FBI Director Kash Patel has fired agents involved in tracking phone calls of eight Republican senators and a congressman as part of former Special Counsel Jack Smith’s investigation of President Donald Trump.
Communication records belonging to GOP Sens. Lindsey Graham (SC), Marsha Blackburn (TN), Ron Johnson (WI), Josh Hawley (MO), Cynthia Lummis (WY), Bill Hagerty (TN), Dan Sullivan (AK), Tommy Tuberville (AL), and Rep. Mike Kelly (PA) were handed over to Smith’s “Arctic Frost” team after they subpoenaed major phone companies in 2023, Breitbart News reported.
That fact was unknown to the public until this week, with Patel saying he discovered the files hidden in a “lockbox” that was placed in a “vault” in a “cyber place where no one can see or search these files.”
“You put it in there when you want to hide it from the world, and that takes the authorization of the attorney general and the director of the FBI,” Patel said in a Tuesday interview on Fox News. “So not only did they weaponize this law enforcement, but when we got in there, and when I got in as the FBI director, from my experience as Russiagate, I knew where to look and what rooms to open and what doors to kick down, and that’s what we did.”
“We found this information to expose the politicization by Jack Smith and the prior Department of Justice,” he added, before revealing that he fired agents who facilitated the secret investigations into U.S. lawmakers:
I mean, just think about it, eight sitting United States senators. Phone records were gathered and subpoenaed through the grand jury process, and it was buried and wormholed. It was the hope that no one would find it. So we’re just scratching the surface here, but accountability is coming. You’re darn right. I fired those agents. You’re darn right. I blew up CR-15, the public corruption squad that led the weaponization at the Washington Field Office. We’re just warming up, but we are running our investigations to the ground. We are finding every single person involved. We will not leave a single room locked.
Hawley, one of the senators who had his phone calls tracked by the Biden administration’s DOJ, called Smith’s subpoena “an abuse of power beyond Watergate, beyond J. Edgar Hoover, one that directly strikes at the Constitution, the separation of powers, and the First Amendment.”
“We need a full investigation of all involved: who knew about it, who ordered it, and who approved it. Anyone and everyone who violated the law must be prosecuted. The way to save the country is to restore the rule of law,” the senator wrote on X.
The U.S. Office of Special Counsel (OSC) in August opened an investigation into Smith, who may have unlawfully targeted Trump, Breitbart News reported.
Olivia Rondeau is a politics reporter for Breitbart News based in Washington, DC. Find her on X/Twitter and Instagram.
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