House Judiciary Chair Refers Jack Smith to DOJ for Possible Prosecution

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) sent a letter to the Department of Justice (DOJ) on July 22 requesting a criminal probe into former special counsel Jack Smith.

In his letter to Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, Jordan claimed that Smith, while testifying under oath during his congressional deposition last year, “seemingly made willfully and intentionally false statements of material fact that contradict new documents obtained by the Committee” from the DOJ.

Smith’s lawyers deny the allegation and say he testified truthfully.

Smith was appointed in November 2022 by then-Attorney General Merrick Garland to oversee investigations into President Donald Trump, who at the time was a private citizen.

In January, Smith told a House panel that the decision to obtain senators’ phone records was in line with DOJ policy.

In the July 22 letter, Jordan said that during the DOJ’s investigation of allegations concerning the 2020 election, codenamed Arctic Frost, and the subsequent special counsel investigation, investigators “unconstitutionally subpoenaed phone records for over a dozen Republican Members of Congress and obtained gag orders to prevent the Members from knowing that the Biden-Harris Administration had obtained these records.”

Jordan wrote that during the Dec. 17, 2025, deposition, the committee advised Mr. Smith that he was “obliged to provide all necessary information that would make his responses truthful and to avoid half-truths or incomplete answers.”

When asked during the deposition whether he or his team ever obtained the content of lawmakers’ communications, Smith answered no. And when asked whether he sought a search warrant for the content of any text messages from members, Smith said, “No, I don’t recall that.”

When pressed whether this was just for toll records, he said: “Correct.”

Toll records are telecommunications files that log telephone call or text message transactions. They can detail call times, durations, source numbers, and destination numbers but do not record the audio or content of conversations. 

Jordan cited DOJ records released to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) last week that claimed that more than 40 members of Congress had their text messages viewed by Smith’s team.

Grassley and Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations Chairman Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) said that they requested the records from the DOJ after receiving legally protected whistleblower disclosures. They also said their own text messages were obtained by Smith’s team.

“Jack Smith’s criminal investigation of President Trump was a runaway train that had no brakes,” Grassley said in a July 14 statement.

Jordan said that new information received on July 14 showed that Smith’s team likely violated the DOJ’s own internal policy and obtained text messages between lawmakers and executive branch officials “that may have included privileged content, without any screening by a filter team for potential privileges.”

Grassley’s office said in a statement: “Communications from Members of Congress pertaining to their official legislative duties are protected from criminal prosecution under the Constitution’s Speech or Debate Clause. Bypassing a Filter Team evades consideration of additional privileges, such as attorney-client privilege.”

A document uploaded by Grassley’s office on July 14 included a screenshot of emails sent by Smith’s team in which they had discussed receiving texts from “White House phones.” An internal DOJ email dated Aug. 21, 2023, showed Smith’s team talking about obtaining “54 excel files with text messages from White House phones.”

Trump administration personnel whose messages were accessed included former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, current White House aide Stephen Miller, current White House adviser Peter Navarro, current CIA Director John Ratcliffe, current FBI Director Kash Patel, former senior counselor Kellyanne Conway, former Vice President Mike Pence, and Trump’s daughter Ivanka Trump, the committee said.

Jordan said in his letter that Smith’s team obtained text messages of 44 lawmakers, “implicating both Republicans and Democrats in both chambers of Congress—that may have included privileged content.”

“The responses provided by Mr. Smith gave the impression that neither Mr. Smith nor his team had access to the content of Members’ privileged text messages. We now know this to be false,” he wrote. “In light of the new information detailing that Mr. Smith’s team did have access to content of Members’ text messages and the fact that Mr. Smith made false statements regarding this information during his deposition, suggests that he willingly and knowingly made false representations to the Committee.”

Jordan said the committee believes “that sufficient evidence exists for DOJ to examine whether Mr. Smith’s actions warrant a charge for the violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1001,” a federal law that makes it illegal to knowingly and willfully make false statements within the jurisdiction of the U.S. government.

The Epoch Times reached out to Smith for comment but did not receive a response by publication time.

In a letter to Jordan and Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, Smith’s lawyers called his answers “unimpeachably truthful” and noted that he was responding explicitly to questions about toll records, which did not include the contents of any text messages.

“During his testimony, Mr. Smith provided truthful, responsive answers and candidly discussed his work as Special Counsel,” Smith’s lawyers, Peter Koski and Lanny Breuer, wrote. “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.”

Jack Philips contributed to this report.