Fox News correspondent David Spunt reports on former special counsel Jack Smith testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Capitol Hill as GOP senators press him on claims of political overreach.
Massive trove of Republican voter and donor info breached in Biden DOJ probe: Senate chairman
by Alex Miller,Bill Melugin · Fox NewsNEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!
FIRST ON FOX: A new memo obtained by Fox News Digital alleges that former President Joe Biden’s Justice Department collected information on hundreds of thousands of Republican voters and donors.
The memo is part of an update from Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and his investigation into former special counsel Jack Smith and his Arctic Frost probe, which was launched by Biden’s Department of Justice (DOJ) in 2022 to investigate efforts to overturn results of the 2020 election.
Grassley has been diving into Arctic Frost since last year, releasing a drip feed of whistleblower reports on the investigation that led to Smith testifying before the Judiciary Committee last month.
The latest update found that Smith’s special counsel's office and the DOJ "obtained spreadsheets containing Republican campaign donors, supporters, and detailed personal voter information in various formats, totaling over 639,000 individuals, at minimum," Grassley said in the memo.
"Out of those, over 148,000 rows are identified in the spreadsheets as donors," he continued. "The donors generally contributed small-dollar amounts."
The data gathered on the voters and donors included names, dates of birth, physical addresses, emails, whether the person was a registered Republican, their occupation and place of employment — samples on the list included retirees, pool technicians, drivers, loggers, etc. — credit card information, donor analysis data, and donation amount, among other details.
Fox News Digital reached out to Smith’s newly launched law firm for comment.
The memo follows a previous release from Grassley that showed Smith’s team collected checks from nearly 5,000 Americans across the country who donated to Trump and Trump-aligned Republican entities.
"This update shows that Jack Smith and the Biden Justice Department collected incredibly invasive donor data — and voter data — beyond what could conceivably be necessary for him or his team to fulfill the [special counsel office’s] mandate," Grassley said.
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"This update further corroborates that Smith and his partisan team aimed to map out the entire Republican Party apparatus," he continued. "I again call on my Democratic colleagues to join my oversight work instead of trying to defend Smith and sweep his abuse of authority under the rug."
Grassley noted that during Smith’s hearing last month, he pressed the former special counsel for a "yes or no" answer on whether his investigation gathered data on donors.
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"Yes," Smith said. "We acquired financial information. As I sit here right now, I cannot recite to you every subpoena we issued. I can tell you why we issued subpoenas. And it was to conduct a criminal investigation of one of the most serious crimes that's ever happened in our nation's history. I had a duty to collect facts."
Alex Miller is a writer for Fox News Digital covering the U.S. Senate.