Did you buy a MAGA hat after the 2020 election? Jack Smith’s team had your info
by Stephen Dinan · The Washington TimesFormer special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into President Trump scooped up information on 639,000 Republican supporters and everyday voters, the Senate Judiciary Committee chairman revealed Wednesday.
One spreadsheet that Mr. Smith obtained focused on people who bought the iconic red Trump campaign “Make America Great Again” hats after the 2020 election.
Sen. Charles E. Grassley, Iowa Republican, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and president pro tempore of the Senate, called the information obtained “incredibly invasive” and said there was no possible valid reason Mr. Smith needed it for his criminal investigations of the president.
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“The new findings further corroborate that Smith and his partisan team aimed to map out the entire Republican Party apparatus,” Mr. Grassley said.
The information Mr. Smith collected dated back to 2005 and covered donors and other supporters, as well as everyday Republican voters, Mr. Grassley said.
It was scoured from files that Republican-aligned groups were compelled to turn over under subpoena, Mr. Grassley said.
The senator learned of the expansive data collection through whistleblowers.
Various spreadsheets obtained by Mr. Smith contain information on more than 639,000 Republican-connected individuals. Of those, 148,000 were identified in the spreadsheets as donors, largely making small-dollar contributions.
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Data collected included names, dates of birth, credit card information and occupations.
Mr. Grassley, in a memo detailing his new findings Wednesday, said Mr. Smith’s data did not focus just on big-time donors.
Those who gave as little as $1 were included in the data he collected.
Mr. Smith also obtained lists of Trump campaign personnel, which “potentially include campaign volunteers,” according to Mr. Grassley’s memo.
Mr. Grassley released two pages from a spreadsheet detailing 158 people who bought MAGA hats on Nov. 16, 2020.
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He said Mr. Smith also collected a copy of the Trump campaign’s merchandise catalog, which sold T-shirts, mugs, posters and welcome mats.
Mr. Smith, in testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee in September, defended his investigation but declined to answer specific questions about the extent of his subpoenas.
“I do not recall because I’ve not seen those subpoenas in a very long time,” he said.
Republicans have accused Mr. Smith of giving misleading testimony to Congress in December 2025, when he said he did not seek the contents of messages from members of Congress. Republican lawmakers say he did, in fact, receive them by subpoenaing White House records containing exchanges with members of Congress.
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Democrats defended Mr. Smith, saying he gave a precise answer, and if Republicans are upset, it is because they asked the wrong question.
He said the wide net he cast was an attempt to figure out the contours of Mr. Trump’s actions in challenging the results of the 2020 election.
Sen. Ted Cruz, Texas Republican, told Mr. Smith that he had issued 197 subpoenas covering at least 430 Republican organizations. He called that “a massive fishing expedition.”
“I do not recall those numbers,” Mr. Smith replied.
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Mr. Smith, appointed by then-Attorney General Merrick Garland, would go on to bring two criminal cases against Mr. Trump.
One, in federal court in Florida, accused Mr. Trump of mishandling classified documents. That case was dismissed by U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, who ruled that Mr. Smith had been unlawfully appointed as special counsel. The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed his appeal after Mr. Trump won the 2024 election and the Justice Department moved to drop all charges.
The other case, brought in federal court in the District of Columbia, accused the president of trying to subvert the 2020 election, including by fomenting the riot at the Capitol that disrupted the Electoral College count on Jan. 6, 2021.
The Supreme Court undercut some of Mr. Smith’s charges, and he was in the process of trying to rewrite his case when Mr. Trump won the 2024 election. Mr. Smith subsequently moved to dismiss the case, citing the Justice Department’s longstanding policy against prosecuting a sitting president.
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Stephen Dinan
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