The House Judiciary Committee formally referred former Special Counsel Jack Smith to the Department of Justice on July 22, requesting a federal investigation into whether he made false statements during a December 17, 2025, congressional deposition.
In a letter addressed to Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan stated that newly obtained Justice Department documents contradict Smith’s sworn testimony regarding his team’s access to members of Congress’s private communications.
The committee asked the Justice Department to evaluate potential violations of 18 U.S.C. § 1001, which criminalizes knowingly making false or misleading statements to Congress.
According to the letter, the referral centers on testimony Smith gave regarding subpoenas issued for lawmakers’ phone and text records during the “Arctic Frost” investigation and the subsequent special counsel probe into the 2020 election. During his deposition, Smith was asked under oath whether his office requested or received the text message contents of members of Congress, to which he responded that his office sought only phone toll records, not text message content.
When asked specifically, “Did the records that you requested, the toll records from the Member of Congress, include the content of text messages?” Smith answered, “No.”
The committee cited internal Justice Department records turned over on July 14, 2026, showing that the special counsel’s team did obtain text message content involving 44 members of Congress, spanning both parties in the House and Senate. The documents indicate that on August 21, 2023, Senior Assistant Special Counsel Thomas Windom received 54 spreadsheets containing text messages from White House phones via the National Archives and Records Administration. The letter states Windom reviewed and shared those messages among the investigative team without first routing them through a department filter team to screen for legislative privilege under the Constitution’s Speech or Debate Clause.
The committee argued that while Smith testified his team did not seek search warrants from telecommunication carriers for text contents, his failure to disclose receiving text content through National Archives records constituted a misleading half-truth under federal oversight standards.
“All individuals have an obligation to comply with a duly authorized congressional inquiry,” Jordan wrote in the referral. “Mr. Smith, a former public servant, is no different. Yet his testimony included intentionally false statements designed to obstruct the Committee’s oversight.”
The Justice Department has not yet issued a public response regarding whether it will open a formal investigation into the referral.
Please make a small donation to the Tampa Free Press to help sustain independent journalism. Your contribution enables us to continue delivering high-quality, local, and national news coverage.
Sign up: Subscribe to our free newsletter for a curated selection of top stories delivered straight to your inbox.
