The revelation has driven heavy coverage across news outlets and video segments this week, with the story landing on Fox News, The Hill and local stations as lawmakers from both parties absorb the news that their private texts were part of the investigation.

The exchanges were part of a trove of materials the National Archives turned over to Smith’s team after a subpoena for White House records spanning October 2020 to January 2021, according to Politico. Smith’s top deputies received the materials in August 2023, weeks after securing a grand jury indictment against Trump, and internal emails Grassley released Tuesday indicated the team was preparing to share them with Trump’s legal team during pre-trial discovery.

Why is Grassley pushing back on Smith now?

Grassley’s release of the materials is part of a broader effort by the Iowa Republican and other Trump allies to portray Smith as a reckless or overaggressive prosecutor in pursuing criminal cases against Trump during the Biden administration, according to Politico. Many GOP lawmakers believe those cases were politically motivated.

Grassley was already angered after learning investigators had obtained call records of several Republican lawmakers as part of Smith’s probe into Trump’s efforts to subvert the 2020 election, which culminated in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack.

“Jack Smith has answering to do, and I intend to have him before the Senate Judiciary Committee in the coming months to hold him accountable,” Grassley said, according to Politico. A spokesman for Smith did not immediately respond to a request for comment, Politico reported. Smith testified to the House Judiciary Committee both privately and publicly earlier this year.

A Fox News segment featuring correspondent Bill Melugin detailed the Justice Department records showing Smith’s team reviewed the lawmakers’ texts, while The Hill noted the disclosure covered both Democrats and Republicans.

Which lawmakers were affected?

The newly disclosed records show a wide range of lawmakers communicating with the White House in Trump’s final months in office, according to Politico, including Grassley himself and 19 other senators, as well as then-House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy. Several exchanges involving Democrats, including Sen. Cory Booker and then-Rep. Karen Bass, were also among the subpoenaed materials.

Rep. Scott Perry of Pennsylvania is also among the lawmakers whose messages were obtained in the two-month window before Trump’s term ended. Smith’s investigators spent more than a year fighting to obtain Perry’s texts and emails after the FBI seized his phone in August 2022, with Perry arguing in court that thousands of the messages were protected by the Constitution’s speech-or-debate clause. Prosecutors eventually won access to roughly 1,600 of Perry’s messages that judges ruled were unrelated to his legislative work.

Grassley is casting the disclosure of lawmakers’ texts as a possible breach of that same speech-or-debate protection, which shields Congress’s legislative communications from executive branch scrutiny.

What happens next?

Grassley has said he plans to call Smith to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee in the coming months. A KOMO News report noted Grassley alleges investigators bypassed standard procedures for handling potentially privileged material, a claim that is likely to feature in that eventual hearing.

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