Former Special Counsel Jack Smith quietly swept up the phone records of former Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline as part of his sweeping Operation Arctic Frost probe into challenges to the 2020 election.
According to the Gateway Pundit, Smiths team subpoenaed Klines records while he was at the forefront of legal efforts questioning the integrity of the 2020 vote. Kline, now a professor at Liberty University School of Law, headed the Amistad Project of the Thomas More Society at the time, a group that raised serious concerns about election procedures and private funding of public election offices.
Operation Arctic Frost was a taxpayer-funded Biden DOJ witch hunt launched in April 2022 that seized government-issued cell phones belonging to Trump and Pence while conducting a barrage of interviews across the country. The investigation was triggered by the 2020 Trump alternate electors, prompting the Biden DOJ to open the Arctic Frost probe into Trump and hundreds of other individuals and organizations who dared to question the official narrative.
Klines phone records from October 2020 through January 31, 2021, were demanded by Smiths office, sweeping in the period when post-election litigation and investigations were at their peak. This move underscores how far the Biden Justice Department was willing to go to scrutinize not just Trump insiders, but outside legal experts and advocacy groups aligned with conservative election integrity efforts.
The Tennessee Star reported that a new document shows Kline was among roughly 430 individuals or organizations subpoenaed by Smith in the Arctic Frost investigation into the 2020 election contest by President Donald Trump and other Republicans. The outlet noted this reveal[ed] for the first time that legal experts and organizations who sought to contest the results from outside the White House were included in Smiths investigation, suggesting a far broader dragnet than previously understood.
The Star obtained correspondence from Verizon last week, notifying the Kline family on February 25 that its records had been subpoenaed by the U.S. Senate, in connection with an earlier subpoena obtained by Smith. Verizon attached records showing the special prosecutors office contacted the telecommunications giant on August 1, 2023, instructing it to produce Klines records to comply with a grand jury subpoena.
According to the letter from the special prosecutors office, the subpoena sought subscriber information, names, addresses, records for inbound and outbound calls, text messages, and voicemails, as well as the [m]eans and source of payment, to Verizon, which the document specified included the credit card or bank account Kline used to pay his phone bill. It also demanded any other phone numbers tied to Klines account, along with the Internet Protocol (IP) addresses he used to access the internet through Verizon-connected devices, effectively mapping his digital footprint during the contested election period.
Like other Arctic Frost subpoenas that targeted phone records of numerous Republicans in Congress, including at least eight U.S. senators, the order was signed by U.S. District Court Judge James Boasberg. Boasberg, an appointee of former President Barack Obama who has previously clashed with the Trump administration, authorized this expansive intrusion into the communications of a private citizen engaged in constitutionally protected legal advocacy.
Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley has already warned that Smiths efforts went far beyond the former president and his immediate circle. Grassley said new disclosures revealed Jack Smith targeted conservative organizations such as TPUSA and the Republican Attorneys General Association, raising alarms about a partisan tilt in federal law enforcement.
Ive obtained through legally protected whistleblower disclosures, Grassley said during a press conference last year. 197 subpoenas were issued by Jack Smith and his team. These subpoenas were issued to 34 individuals and 163 businesses, including financial institutions.
Former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi disclosed in November that, during the Arctic Frost investigation, Smiths team even seized President Trumps government-issued phone, an extraordinary step against a former commander-in-chief. Jack Smith also subpoenaed President Trumps personal records, underscoring a pattern of aggressive tactics that many on the right view as criminalizing political opposition rather than pursuing neutral justice.
For conservatives concerned about weaponization of the Justice Department, the targeting of Phill Klinea law professor and former state attorney general who pursued legal avenues to question election proceduresillustrates how deeply the Biden DOJ has probed into the broader Republican ecosystem.
With hundreds of subpoenas, the seizure of Trumps official and personal communications, and the inclusion of outside legal organizations in the Arctic Frost net, the investigation appears less like a narrow inquiry into specific crimes and more like a sweeping effort to intimidate and monitor those who challenged the 2020 election from a constitutionally grounded, conservative perspective.
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