I spend my professional life around fiduciaries. When a trustee breaches duty, when an investment manager crosses a line, there’s a process. Regulators investigate. Courts rule. People lose licenses, pay fines, sometimes do time. That’s not idealism. That’s how the system is supposed to work when someone entrusted with power abuses it.Compare that to what Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) just disclosed about special counsel Jack Smith’s “Arctic Frost” investigation. According to records released by the two senators, Smith’s team obtained and reviewed text messages from 44 sitting and former members of Congress as part of the Biden Justice Department’s criminal inquiry of President Donald Trump, and it did so by bypassing the Filter Team process built specifically to keep investigators away from privileged material. Republicans and Democrats both got swept up. Grassley and Johnson’s own messages were among them.Here’s the part that should bother every American, not just the ones who dislike Jack Smith. The Justice Department’s own subpoena to the National Archives sought texts from White House phones tied to Trump, Mark Meadows, Dan Scavino, Kellyanne Conway, Mike Pence, and others covering the period from October 2020 through Jan. 20, 2021. Once the National Archives handed the material over, one of Smith’s senior lawyers had it downloaded within 30 minutes, and other members of the team were reviewing it within an hour, according to the DOJ’s own account to the committee. No wait for the filter review designed to protect Speech or Debate Clause material and attorney-client privilege. Just straight into the file.