Jack Smith defends secret subpoenas of congress phone records in December 2025

Jack Smith admitted that judges weren’t made aware his team was seizing Republicans’ phone records when asked to sign off on non-disclosure orders for associated subpoenas, according to a transcript of the ex-special counsel’s deposition released Wednesday. Smith claimed to members of the House Judiciary Committee in the Dec. 17 sitdown that keeping the subpoenas — which were part of the FBI’s sprawling Arctic Frost probe into 2020 election interference — hidden was necessary to avoid a “grave risk of obstruction of justice.”