Senator Chuck Grassley has exposed what amounts to one of the most egregious violations of constitutional authority in modern American history. The Iowa Republican released over 1,700 pages of whistleblower documents Wednesday revealing that Special Counsel Jack Smith secretly obtained phone records from at least eight senators and one congressman as part of his investigation targeting former President Donald Trump.

Let us be clear about what happened here. The Biden Department of Justice, under the direction of Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI Director Christopher Wray, launched an operation codenamed “Arctic Frost” that systematically targeted Republicans in key battleground states. This was not a legitimate investigation. This was a fishing expedition designed to criminalize political opposition.

The facts are straightforward. Wray sent a memorandum to Garland claiming that fraudulent elector certificates had been submitted to the National Archives for Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, and Wisconsin. He characterized these as part of a grand conspiracy to obstruct the 2020 election certification. Smith then used this premise to justify an unprecedented surveillance operation against sitting members of Congress.

Grassley made public 197 subpoenas sought by Smith. According to the senator, Verizon informed him that at least eleven members with Verizon accounts were affected, including a hardline for Senator Ted Cruz’s office and a cellphone belonging to a staffer for former Senator Kelly Loeffler.

The constitutional implications here are staggering. Cruz revealed that AT&T’s legal counsel advised the company not to comply with Smith’s subpoena because it violated the Speech and Debate Clause of the Constitution. This clause exists precisely to prevent the executive branch from intimidating or surveilling members of Congress for their legislative activities.

But here is where this becomes even more disturbing. The subpoena came with an order from Judge James E. Boasberg prohibiting AT&T from informing Cruz about the surveillance for at least one year. The basis for this gag order? Boasberg claimed there were “reasonable grounds to believe that such disclosure will result in destruction of, or tampering with evidence, intimidation of potential witnesses, and serious jeopardy to the investigation.”

As Cruz correctly noted, there was “precisely zero evidence” to support this conclusion. Zero. This was not about protecting an investigation. This was about concealing an abuse of power from its victims until the damage was done.

The same Judge Boasberg, it should be noted, has been issuing nationwide injunctions to obstruct Trump’s implementation of his electoral mandate. The pattern is unmistakable.

This is not how the American justice system is supposed to function. The Fourth Amendment protects against unreasonable searches and seizures. The Speech and Debate Clause protects congressional independence. These are not suggestions. They are constitutional requirements that exist to prevent exactly this kind of tyrannical overreach.

The Biden administration weaponized federal law enforcement to spy on political opponents, obtained secret court orders to prevent those opponents from learning about the surveillance, and did so without any evidentiary basis for believing crimes had been committed. They created an enemies list and used the full power of the federal government to target everyone on it.

AT&T pushed back and refused to comply when its lawyers recognized the constitutional violations. Verizon, apparently, did not exercise the same judgment. The result? The federal government obtained private communications data from sitting members of Congress who were doing nothing more than exercising their constitutional duties.

This represents a fundamental threat to the separation of powers and the rule of law. When the executive branch can secretly surveil the legislative branch without evidence of wrongdoing, when judges rubber-stamp unconstitutional requests, and when these abuses remain hidden for years, we are no longer operating under constitutional constraints.

The American people deserve answers, accountability, and prosecutions where appropriate. This cannot stand.

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