Lawyers for Jack Smith on Tuesday fiercely defended the former special counsel’s issuance of a grand jury subpoena for the phone records of some Republican lawmakers during his investigation into President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, shutting down allegations of “wiretapping.”
In a letter addressed to Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Smith’s lawyers, Lanny Breuer and Peter Koski, said they felt “compelled to correct inaccurate assertions made by you and others” after it was made known that the FBI in 2023 analyzed the phone toll records of eight GOP senators and one Republican House member.
“A number of people have falsely stated that Mr. Smith ‘tapped’ Senators’ phones, ‘spied’ on their communications, or ‘surveilled’ their conversations. As you know, toll records merely contain telephonic routing information — collected after the calls have taken place — identifying incoming and outgoing call numbers, the time of the calls, and their duration. Toll records are historical in nature, and do not include the content of calls,” the letter reads.
“Wiretapping, by contrast, involves intercepting the telecommunications in real time, which the Special Counsel’s Office did not do,” it adds.
