“Arctic Frost” was the FBI’s internal codename for a federal investigation — launched in April 2022 — of allegations that former President Trump and an array of conservative allies — claiming widespread election fraud — had covertly tried to overturn the results of the 2020 U.S. presidential race that saw Joe Biden supplant Trump in the White House. In November 2022, the leadership of the Arctic Frost probe was transferred from the Biden FBI to the office of Democrat attorney Jack Smith, a newly appointed Special Counsel for the Biden administration’s Department of Justice. Then-Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Smith to the post of Special Counsel on November 18, 2022, three days after Mr. Trump had formally announced his intent to run for president again in 2024.
On October 29, 2025 — nearly three years after Smith’s appointment as Special Counsel — Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) released a trove of FBI files revealing that during Smith’s time as the head of Arctic Frost, his Special Counsel’s office had signed at least 197 subpoenas authorizing widespread government spying on hundreds of Republican and conservative individuals and organizations. The surveillance of those targets sought to uncover information about Trump’s alleged efforts to pressure Republican lawmakers into helping him challenge the 2020 election results.
Smith’s subpoenas, said Grassley, included nonpublic, confidential grand-jury material “obtained through legally protected whistleblower disclosures.” The senator characterized Arctic Frost as “the vehicle by which FBI agents and DOJ prosecutors could improperly investigate the entire Republican political apparatus.” Of the 197 known subpoenas, 34 were issued to individuals and 163 were issued to businesses, including communications companies, media corporations, and financial institutions. The information requested by these subpoenas included, among other things, the metadata of phone calls involving at least 11 U.S. Senators and 6 U.S. House Members — all Republicans.[3] According to Grassley, the subpoenas as a whole “related to over 430 individuals and organizations,” and “all of them appear to be aimed at Republicans.” Some of the subpoenas targeted White House insiders such as Stephen Miller, Dan Scavino, Jared Kushner and Lara Trump — as well as Republican donors. Jack Smith tried to downplay the significance of the spying by claiming that “the toll data [metadata] collection” in Arctic Frost “was narrowly tailored and limited to the four days from January 4th to 7th, 2021” — with a focus on “the January 6 riots at the U.S. Capitol.”
But Smith’s claim was untrue, as evidenced by the fact that:
In April 2022, the Biden DOJ subpoenaed the personal phone records of House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan, seeking 28 months of private mobile-phone communications data that included, for each call: the time of placement, the name of the recipient, the duration of the conversation, and the general location data of the parties involved.
A number of the aforementioned 197 subpoenas — though not those targeting Gohmert and Jordan — were signed by Federal District Court Judge James Boasberg. Typical was one that ordered the communications company AT&T to give the cell-phone records of Republican Senator Ted Cruz to the Biden DOJ, though AT&T refused to comply with the subpoena because it violated the speech-or-debate clause of the U.S. Constitution. Boasberg signed not only that subpoena, but also an accompanying gag order barring AT&T from informing Cruz about the requested surveillance against him for at least a full year — on the premise that, as Boasberg put it, 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.”
It should be noted that Boasberg’s role in signing subpoenas and gag orders against Republicans and their supporters extended well beyond the case of Senator Cruz. As Fox News reported on November 1, 2025:
“At issue were subpoenas and gag orders issued by former special counsel Jack Smith’s team as part of its probe into President Donald Trump’s actions in the wake of the 2020 election. The redacted documents were made public this week by Sen. Chuck Grassley…. They included subpoenas of phone records for 10 senators and one House lawmaker [figures that would eventually grow to 11 senators and 6 House members], and gag orders sent to Verizon and AT&T instructing them not to notify lawmakers of the subpoena…. Both the subpoenas and gag orders were signed by U.S. District Judge James Boasberg … in May 2023 — roughly two months into his tenure as the chief judge for the federal [FISC] court.”
According to George Washington University Law School professor Jonathan Turley, the Biden Justice Department — through its use of gag orders (a.k.a. judicial nondisclosure orders) in Arctic Frost — “was targeting the very members” of Congress who were tasked with “exercising oversight over investigations into its [the DOJ’s] own previous abusive use of investigatory powers” — even though it was “still not clear for what crimes these members were being investigated.” Indeed, said Turley, Judge Boasberg’s participation in that politically motivated targeting “shattered the very rules of engagement between the coequal and ‘coordinate branches’” to which Boasberg himself had repeatedly pledged fealty. Turley expanded:
“Boasberg signed these orders despite a federal law designed to prevent precisely this type of secret investigation of Congress. Federal law requires that ‘no law, rule, or regulation may be used to prevent a service provider from notifying a Senate office that data or records have been sought through legal process.’ Just in case there was any doubt, the law further states that ‘any provider for a Senate office … shall not be barred, through operation of any court order or any statutory provision, from notifying the Senate office of any legal process seeking disclosure.’ However, Boasberg signed orders that prevented the phone providers from informing members of Congress — members who were actively investigating abuses by the Justice Department — that they were now being subjected to precisely such investigations.”
At an October 29, 2025 press conference, a livid Senator Ted Cruz described Boasberg as a “radical leftist judge who is out of control, who has been issuing nationwide injunctions — one after the other — trying to stop President Trump from carrying out his mandate for the voters.” “There is precisely zero evidence to conclude that I am likely to destroy or tamper with evidence or to intimidate potential witnesses,” Cruz added. “Zero evidentiary basis for that. This order is an abuse of power, this order is a weaponized legal system. My assumption is … Judge Boasberg printed these things out like the placemats at Denny’s. One after the other.” “If a judge signs an order reaching a factual conclusion for which there is zero evidence whatsoever, that judge is abusing his power,” Cruz continued. “There will be accountability for these zealots who wanted to corrupt the Department of Justice and corrupt the judiciary in order to try to attack their enemies list.” Added Cruz: “I am right now calling on the House of Representatives to impeach Judge Boasberg. Judge Boasberg put his robe down, stood up, and said, ‘Sign me up to be part of the partisan vendetta against 20% of the Republicans in the Senate.’ That is a dereliction of duty and a violation of the judicial oath.”
In a letter dated November 20, 2025, three leading Republicans — Senator Chuck Grassley, Senator Ron Johnson, and Representative Jim Jordan — demanded that Judge Boasberg explain why he had authorized the one-year gag orders (a.k.a. judicial nondisclosure orders or NDOs) that prevented phone companies from informing Republican lawmakers that their call records had been subpoenaed by Jack Smith in 2023. The letter said, in part:
“We are investigating the government’s conduct during Arctic Frost, the Biden Department of Justice (DOJ) case that would become Special Counsel Jack Smith’s election case against President Donald Trump. As part of Arctic Frost, Special Counsel Smith’s office sought judicial nondisclosure orders (NDOs) for subpoenas, which you granted. We write to you today to better understand your decision-making and to provide you an opportunity to explain yourself publicly.
“Chairmen Grassley and Johnson revealed that Special Counsel Smith’s office issued at least 43 subpoenas to Verizon and at least two to AT&T…. All 45 subpoenas were accompanied by an NDO of which 19 of them, including the NDOs associated with Members of Congress, were signed by you.
“2 U.S.C. § 6628 provides that no law, rule, or regulation may be used to prevent a service provider from notifying a Senate office that data or records have been sought through legal process…. It is unclear the extent to which the court considered the application of 2 U.S.C. § 6628 in granting Jack Smith’s NDO requests.
“Special Counsel Smith’s request for records relating to sitting Members of Congress … raises serious constitutional and separation of powers concerns. Had the court considered the application of 2 U.S.C. § 6628, it would have seen that the clear prohibition on granting NDOs was designed, at least in part, to address such grave constitutional concerns. 2 U.S.C. § 6628(d) provides that the Senate office may seek a motion to ‘quash or modify any legal process directed at a Senate office if compliance with legal process would require disclosure.’ However, Verizon informed our offices that they believed they were barred from notifying affected Members due to the NDOs you approved, thus preventing the Senate from intervening in the issuance of the subpoenas and addressing these concerns prior to any harm occurring. Further, it is absurd on its face to suggest that an NDO would be required for Senators, who had been accused of no crime, out of fear they would destroy evidence, intimidate witnesses, and otherwise damage the investigation. Accordingly, we want to know whether you knew the government sought information relating to Members of Congress and, if not, why not.”