WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW
  • Grassley’s memo alleges the Biden Justice Department collected information involving at least 639,000 Republican voters, supporters, and donors.
  • More than 148,000 spreadsheet rows were identified as donors, many of whom gave small amounts.
  • The collected data included names, addresses, employment details, credit card information, donation amounts, and Republican registration status.
  • Smith acknowledged that investigators obtained financial information and said subpoenas were issued to conduct a criminal investigation.

A newly obtained memo alleges that former President Joe Biden’s Justice Department collected personal information tied to hundreds of thousands of Republican voters and political donors. Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley, a Republican from Iowa, released the update as part of his investigation into former special counsel Jack Smith and the Arctic Frost probe.

The Justice Department launched Arctic Frost in 2022 to investigate efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Grassley has been examining the probe since last year and steadily releasing whistleblower reports about its scope and methods.

Those disclosures eventually led to Smith appearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee last month. Republican senators pressed the former special counsel during the hearing over allegations of political overreach in the investigation.

According to Grassley’s latest memo, the investigation amassed spreadsheets filled with Republican campaign donor, supporter, and voter information. Grassley said the records covered at least 639,000 people.

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The memo said Smith’s office and the Justice Department “obtained spreadsheets containing Republican campaign donors, supporters, and detailed personal voter information in various formats, totaling over 639,000 individuals, at minimum.”

The chairman said a substantial number of entries involved political donors. “Out of those, over 148,000 rows are identified in the spreadsheets as donors,” Grassley said.

“The donors generally contributed small-dollar amounts,” Grassley continued. The memo’s description indicates the data collection reached beyond major political contributors and included people giving relatively modest sums.

The information gathered included names, dates of birth, physical addresses, email addresses, occupations, employers, and whether each person was registered as a Republican. Samples on the list included retirees, pool technicians, drivers, and loggers.

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The records also contained credit card information, donation amounts, donor analysis data, and other details, according to the memo.

The latest disclosure followed a previous release from Grassley concerning the financial records collected during the investigation. That earlier material showed Smith’s team obtained checks from nearly 5,000 Americans who donated to Trump and Republican entities aligned with him.

Grassley argued that the breadth of the collected information went far beyond any reasonable investigative need. “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,” he said.

The Iowa senator also accused Smith’s operation of trying to chart the Republican Party’s broader political network. “This update further corroborates that Smith and his partisan team aimed to map out the entire Republican Party apparatus,” Grassley said.

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Grassley called on Senate Democrats to participate in his investigation rather than continue defending Smith. “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,” he said.

During Smith’s committee appearance last month, Grassley pressed him for a direct answer about whether investigators gathered donor data. Smith answered in the affirmative and acknowledged that his office had obtained financial information.

“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.”

The dispute now centers on how far Arctic Frost reached as it pursued its investigation. Grassley’s memo places the personal and financial information of at least 639,000 Republican voters, supporters, and donors at the center of his continuing oversight effort.

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