Jack Smith Just Gave One Answer Under Oath That Let Grassley Prove Him Guilty of Perjury

Jack Smith stood before the House Judiciary Committee and answered one question with a single word.

On Tuesday, Chuck Grassley released the internal DOJ records covering himself and 43 other lawmakers, exposing what that word was hiding.

Grassley says what those documents prove about that single word could end Jack Smith's career for good.

DOJ Letter Confirms Smith's Team Bypassed the Filter Team

Last December, a House Judiciary lawyer asked Jack Smith a direct question.

Did his investigation request the content of text messages belonging to members of Congress?

Smith answered under oath.

"No."

That answer just collapsed.

Assistant Attorney General Patrick Davis sent Grassley a letter this week confirming Smith's team "bypassed the Filter Team and directly accessed" the text messages of 44 sitting and former members of Congress.

The Filter Team exists for one reason.

It screens material pulled from government archives before investigators ever see it, protecting privileged communications under attorney-client privilege and the Constitution's Speech or Debate Clause.

The FBI then matched the phone numbers in those texts to the lawmakers who sent them.

Grassley didn't mince words about what he found.

Smith's Trump investigation, he said, was "a runaway train that had no brakes."

Forty-Four Lawmakers From Both Parties Were Swept Up

The list Grassley and Senate colleague Ron Johnson released reads like a Senate floor roster.

Grassley himself is on it.

So are Josh Hawley, Rand Paul, Tom Cotton, Susan Collins, Lindsey Graham, and Elise Stefanik.

Democrats show up too, including Cory Booker and then-Rep. Karen Bass.

The messages ran between October 2020 and January 20, 2021, connecting these lawmakers to Trump White House officials like Mark Meadows and Stephen Miller.

An internal DOJ email dated August 21, 2023, shows Smith's team discussing 54 Excel files of text messages pulled straight from White House phones and loaded onto a shared drive.

That's not a stray record here or there.

That's a spreadsheet operation built around private congressional communications.

Smith's office had already faced internal warnings about this exact problem.

Prosecutors flagged the Speech or Debate Clause risk in their own emails before they went ahead anyway.

One email cited a federal appeals ruling stating flatly that the bar on compelled disclosure of lawmaker communications "is absolute."

Smith's team read that warning and moved ahead anyway.

Now the deposition transcript is raising fresh questions of its own.

Thirty pages of that transcript exist only as scanned images rather than searchable text, and one of them happens to be the exact page holding Smith's toll records claim.

A word search of the file would never surface it.

The committee that released it hasn't explained why those pages, and only those pages, came through as pictures instead of type.

Josh Hawley wasn't buying the coincidence.

"Looks like perjury," he posted.

Rand Paul went further, calling the whole episode "a blatant abuse of power" and invoking the Founders directly.

This Isn't the First Time the DOJ Has Done This

Republicans have a receipt for this pattern going back years.

A Justice Department inspector general later revealed that prosecutors quietly pulled phone and text records covering 43 congressional aides and two sitting lawmakers during a leak investigation that started in 2017.

That probe also used gag orders to keep the targets from ever finding out.

None of it led to a single criminal charge.

The pattern is the same every time.

A prosecutor decides Congress is an obstacle instead of a co-equal branch, and the guardrails come down.

Grassley isn't finished either.

He says he plans to bring Smith before the Senate Judiciary Committee to answer for what his team did, and he wants Democrats caught in the same net to call it what it is instead of hiding behind party lines.

That's the real test now.

If Smith told Congress "no" under oath while his own investigators held the actual content of those texts, that isn't a gray area.

It's a false statement to the body constitutionally empowered to hold him accountable, and prosecutors go to prison for less.

The Constitution didn't create a Speech or Debate Clause so a special counsel could decide when it applies.

Grassley has the documents.

Now he needs Smith under oath again, this time with the receipts already on the table.

Sources:

• Chuck Grassley and Ron Johnson, Senate Judiciary Committee press release, July 14, 2026.
• Fox News, "Jack Smith probe swept texts of 44 Congress members, bypassing review," July 14, 2026.
• ZeroHedge, "Jack Smith's Team Spied On 44 Lawmakers' Texts, Built A Case On Them, And Misled Congress," July 14, 2026.
• Mediaite, "GOP Lawmakers Fume After Revelation Jack Smith Covertly Read Texts," July 14, 2026.
• The Washington Times, "Jack Smith's 'Arctic Frost' team spied on lawmakers' texts without shielding privileged info," July 14, 2026.
• NBC News, "Trump's DOJ secretly obtained phone and text message logs of 43 congressional staffers," December 11, 2024.
• The Federalist, "New Docs Support Claims Jack Smith's Team Violated Constitution," July 15, 2026.