Jim Jordan said that new information received on July 14 showed that Smith’s team likely violated the DOJ’s own internal policy.
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.
By Owen Evans
