now White House chief of staff Susie Wiles — using flimsy pretexts and burying the entire process in prohibited case files designed to evade all oversight."
He followed words with action. Patel fired at least 10 of the FBI officials involved in secretly subpoenaing his phone records. The people who authorized and executed the surveillance of a future FBI director are no longer employed by the bureau he now runs.
That is accountability in real time, not a blue-ribbon commission, not a sternly worded letter, not a promise to "look into it." People lost their jobs.
All of this collection occurred in the service of Jack Smith's classified documents case against President Trump. Smith indicted Trump on 37 federal counts in Miami in June 2023, including 31 counts under the Espionage Act and 6 other process crimes related to documents lawfully stored at Mar-a-Lago.
The case never reached trial. Judge Aileen Cannon dismissed it in 2024, finding that the appointment of Smith by Attorney General Merrick Garland carried unconstitutional elements. The entire legal architecture Smith built, the indictment, the aggressive subpoenas, the surveillance of political figures, rested on a foundation the court ruled defective.
So the investigation is gone. The charges are gone. But the data collection happened. Patel's texts, calls, home address, and credit card number were already in government hands. Wiles's records were already pulled. The "wish list" targeting 14 members of Congress was already drafted. You don't get that back with a dismissal order.
The Grassley revelations fit into a broader picture that has become impossible to ignore. Judges Boasberg and Beryl Howell, both Obama appointees, secretly worked with Smith to bring charges against President Trump. The FBI, under Biden-era leadership, used its surveillance powers against people who would later serve in the incoming administration. And Smith's team didn't limit its appetite to the defendant. It reached members of Congress.
This is what institutional capture looks like when the restraints come off:
Every layer of this was supposed to have a check. Grand jury secrecy exists to protect the innocent, not to shield prosecutors who overreach. Congressional oversight exists precisely for moments like this. Both were circumvented.
Grassley now has the subpoenas in the open. The Senate Judiciary Committee has the names, the scope, and the timeline. The question is whether this becomes a sustained investigation or a single news cycle.
Fourteen members of Congress were on a special counsel's surveillance wish list. Some of them sit on the committee now reviewing the evidence. That fact alone should guarantee this does not end with a Tuesday press release.
The previous FBI leadership treated political proximity to Donald Trump as probable cause. They collected, they buried, and they assumed no one would ever see the receipts. Grassley just made sure everyone did.
