House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan referred former Special Counsel Jack Smith for criminal prosecution for allegedly making false statements during his December 17, 2025, deposition.
Jordan told acting Attorney General Todd Blanche that the committee has “strong evidence” against Smith.
“All individuals have an obligation to comply with a duly authorized congressional inquiry,” said Jordan. “Mr. Smith, a former public servant, is no different. Yet his testimony included intentionally false statements designed to obstruct the Committee’s oversight. His conduct can only be understood as an effort to thwart the Committee’s inquiry by intentionally making false statements and representations before Congress.”
Jordan wrote:
New information obtained by the Committee reveals how Mr. Smith likely circumvented key constitutional protections, including the Speech or Debate Clause, to spy on Members of Congress. On July 14, 2026, the DOJ produced documents to the Committee revealing that Mr. Smith’s team obtained text messages of 44 Members of Congress—implicating both Republicans and Democrats in both chambers of Congress—that may have included privileged content. This information calls into question the completeness and accuracy of statements that Mr. Smith made under oath to the Committee regarding his team’s access to the content of Members’ text messages.The new information received on July 14 showed that Mr. Smith’s team likely violated DOJ’s own internal policy and obtained text messages between Members of Congress and Executive Branch officials that may have included privileged content, without any screening by a filter team for potential privileges. The filter team procedures state that “[n]o materials shall be disclosed to the investigative team without approval of a filter team attorney.” Despite this, on August 21, 2023, Senior Assistant Special Counsel Thomas Windom received an email from the General Counsel of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) in response to the Special Counsel Office’s June 2, 2023 request, for NARA to produce “Presidential records of the Trump administration . . . .” In that email, NARA attached “54 spreadsheets containing requested custodians’ text messages” from White House phones. Windom then reviewed the text messages and proceeded to forward the content of the texts to fellow prosecutors on the investigative team. Windom, as a member of Smith’s investigative team, should not have had access to the content of those text messages until after they were reviewed by the filter team.
The Filter Team exists to prevent investigators from getting privileged materials.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley revealed the information on July 14.
The DOJ provided Grassley and Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations Chairman Ron Johnson with the documents “after receiving legally protected whistleblower disclosures.”
The documents show that Smith and his team “read the text messages of 44 members of Congress from both parties and White House staff during its investigation.”
The team also targeted former Vice President Mike Pence, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, current FBI Director Kash Patel, and Ivanka Trump
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