The Justice Department has disclosed that Special Counsel Jack Smith’s investigative team directly accessed and downloaded text messages between White House personnel and dozens of members of Congress, bypassing an established internal “filter team” designed to block privileged communications.
The disclosure came in a letter from Assistant Attorney General Patrick D. Davis to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles E. Grassley.
The correspondence, which was authorized for public release by Grassley and Senator Ron Johnson, details the inner workings of the dual investigations into the events of January 6, 2021 (codenamed “Project Coconut”) and classified documents at Mar-a-Lago (codenamed “Project Cranberry”).
According to the letter, the Department of Justice established a dedicated Filter Team to review several million documents obtained during the investigations. The team’s mandated role was to separate privileged attorney-client or work-product materials from the files before transmitting the unprivileged, responsive information to the main Special Counsel and FBI investigative teams.
Department guidelines state that filter team members are prohibited from communicating with or being part of the active investigative team, with all official coordination routed strictly through a designated Filter Team Coordinator.
However, records provided by the Justice Department show that on June 2, 2023, Senior Assistant Special Counsel Thomas Windom bypassed this process by emailing National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) General Counsel Gary Stern to request text messages from October 2020 through January 20, 2021, associated with a lengthy list of White House staff members.
On August 21, 2023, Stern emailed Windom to notify him that NARA was producing 54 spreadsheets containing the requested text messages. Within minutes of receiving the secure download links and passwords, Windom downloaded the spreadsheets and instructed his investigative team to do the same, bypassing the designated Filter Team review process.
According to internal emails, Windom immediately began sharing specific copied text messages with team members, and the files were saved directly to the Special Counsel team’s shared drive.
Among the downloaded files, investigators acquired direct communications between White House personnel and at least 44 members of Congress. The list of affected lawmakers includes prominent senators and representatives from both parties, including Senators Chuck Grassley, Ron Johnson, Lindsey Graham, Josh Hawley, and Cory Booker, as well as Representatives Kevin McCarthy, Steve Scalise, Jim Jordan, and Elise Stefanik.
The direct acquisition of these records occurred despite previous internal warnings regarding the constitutional protections of congressional communications. On May 17, 2023, just over two weeks before Windom contacted NARA, the investigative team sought approval to target the phone toll records of several members of Congress.
At the time, an attorney in the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section, John Keller, sent an email warning Windom of the legal risks involved. Keller noted that under D.C. Circuit precedent, the Speech or Debate Clause of the U.S. Constitution provides an “absolute” bar against the compelled disclosure of a lawmaker’s legislative communications, including telephone calls made or received while gathering information for votes or legislation.
Department records also reveal that the filter review process had experienced technical issues prior to the NARA download. On June 11, 2023, a Justice Department employee contacted the third-party contractor managing the Filter Team’s document review software, alerting them that incorrect permission settings had allowed active investigators to view raw documents that had not yet been sorted or cleared by the Filter Team. The email urged the contractor to resolve the issue as the agency’s “top priority.”
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