House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan has referred former special counsel Jack Smith to the Justice Department for possible criminal charges, accusing him of lying under oath about whether his team accessed the private text messages of dozens of members of Congress.
Jordan sent the criminal referral to acting Attorney General Todd Blanche on Wednesday, alleging that Smith made "intentionally false statements designed to obstruct the Committee's oversight" during a closed-door deposition before the House Judiciary Committee. The referral asks the Justice Department to determine whether Smith's conduct warrants prosecution under federal false-statements law, specifically 18 U.S.C. § 1001, the statute that prohibits knowingly and willfully making materially false statements to federal investigators or Congress.
The Justice Department confirmed receipt of the referral and said it "will investigate all evidence of criminal conduct." Smith has denied any wrongdoing. His lawyers called the referral baseless, and Democrats dismissed it as a politically motivated stunt. But the underlying facts, newly released records showing Smith's team read text messages belonging to 44 sitting members of Congress, have sharpened a confrontation that goes well beyond procedural sparring.
The referral centers on what Smith said, and what he did not say, during a December 17, 2025, deposition before the House Judiciary Committee. Congressional investigators asked whether Smith or anyone on his team examined the contents of lawmakers' text messages during his investigations into President Donald Trump. Smith said "no."
He told the committee his team sought only telephone toll records, "historical telephone routing information, collected after calls had taken place, identifying the incoming and outgoing call numbers, the time of the calls and their duration." He added plainly: "Toll records do not include the content of calls."
That answer, Jordan now argues, was misleading at best and perjurious at worst. Newly obtained Justice Department records tell a different story.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley released documents the week before Jordan's referral showing that Smith's team had, in fact, reviewed the text message content of 44 members of Congress from both parties. The texts were not pulled from telecommunications providers through the toll-record process Smith described. They came from the National Archives, obtained through a separate subpoena targeting White House personnel phone records.
Of those 44 lawmakers, 40 were Republicans and four were Democrats, the Washington Examiner reported. The list included prominent names: Jordan himself, Grassley, the late Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise of Louisiana, and Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey. Text messages belonging to former Vice President Mike Pence, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, FBI Director Kash Patel, and Ivanka Trump were also accessed.
Jordan's referral argues that Smith's deposition answers "gave the impression that neither Mr. Smith nor his team had access to the content of members' privileged text messages." The chairman's conclusion was blunt: "We now know this to be false."
The distinction matters. Smith described a narrow data-collection method, call routing logs from phone companies, and denied accessing message content. But the records Grassley released showed his team obtained text content through a completely different channel. Jordan contends that failing to disclose this second pathway amounted to a deliberate deception, not a technicality.
Grassley's office flagged an additional problem: Smith's team appeared to access the text messages without running them through a "filter team", a standard safeguard designed to prevent investigators from viewing privileged or constitutionally protected communications before a neutral reviewer screens them. The absence of that step raised questions about whether Smith's office violated established investigative protocols meant to protect the separation of powers.
The scope of Smith's broader investigation underscored the concern. His "Arctic Frost" probe involved 197 subpoenas directed at 34 individuals and 163 businesses, targeting records associated with more than 430 individuals and organizations, Newsmax reported. Republicans have argued the subpoena pattern appeared aimed primarily at members of their own party. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas framed the issue in stark terms: "When you have the Biden Department of Justice subpoenaing 20% of the Republicans in the Senate, it is an egregious abuse of process."
Smith brought federal criminal charges against Trump in two separate cases in 2023, one related to alleged interference during the 2020 election, the other involving Trump's handling of classified documents. Neither case went to trial. Smith resigned in January 2025 ahead of Trump's inauguration.
In his letter to Blanche, Jordan cast the referral in institutional terms. "All individuals have an obligation to comply with a duly authorized congressional inquiry," he wrote. "Mr. Smith, a former public servant, is no different."
He went further, arguing that partial truth can constitute affirmative falsehood. "A statement containing some truthful information becomes affirmatively false when it represents that the partial information is complete," Jordan wrote, as AP News reported. That framing targets the core of Smith's defense, that his answers about toll records were technically accurate, by arguing that accuracy on one point does not excuse silence on the larger one.
Jordan's referral does not itself constitute criminal charges. It asks the Justice Department to examine the evidence and decide whether prosecution is warranted. But the DOJ's confirmation that it will investigate gives the referral more weight than a symbolic gesture.
The broader pattern of federal prosecutions and dismissals connected to the Trump era continues to shift. A federal judge recently dismissed the Proud Boys seditious conspiracy case at the DOJ's own request, permanently closing one of the highest-profile January 6 prosecutions. Smith's referral lands in that same contested legal landscape, where the question of who weaponized the justice system, and against whom, remains bitterly disputed.
Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, rejected Jordan's referral outright. He accused Republicans of faulting Smith "for not reading the minds of congressional investigators and for not volunteering information they didn't ask for."
"This referral deliberately distorts and misstates the facts, including what questions the Republicans actually asked at Mr. Smith's interview. The Republicans fault Mr. Smith for not reading the minds of congressional investigators and for not volunteering information they didn't ask for. This is absurd. Mr. Smith may be telegenic but he is not telepathic."
Raskin's argument rests on a narrow reading of the exchange: that Smith answered the specific questions posed to him about toll records and was not asked directly about text message content obtained through the National Archives. "Wishing that you had asked different questions while you had the opportunity to examine a witness is not a proper basis for a referral of a witness for criminal prosecution," Raskin said, as Breitbart reported. He added flatly: "This referral, if ever brought before a judge, will get laughed out of court."
Smith's own attorneys, Peter Koski and Lanny Breuer, issued a statement defending his testimony and calling the referral an attempt to intimidate a public servant.
"This referral reflects a chilling eagerness to weaponize the justice system by attacking a career, nonpartisan public servant who faithfully and fearlessly performed his duties by following the facts and the law."
They maintained that Smith's answers were "unimpeachably truthful." But that claim now sits alongside DOJ records showing his team accessed the very type of content he told Congress his office did not examine.
Whatever the legal outcome of Jordan's referral, the underlying revelation stands on its own. A special counsel's office, operating under the authority of the Biden-era Justice Department, obtained and reviewed the private text messages of 44 sitting members of Congress, the majority of them from the opposing party, without a filter team screening the material first. The lawmakers were not informed.
That fact pattern raises questions that extend beyond whether Smith parsed his words carefully enough during a deposition. It goes to the heart of whether a federal prosecutor's office treated the communications of elected officials, communications that carry constitutional speech-and-debate protections, with the care the law demands.
Jordan himself was among the 44 members whose texts were read. So was Grassley. The investigators who are now demanding accountability were themselves targets of the very conduct they are investigating. That does not disqualify their inquiry. If anything, it sharpens the stakes.
The Just The News report noted that Smith is also accused of lying when asked separately whether he ever subpoenaed text messages of members of Congress, a question that, unlike the toll-records exchange, appears harder to explain away as a matter of narrow phrasing.
The DOJ under the current administration has shown a willingness to revisit politically charged federal cases from recent years, including prosecutions with direct political dimensions. Whether that willingness extends to charging a former special counsel remains to be seen.
Smith testified again before the House Judiciary Committee on January 22, 2026, at the Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill. The full scope of what he said during that appearance, and whether it aligned with the records Grassley later released, has not been publicly detailed.
Fox News reported that the Justice Department's statement confirming receipt was direct: "The Department can confirm receipt of the criminal referral from the House Judiciary Committee and will investigate all evidence of criminal conduct." No timeline for that investigation has been announced. No charges have been filed.
A criminal referral is not an indictment. It is a formal request from Congress asking prosecutors to look at the evidence and decide. But the facts that prompted it, 44 lawmakers' texts read without a filter team, a deposition answer that now appears incomplete at best, and a special counsel who spent years pursuing the sitting president, are not the kind of facts that fade quietly.
Jack Smith spent years telling the country that no one is above the law. Congress is now asking whether that standard applies to him, too.
