One of the senators whose phone records were obtained by Jack Smith during his ill-fated probe of President Trump sued on Wednesday, asking a court to reprimand the former special counsel for his aggressive actions.
Sen. Marsha Blackburn, Tennessee Republican, said the Constitution — and U.S. law — should have required Mr. Smith to disclose that he was seeking records involving a sitting member of Congress.
Instead, he concealed that, even failing to reveal to a federal judge that lawmakers were the targets. Not knowing that information, District Judge James Boasberg signed off on a nondisclosure order preventing Verizon from revealing Mr. Smith’s demand.
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Ms. Blackburn also challenged Mr. Smith’s appointment to the special counsel’s job, saying he was illegally serving and never should have been in his position in the first place.
“Jack Smith perpetrated one of the worst abuses of government power in our nation’s history,” the senator said in a statement announcing her case. “This lawsuit is solely about holding Mr. Smith accountable and ensuring that our nation’s justice system can never again be weaponized against the American people.”
The lawsuit names Mr. Smith and the Justice Department.
The Washington Times has reached out to the department and to a lawyer for Mr. Smith.
Then-Attorney General Merrick Garland tapped Mr. Smith to be special counsel, taking over what had been an FBI-DOJ probe of Mr. Trump in 2022.
Mr. Smith would go on to secure two indictments against Mr. Trump, one for mishandling classified documents at his home in Florida after his first term and the other accusing him of trying to thwart the transition of power by inciting the mob intrusion at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Both cases faced legal setbacks, and the DOJ dismissed them after Mr. Trump won the 2024 election.
During his probe, Mr. Smith sought phone toll records of 16 Republican members of Congress. Those records disclose who was part of a communication and when it happened.
AT&T refused his request, but Verizon complied, delivering records for senators, including Ms. Blackburn.
Senators said the law specifically required him to disclose that members of Congress were targets, giving them a chance to assert their prerogative under the Constitution’s Speech and Debate Clause to resist any information being provided.
They said Mr. Smith circumvented that law.
Mr. Smith justified the demands for phone records by saying the lawmakers had been in communication with the White House on Jan. 6 and that those they were speaking with could corroborate other evidence he’d amassed about a conspiracy to subvert the election.
“The toll records that we sought were relevant to the investigation,” he told senators in testimony on Tuesday.
He said he was worried about record tampering or witness intimidation if the requests were made public. But he said that wasn’t a strike at the senators.
“Our concern was President Trump,” he said.
In addition to the phone toll records, Mr. Smith also obtained the contents of some communications from members of Congress.
He had demanded to get ahold of the phones some Trump administration staffers turned in at the end of their tenure, and the communications were on those phones.
Mr. Smith was asked during a deposition with the House last year if he’d ever sought the contents of communications with Congress. He denied it.
Senators this week said that was misleading, because he had obtained the communications, even if he didn’t explicitly seek them.
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