Former special counsel Jack Smith’s investigators blew past the Justice Department’s own privilege safeguards to directly access text messages between Trump White House officials and 44 members of Congress – then had the FBI match the phone numbers to lawmakers’ names, according to DOJ records released Tuesday.
Assistant Attorney General Patrick Davis told Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA) in a letter accompanying the records that Smith’s team “bypassed the Filter Team and directly accessed these text messages.” The FBI then worked out which senators and House members had sent or received them, Davis wrote.
The filter unit existed for one purpose: to screen messages pulled from the National Archives for privileged material before line investigators ever laid eyes on them.
“All communication to/from the Filter Team must go through the Coordinator,” one internal protocol document states – adding that nothing was to reach the investigative team without a filter attorney’s sign-off.
The messages, sent between October 2020 and Jan. 20, 2021, ran between a bipartisan roster of lawmakers and Trump White House figures including chief of staff Mark Meadows, Dan Scavino, Ivanka Trump, Stephen Miller, Peter Navarro, now-CIA Director John Ratcliffe and now-FBI Director Kash Patel, the records show.
Hellbound and Down 