Jack Smith Destroys GOP Senators’ Claim He Was Spying on Them

Republican rage over Jack Smith’s investigation was apparently all for naught.

Conservative lawmakers accused the former special prosecutor earlier this month of spying on them during his investigation of Donald Trump by tapping their phone lines and monitoring their phone calls. Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley dubbed the right-wing scandal “worse than Watergate.”

But none of those allegations have held up, especially not in light of a letter Smith’s legal team issued Tuesday that reveals just how legal—and common—the log request was.

“Although you have not reached out to us to discuss this matter, we are compelled to correct inaccurate assertions made by you and others concerning the issuance of a grand jury subpoena for the toll records of eight Senators and one Member of the House of Representatives,” attorneys Lanny Breuer and Peter Koski wrote.

“It is well established that obtaining telephone toll records pursuant to a subpoena is a routine and lawful investigative step that does not violate an individual’s expectation of privacy,” they continued, underscoring that phone toll records don’t contain the content of the calls—only the incoming and outgoing phone numbers, as well as the calls’ duration.

The practice was so ordinary, per Smith’s team, that another special counsel investigator requested the same information during his investigation of President Joe Biden.

“Indeed, Special Counsel Robert Hur subpoenaed toll records in his investigation of President Biden,” the letter reads.

“During the current Trump administration, the Department of Justice has routinely relied upon subpoenaed toll records in numerous criminal prosecutions. During Trump’s first term, the Justice Department purportedly obtained communications records of two Democratic Members of Congress—Rep. Eric Swalwell and then-Rep. Adam Schiff—and forty-three congressional staffers in connection with an investigation into media leaks. More recently, the Department of Justice used toll records in the prosecution of Senator Menendez,” Breuer and Koski continued.

Smith conducted two parallel investigations into Trump, both of which resulted in indictments. They centered on allegations that Trump mishandled and retained classified records after the end of his first presidential term, and his alleged efforts to subvert the 2020 presidential election. Trump pleaded not guilty on all charges before the charges were dropped altogether after the 2024 election due to Justice Department policy that prevents the prosecution of a sitting president.

Senior Trump officials have since deemed Smith an enemy of the administration, arguing that his investigation was tantamount to the political weaponization of the Justice Department.

In a historic turn of events revealed Tuesday, Trump has apparently demanded reparations for the legal comeuppance, expecting the DOJ to pay him millions because the agency investigated him.

ICE agents violently arrested a blind man outside of a Portland detention facility, slamming him to the ground and dragging him across the pavement after he sat where they didn’t want him to sit.

Quinn Haberl, who is 4 foot 6, believes that Immigration and Customs Enforcement wanted to make an example out of him with the incident on Saturday.

“I think they wanted to make a point,” he told The Oregonian. “So they picked the weakest person they could find and made a big show out of it.”

“I was sitting in the grass and my legs were just barely in the driveway and they came up, I think there were six of them and they grabbed me and they started to drag me across the driveway on the ground,” Haberl said in an interview with KGW. He was later cuffed.

The Department of Homeland Security told a different story.

“This rioter was arrested after he blatantly disobeyed law enforcement orders to remain off federal property, obstructed law enforcement, and continued to block the driveway so vehicles could not enter or exit the ICE facility,” they said in a statement.

Even still, the level of violence used against an unarmed, unthreatening, and clearly disabled person is another installment in an alarming trend of federal agents using excessive force to respond to protestors.

“I’m only 4 foot 6 and I can’t see, what harm was I gonna do to them?” Haberl said. “It was scary, being dragged across the ground when you can’t see what’s happening around you.”

Haberl was released and sent to the hospital with bruising, saying he needed some time before returning to the protests.

“They call Portland a war zone? The only people that’s making it a war zone is ICE.”

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt attempted to justify the destruction of the White House by claiming Americans had actually voted for it.

Speaking on Fox News’s Jesse Watters Primetime Tuesday, Leavitt tried to douse fires sparked by viral photographs of a shredded East Wing, claiming that this was exactly what people liked about Donald Trump in the first place.

“He is the builder in chief,” Leavitt said. “In large part, he was reelected back to this people’s house because he is good at building things. He has done it his entire life, his entire career.”

She noted that the East Wing of the White House would be “more modern and beautiful than ever,” and again touted the 90,000-square-foot ballroom Trump had claimed in July would not “interfere with the current building.” Trump had announced earlier Tuesday the East Wing would be “fully modernized.”

But the Trump administration knows it has a massive problem. The Treasury Department, which sits across from the East Wing, sent a message to federal employees Monday evening asking them to stop taking photos of the gaping hole in the side of the building.

It also seems that Trump has allowed his “builder in chief” status to eclipse his actual duties. The president has reportedly become consumed by his large-scale remodeling at the White House, wandering away from his work to survey renovations.

President Trump has withdrawn more nominees than any president—at least since 1981—as his most recent pick bows out after his blatant racism and self-described “Nazi streak” was exposed in a series of unearthed text messages. 

Author Gabe Fleisher noted that at 49 failed nominations, Trump has easily eclipsed previous presidential standards. Obama was up next, with 35 withdrawals in 2009. Trump’s forty-ninth failed nominee, Paul Ingrassia, was up for a position at the Office of Special Counsel but announced he is withdrawing from consideration on Tuesday evening after it became obvious he didn’t have enough Republican support in the Senate. 

Ingrassia is a deeply hateful and racist person. “No moulignon holidays.… From kwanza [sic] to mlk jr day to black history month to Juneteenth,” he wrote in one text, using an Italian slur for Black people in the beginning of the message. “Every single one needs to be eviscerated.”

“MLK Jr. was the 1960s George Floyd and his ‘holiday’ should be ended and tossed into the seventh circle of hell where it belongs,” he said in January. He also said he had a “bit of a Nazi streak,” and to “Never trust a chinaman or Indian. NEVER.” 

Ingrassia, who has also been accused of sexually harassing a co-worker, essentially tanked his nomination. He isn’t the only nominee to step down due to controversy of his own creation. Attorney General nominee Matt Gaetz was forced to bow out over allegations that he paid a 17-year-old girl for sex. D.C. U.S. attorney nominee Ed Martin was forced out over his defense of January 6 insurrectionists. Potential Centers for Disease Control and Prevention nominee David Weldon was taken out over spreading vaccine misinformation, and Bureau of Labor Statistics nominee E.J. Antoni stepped down after misogynist tweets about Kamala Harris resurfaced, in which he implied that she slept her way to success. A slew of other withdrawals, like potential NASA head Jared Isaacman, have occurred due to internal MAGA beef.

This is an ominous record to hold, demonstrating the volatility of Trump’s nominees and the often disqualifying character traits they display. So many of them are clearly just awful, unpleasant people who think racism is at least funny, if not a preferred ideology. How many people with a “Nazi streak” already made it in?  

The government may be shut down, but at least one Democratic senator is still working—speaking around the clock from the Senate floor against the dangers of President Trump and his administration.

Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon began speaking at 6:24 p.m. Tuesday night and is still holding the floor as of this article’s publication, with his Democratic colleagues at times interjecting to ask him questions.

“I’ve come to the Senate floor tonight to ring the alarm bells. We’re in the most perilous moment, the biggest threat to our republic since the Civil War. President Trump is shredding our Constitution,” Merkley said to begin his remarks.

The many topics Merkley has addressed so far in his more than 14-hour speech include the administration’s funding cuts to universities, Trump’s indictments of his political opponents, his deployment of National Guard troops to cities across the country, and his threat to do the same to Portland, Oregon.

“President Trump wants us to believe that Portland, Oregon, in my home state, is full of chaos and riots. Because if he can say to the American people that there are riots, he can say there’s a rebellion. And if there’s a rebellion, he can use that to strengthen his authoritarian grip on our nation,” Merkley said.

Merkley is following Senator Cory Booker’s record-setting speech of 25 hours and five minutes in March and April. The Oregon senator is no stranger to long speeches himself—in 2017, he spoke for over 15 hours against Trump’s nomination of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court. And unlike 13 of his Democratic colleagues, Merkley didn’t vote to confirm a Trump judicial nominee Tuesday, putting some ideological weight behind his marathon speech.

Follow along with Merkley’s speech below:

The Department of Defense now requires department staffers to channel all communications with Congress through the Pentagon’s central legislative affairs office.

A October 15 memo, obtained by BreakingDefense, marks a change in policy for the administration, further limiting access to military HQ. The only exception to the rule will be the Pentagon’s inspector general office. All other DOD personnel will be required to coordinate exchanges with members of Congress and state elected officials via the Pentagon’s assistant secretary of defense for legislative affairs.

Using the Trump administration’s unofficial moniker for the department, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Deputy Defense Secretary Steve Feinberg wrote in the co-signed memo that the Department of War “relies on a collaborative and close partnership with Congress to achieve our legislative goals.

“This requires coordination and alignment of Department messaging when engaging with Congress to ensure consistency and support for the Department’s priorities to re-establish deterrence, rebuild our military, and revive the warrior ethos,” the memo reads.

“Unauthorized engagements with Congress by DoW personnel acting in their official capacity, no matter how well-intentioned, may undermine Department-wide priorities critical to achieving our legislative objectives,” they add.

Members of the House Armed Services Committee were less than thrilled by the development.

“Congress decides who Congress will talk to, and the continued efforts of the secretary to wall off the department is not consistent with past tradition, and I frankly don’t think it’ll fly with the members or leaders of the committee,” California Representative George Whitesides told BreakingDefense.

A congressional aide who spoke with the military-focused publication said that the new policy could “potentially backfire” on the Defense Department, especially as Congress chips away at the 2026 National Defense Authorization Act—a process that can sometimes require the Pentagon to supply details “within minutes.”

It’s the latest in a larger Pentagon clampdown on transparency under Hegseth’s helm. Last week, 40 to 50 members of the Pentagon press pool packed up their desks at the department, loudly rejecting a 21-page pledge that, in part, forbids journalists from soliciting any information from government employees without express permission from the Pentagon. Just a handful of journalists remain—roughly 15 out of hundreds of credentialed reporters—representing blogs, freelancers from foreign publications, and One America News.

Graham Platner, an upstart Democratic candidate running to challenge Republican Maine Senator Susan Collins, reportedly acknowledged that his skull-and-crossbones tattoo is a Nazi military symbol.

Jewish Insider reported Tuesday that an acquaintance of Platner’s had heard the former Marine refer to his chest tattoo as “my Totenkopf,” a German term referring to a specific skull and crossbones symbol used by a branch of the Nazi S.S. military that has since been resurrected by white supremacists, according to the Anti-Defamation League.

In a statement to Jewish Insider, Platner said that he “absolutely would not have gone through life having this on my chest if” he knew the tattoo resembled the Nazi symbol, and he was “already planning” to have it removed.

Platner first publicly admitted he had the tattoo on his chest during an appearance on Pod Save America last week, after images of it had surfaced on social media. He claimed he got the tattoo in 2007, while he was “very inebriated” on leave with some fellow Marines in Croatia.

“We chose a terrifying skull and crossbones off the wall because we were Marines and skulls and crossbones are a pretty standard military thing,” Platner said. “And then we all moved on with our lives.”

Platner denied holding antisemitic beliefs. “I am not a secret Nazi. Actually, if you read through my Reddit comments, I think you can pretty much figure out where I stand on Nazism and antisemitism and racism in general,” Platner said.

Online, Platner has a history of making controversial statements, which he claims he made to “get a rise” out of people—but has seemingly made no comments targeting the Jewish people or faith.

Genevieve McDonald, Platner’s former campaign director, who resigned last week, suggested Tuesday that the candidate must have known about the image’s origins.

“Graham has an antisemitic tattoo on his chest. He’s not an idiot, he’s a military history buff,” she wrote in a post on Facebook. “Maybe he didn’t know it when he got it, but he got it years ago and should have had it covered up because he knows damn well what it means.”

McDonald, a former state representative, blamed the “D.C. consultant class” for the public relations disaster that could cost Democrats the Senate election. “The vault is open for the GOP to crush any fucking dreams we had in the general,” she wrote.

Donald Trump is reportedly trying to loot the federal government to the tune of $230 million. That’s how much he’s demanding from the Department of Justice in compensation for past federal probes of his misdeeds, according to a Tuesday report in The New York Times.

The Times’ sources say that before he returned to the White House, Trump filed administrative claims, or formal requests for relief from a government agency, which often precede a lawsuit. One 2023 claim seeks damages for investigations into Russian election interference and ties to the Trump 2016 campaign—another, filed in 2024, for the 2022 FBI search of Mar-a-Lago for classified documents.

The president reportedly expects to be paid a settlement but, so far, has not gotten his nine-figure payday.

The potential settlement, being for an administrative claim, would not need to be publicly announced, and would simply need the approval of one of two Trump-friendly officials: Todd Blanche, who is the deputy attorney general and Trump’s former criminal defense attorney, or DOJ civil division chief Stanley Woodward Jr., who has represented many of the president’s aides and allies—from Trump’s co-defendant in the classified documents case to participants in the January 6 Capitol attack.

Compensation in such cases is “typically covered by taxpayers,” the Times reports.

Of the unprecedented situation, Bennett L. Gershman, an ethics professor at Pace Law School, told the Times that “the ethical conflict is just so basic and fundamental, you don’t need a law professor to explain it.”

Trump seemingly acknowledged the abysmal optics of his stickup during a press conference last week: “I have a lawsuit that was doing very well, and when I became president, I said, ‘I’m sort of suing myself. I don’t know. How do you settle the lawsuit?’ I’ll say, ‘Give me X dollars,’ right? And I don’t know what to do with the lawsuit. It’s a great lawsuit, and now I won, it sort of looks bad. I’m suing myself, right? So I don’t know.”

It looks like former CIA Director John Brennan is next up on Trump’s long list of political retribution targets.

As the conservative magazine The Federalist first reported on Tuesday, the House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday referred Brennan to the Justice Department for criminal prosecution on the grounds that he “knowingly made false statements” to Congress about Trump’s collusion with Russia during a hearing in May 2023.

Brennan, who led the CIA during an investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, has been historically critical of Trump on Russia. Just before his tenure as CIA director ended in 2017, he warned that he didn’t think Trump had “a full appreciation of Russian capabilities, Russia’s intentions and actions that they are undertaking in many parts of the world.”

“Brennan made numerous willfully and intentionally false statements of material fact contradicted by the record established by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) and the CIA,” Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan wrote in his letter to the Justice Department on Tuesday.

The committee also added that Brennan “falsely denied that the CIA relied on the discredited Steele dossier in drafting the post-election Intelligence Community Assessment,” “falsely testified when he told the Committee that the CIA opposed including the Steele dossier in the ICA,” and “provided false testimony during a HPSCI hearing in 2017.

“In sum, Brennan’s testimony before the Committee on May 11, 2023, was a brazen attempt to knowingly and willfully testify falsely and fictitiously to material facts. We therefore make this referral for the Department to examine whether any of Brennan’s testimony warrants a charge for the violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1001,” Jordan concludes.

Brennan is on his way to join fellow Trump adversaries such as New York Attorney General Letitia James and former FBI Director James Comey in a spiteful legal battle with the president.

Republicans are still playing the blame game on the subject of political violence—even as a pardoned January 6 rioter attacks one of their colleagues.

House Speaker Mike Johnson brushed off assassination threats against Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries Tuesday, claiming that—despite the wannabe assassin’s conservative politics—the left is still at fault.

When asked directly about the incident during his daily shutdown press conference, Johnson initially said that he was completely unaware of the plot to “eliminate” Jeffries at New York City’s Economic Club Monday.

“Terrible. That’s the first I’ve heard of that. I don’t know anything about it,” Johnson said. “But anybody who threatens to kill any political official, we denounce it, absolutely.”

Christopher Moynihan, a 34-year-old from upstate New York, was arrested Saturday for threatening to kill Jeffries.

Moynihan was convicted in 2022 for participating in the Capitol riot. Video evidence captured him breaking through fences, entering the Capitol, and rifling through documents in the Senate Gallery. During the riot, Moynihan said, “There’s got to be something in here we can fucking use against these scumbags,” according to court documents. Moynihan was also depicted standing behind the Senate well alongside Jacob Chansley, better known as the QAnon Shaman.

He was sentenced to nearly two years in prison in 2023 but was prematurely released, thanks to a blanket pardon from Donald Trump that freed 1,500 January 6 rioters on his first day back in office.

Moynihan is the first pardoned Capitol rioter to be rearrested over alleged political violence, but he’s not the only January 6er to run afoul of the law since they were granted clemency. In February, former Proud Boys leader Henry “Enrique” Tarrio was arrested by Capitol police after a woman accused him of attacking her. In May, Zachary Alam was arrested for allegedly breaking into a home in Virginia.

However, given the chance to elaborate on his statement about Moynihan’s recent attack, Johnson chose to throw the responsibility back at America’s ideological left.

“I will tell you this, the violence on the left is far more prevalent than the violence on the right,” Johnson said Tuesday. “The assassination culture that’s been advanced now—this is the left, in almost every case that is advancing this, and not the right. Let’s not make this a partisan issue, you don’t want me to go there.

“The rhetoric that you saw on display Saturday, we highlighted yesterday, it plays into this. There are people that get triggered—there are deranged people in society when they hear elected officials participating in a rally that was paid for by [George] Soros and sponsored by Communists, with signs and placards and mantras that were repeated that, ‘We should bring death to fascist politicians.’ They call every Republican a fascist now,” Johnson said, referring to the peaceful No Kings protests that took place across the country this past weekend.

Jeffries said in a statement Tuesday that he is “grateful to state and federal law enforcement for their swift and decisive action to apprehend a dangerous individual who made a credible death threat against me with every intention to carry it out.”

Political violence is a phenomenon that persists in and defies both major parties, failing to fall neatly into a convenient, sellable narrative that can be repackaged for voters or donors. In truth, recent spikes in political violence have harmed both public figures (Charlie Kirk, Melissa Hortman, etc.) and regular Americans alike.

Historically, political violence has been far more common from the right, and 2025 marks the first time there has been a significant spike in violence from left-leaning individuals in more than 30 years, though it still remains at a much lower level than historical levels of violence carried out by right-wing attackers, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

The only common denominator in all recent political violence is wide public access to guns, a detail that sets the United States far apart from the rest of the developed world.