Hearings to examine Arctic Frost.

I hereby call to order this hearing, Arctic Frost: A Modern Watergate. Fifty years ago, Watergate exposed a simple but profound abuse of power. Operatives tied to a sitting president broke into a building to secretly gather information from their political opponents by bugging offices and seizing documents. And what followed was just as troubling. Efforts to use the powers of government to conceal it, to pressure investigators, to shut down inquiries, to avoid accountability. Even though that operation failed in its ultimate objective, the American people did not treat it lightly. The consequences were swift and severe. The President of the United States resigned in disgrace, facing near certain impeachment. And dozens of officials, more than 40 individuals connected to the scheme, were indicted or jailed because the attempt itself was the offense. In our law, we recognize a simple truth: a failed crime is not an insignificant one. A man who pulls the trigger and misses is no less guilty than the one who hits his mark. The intent is the same, the danger is the same, and the crime is the same. And if Watergate taught us anything, it is that even a single abuse of power carried out by a handful of individuals can shake the foundations of our republic. But what we confront today, the Biden administration's Arctic Frost scheme, is not a single act. It is a modern Watergate, trading a break-in at one office for a digital sweep into approximately 100,000 private communications, more than a dozen senators, and thousands of individuals' lives. But even that comparison falls short. It is something far broader, an operation that aligned Democrats across all three branches of government. The Biden executive branch through DOJ and the FBI, wielding investigative power against political opponents. Democrat-appointed judges in the judiciary through warrants, secrecy orders, and deference, failing to serve as a meaningful check. And members of the legislative branch who should be the first line of oversight, choosing instead to look the other way. And just like Watergate, these officials deserve to be investigated, tried, impeached, and brought to justice. So let's examine how this operation was carried out step-by-step. In early 2022, senior leadership within the Biden Department of Justice made the decision to open an investigation targeting President Trump and his campaign apparatus. Attorney General Merrick Garland, Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco, and FBI Director Chris Wray all personally approved the opening of the investigation. On April 4, 2022, they signed a confidential memo with each of their signatures. That fact matters because Watergate was carried out in secret by operatives who were not brazen enough to act with formal written authorization from the highest levels of the Department of Justice. Arctic Frost was fully authorized, formalized, and executed through the official powers of the United States government by partisan Democrats. Then, in the fall, came the nearly 200 subpoenas. We're talking about information pertaining to hundreds of entities and individuals. Over 400 Republican-aligned groups and individuals, including the most sensitive categories of personal data, gathered, retained, and in some accounts shared across offices. Watergate was about a handful of files in a single office. This reached into tens of thousands of private communications: emails, records, and personal data; toll records, bank records, donor lists, law firm records, and other personal files relating to every major conservative organization were subpoenaed. Who were the targets of this? Donald Trump's campaign, the RNC, the Conservative Partnership Institute, Save America PAC, America First Policy Institute, and even MyPillow, because God knows we have a national security threat from rogue pillows threatening our country. Watergate broke into an office. Arctic Frost reached into the private lives of thousands of Americans. Meanwhile, conservative leaders found themselves equally violated. The Biden administration sought the phone records of nearly 20 percent of the Republicans in the Senate, including multiple members of the committee, including myself. Without our knowledge, the FBI took the cell phone data of nearly 20 percent of the Republicans in the Senate, including information about with whom we were talking, how long we were talking, and from where we were calling. Toll records are not trivial. They are a map of your life, giving insight into your relationships, your movements, your patterns. Such invasive subpoenas were granted by Judge Boasberg, a Democrat-appointed judge, on the premise that any one of us, or to be clear, all of us as duly elected United States senators, would destroy evidence, tamper with witnesses, or obstruct justice. And Judge Boasberg signed those orders like he was printing the menu at a Denny's, one after the other, facts be damned, every member of the Senate is likely to destroy evidence. Such invasive subpoenas are an abuse of power. Recently, even more troubling facts continue to emerge. Biden's Department of Justice subpoenaed the toll records of now FBI Director Kash Patel and now White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles. They were not aiming low. They were trying to take out everyone on the other side. Both were at the time private citizens and key members of President Trump's 2024 election campaign. Now imagine the reverse. Imagine for just one moment that President Trump's Department of Justice had secretly obtained the phone records of Senator Schumer, and Senator Whitehouse, and Senator Durbin, Senator Hirono, and Senator Padilla. My Democrat colleagues would be losing their minds right now in this hearing if the Trump Department of Justice had done that. Imagine if a Republican Attorney General or Republican FBI Director and a Republican-appointed judge had all signed off on a covert effort to sweep up the communications, locations, data, and call history of every Democrat-affiliated organization and individual in the United States. Imagine if a judge, a Republican-appointed judge, signed an order that said Senator Durbin will destroy evidence if he is aware of this subpoena, because that's what this judge did. Would anyone in this hearing room call that routine? Would Democrats call that normal law enforcement activity? Would the press shrug its shoulders? Of course not. There would be wall-to-wall coverage, there would be cries of authoritarianism, there would be emergency hearings, demands for resignations, and talk of impeachment before the sun went down. Instead, my Democrat colleagues can barely get their heart rate above 60 beats per minute. Arctic Frost is the culmination of a gross pattern of abuse by Democrats for partisan ends to elect and re-elect a Democrat president. In 2016, Obama's FBI began spying on the Trump campaign just a month before election day. In 2020, Biden's FBI met with Senators Johnson and Grassley in an effort to throw off their investigation into the now infamous Hunter Biden laptop, calling the laptop disinformation, a claim we now know was false. The FBI went to the Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and lied to him in an effort to change the outcome of a presidential election. Democrats for years have exhibited the pattern of abusing public law enforcement powers for the sake of politics, a pattern this committee under the leadership of Chairman Grassley is now working to uncover and expose. Because no administration, Republican or Democrat, has any business turning the surveillance powers of the federal government against its political opposition. Fifty years ago, this nation was confronted with an abuse of power, and it responded not with indifference but with accountability. And I'll tell you one of the big differences of Watergate versus Arctic Frost. When Richard Nixon and his corrupt Attorney General and his corrupt administration abused their law enforcement powers to go after their political opponents, Republican senators stood up to the president of their own party and defended the rule of law. Where is even a single Democrat senator who has said one word about this abuse of power? Is there not one? There are 47 Democrats in this body. Is there not one who can come forward and say, you know what, turning the Department of Justice into the oppo research and attack machine of the DNC is not what the DOJ is supposed to be? We were tested then, and there was accountability. We are being tested again now. The question is really simple: will we uphold the same standard, will we defend the rule of law, or will we abandon it? Ranking Member Whitehouse.

Last month, Kash Patel fired roughly a dozen agents and analysts from the FBI's CI-12 unit, a counterintelligence unit dedicated to protecting Americans from foreign espionage. One of the foreign actors that this unit specializes in is Iran and its proxies. According to CNN, this unit was, and I quote, instrumental in tracking potential threats after the first Trump administration killed a top Iranian official in 2020. Just days after Patel fired these agents, President Trump started a war in Iran that has already led to the deaths of at least 13 American service members. If it seems like a bad decision to fire career law enforcement professionals who specialize in defending against Iranian threats just days before we start a war with Iran, that's because it is. And it's even worse when you consider why Patel fired these agents. These agents had been assigned to Jack Smith's investigation into Donald Trump's illegal hoarding of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago. Patel claims that as part of that investigation, Jack Smith issued grand jury subpoenas for toll records for Patel and for Susie Wiles when they were private citizens. Patel also insists that the FBI recorded one of Wiles's phone calls, which her own attorney has denied. If you ask anyone with law enforcement experience to react to news that the FBI may have sought these toll records, the response is simple: of course they did. Virtually every investigation involves subpoenas for toll records for any number of reasons. Sometimes it's to construct a timeline of events. Sometimes it's to rule out wrongdoing. Sometimes it's to prepare for a witness interview. Sometimes it's to help understand the scope of a conspiracy. In fact, the first Trump DOJ did the same thing Republicans have criticized Jack Smith for doing: getting the toll records of members of Congress, following the DOJ policies then in place, and getting non-disclosure orders. Here's what Chairman Grassley said at the time: investigation into members of Congress and staff are nothing new, and the Justice Department has specific procedures for such sensitive investigations. Apparently, when the Trump DOJ does it, it's nothing new. When Jack Smith does it, it's a modern Watergate. With Patel, it's obvious why Jack Smith was looking at him. Patel made himself a fact witness in that investigation. He went on podcasts bragging about how he planned to post classified information online at Donald Trump's direction. And how he'd personally witnessed Donald Trump declassify records. We have known for years that Smith was looking into Patel's role because Smith subpoenaed Patel to testify before a grand jury. Where is Patel's grand jury testimony? Why is that still hidden? The same goes for Ms. Wiles. Wiles is referenced in the indictment against President Trump because Trump showed her classified documents when she didn't have a security clearance. The same month that indictment came out, the PAC Wiles ran received its highest payment ever from the Trump campaign. That's another thing that any investigator worth their salt would take a close look at. The same goes for the rest of the subpoenas my colleagues on the other side want to talk about today. Jack Smith was investigating a massive conspiracy by Trump officials and their allies to overturn an election and attack the Capitol on January 6. Is anyone surprised that he issued subpoenas as part of that investigation? And why? As Smith told the House Judiciary Committee under oath, his investigation, quote, "involved interviewing and subpoenaing records of Republicans because that's who Donald Trump sought to prey on to stay in office." Somebody geared up the Republican Attorneys General Association, or RAGA, to sponsor the rally that turned into the riots on January 6 and pay for robocalls urging people to march to the Capitol building and fight to protect the integrity of our elections. Jeffrey Clark, who worked at DOJ at the time, tried to convince the Department of Justice leadership to send a letter to try to overturn the election results in Georgia. President Trump almost made him acting attorney general because Clark was willing to help Trump try to overturn the election. Pretend for a minute that Jack Smith and all the DOJ and FBI officials who helped his investigation did do something wrong. What would real oversight look like? Well, first, Republicans would accept Jack Smith's offer to testify before this committee under oath instead of holding a series of hearings on conspiracy theories without anything new to say. Why not call him? Hear it from the man himself. Second, Republicans would let us see Jack Smith's full report on his investigations into President Trump. We only have volume one, which explains the subpoenas he issued in the 2020 election interference investigation. We still need volume two on his classified documents crimes investigation. Democrats on this committee have asked DOJ to give us volume two, but Republicans have been silent as President Trump and his MAGA DOJ have fought to bury the report. Third, Republicans would oblige Kash Patel to tell us what he told the grand jury in that classified documents investigation. They might also hold Patel accountable for misleading this committee in sworn testimony. I've asked Patel multiple times under oath to describe his testimony to us, as Rule 6e plainly allows. First, he said he couldn't because it was under seal by the chief judge for the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. Turns out that very chief judge later said that nothing was preventing Patel from divulging his testimony to this committee as the rule allows. So that testimony was false. When Patel came back, he told another lie, this time that he had already released the transcript of his testimony. Here's the transcript he might have been talking about. As you can see from reading it, oh wait a minute, you can't read it because it's almost completely redacted. And it's not even from the right hearing. This is from the time Patel appeared before the grand jury in the Mar-a-Lago classified documents crimes case to assert his Fifth Amendment rights because he was afraid of being prosecuted. The testimony that he actually ended up giving once his Fifth Amendment plea was accepted and he was immunized, we have never seen. If this committee is so interested in Jack Smith's investigation, it should want to know what Patel had to say in that investigation, why he was so afraid to say it, and why he's so afraid to tell us about it now and instead repeatedly lies to this committee. I'll close by talking about what this hearing should be about. Those counterintelligence agents Kash Patel fired aren't the only career law enforcement officials forced out by this administration. Nor are they the only ones purged because they were assigned to investigate President Trump's crimes. Here's what has happened at the FBI since President Trump took office. The FBI has lost at least 300 agents working on national security matters, transferred agents out of the domestic terrorism operations section, disbanded the foreign influence task force, and instructed joint terrorism task forces to work on immigration cases. At DOJ, more than 6,000 employees have left. The National Security Division has lost up to one-third of its leadership, half the line prosecutors in the counterterrorism section, and half the workforce in the counterintelligence section. Attorney General Bondi disbanded DOJ's Task Force KleptoCapture, Kleptocracy Team, and Kleptocracy Asset Recovery Initiative. It is the same story throughout the administration where conspiracy theories and obsessions with revenge are decimating the career law enforcement who protect us against national security threats. Major cuts at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Laura Loomer forcing out the heads of the NSA and U.S. Cyber Command. DHS gutting its office to prevent domestic terrorism and putting a 22-year-old with no experience in charge. And cutting the workforce of CISA, which protects us from cybersecurity threats from bad actors like Iran. Americans are made less safe every time this committee holds a hearing promoting fake outrage about Jack Smith and denigrating FBI and DOJ professionals. Every time MAGA influencers like Laura Loomer convince the president to fire agency heads. And every time Kash Patel fires FBI experts because he wants to distract from his own incompetence, his wasting of taxpayer dollars to fly around the world on a private jet, his partying at the Olympics, or his undermining of the FBI's own investigation. Instead of chasing conspiracy theories down rabbit holes, that's what we should be focused on.

Chairman Grassley.

Thank you, Senator Cruz, for your strong leadership, but more importantly for the outstanding statement you gave this morning that reminds us a lot of history as well as what's going on right now. Today is the second in a series of Arctic Frost hearings that I've authorized as chairman. I started my investigation into Arctic Frost in July of 2022 based on credible whistleblower disclosures. Senator Johnson has since joined the investigation, and I appreciate our joint work. Our goal is to publicly release as many records as possible. The public has a right to know how the taxpayer dollars have been used and who was involved up and down the decision-making chain. Today, we're making new records public. Some records are dated January 2023 before Jack Smith's team secretly sought most member tolling data. The records include a wish list created by Smith's team naming 14 members of Congress for whom they wanted to seek tolling data. Some of those members are senators on this very committee. But the list notes that Smith's team already knew these members had communication, so include text messages for some members with individuals associated with President Trump. And Jack Smith was certainly aware of this effort. To quote from the emails we're making public today, quote, "Before we tell Main," meaning Main Justice, "we're going to fire off subpoenas for so many members' tolls, I should make sure that Jack's aware." Another record states that, quote, "unlikely the many of these members will cooperate with... unlikely many of these members will cooperate with our investigation." The same record also says the members, quote, "likely have a valid speech or debate privilege immunizing them from compelled testimony," end of quote. I've already publicly released other records showing Smith's team was warned that subpoenaing congressional information could violate the speech and debate clause. I've also publicly released 197 subpoenas seeking sensitive financial information from over 400 Republican groups and individuals. Some of the information sought included legislative branch communications. Even with these constitutional concerns, Smith's team secretly sought and obtained member of Congress tolling data. And when one phone company pushed back, Smith backed down. That calls into question the necessity of obtaining member data. Another record calls into question Jack Smith's assertion that the House January 6th Committee materials, quote, "comprised a small part of the office's investigative record," end of quote. This new record states that on January... of the January 6th report, quote, "leadership teams fully read and reviewed. Last weekend, we went over it page by page and incorporated it into our investigative plan," end of quote. Indeed, the same records that we're making public today says that Smith's team will be, quote, "logging all information contained in the report," end of quote. Also, the record states Smith's team will, quote, "leverage," end of quote, the report to, quote, "avoid needless interviews and focus the interviews we perform on underdeveloped topics," end of quote. Overall, the records create additional questions about Smith's conduct, need for member data, and candor to the court and the public. The Democrats have criticized us for not bringing Jack Smith before us at the beginning. And you've heard that again today. If we followed the Democrats' premature and ill-advised strategy, we wouldn't have had a great deal of information we now have that shows Jack Smith misled Congress and the public, if not outright lied. And lastly today, we're also making public two subpoenas for toll records of FBI Director Patel, along with non-disclosure orders that kept them secret. This committee's work will continue. Thank you.

Thank you, Ranking Member Durbin.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Last week, America lost a man who devoted his life in service to our nation. Robert Mueller earned a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart serving as a Marine and risking his life in Vietnam. He led the FBI after 9/11, helping to secure our nation after the worst terrorist attack in American history. Mueller was an amazing man. A registered Republican, he was appointed and reappointed by not only Republican President George H.W. Bush, but Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama. He holds an historic distinction. He is the only FBI director other than J. Edgar Hoover who had his tenure at the FBI extended beyond the 10-year limit. By a vote of 100 to zero in the United States Senate, he was given approval to serve an additional two years under President Obama. I worked with Robert Mueller for many years. I remember reaching out to him after 9/11 and the news that the technology available at the FBI was so ancient on the day of the attack on 9/11 that you could buy more modern and effective technology at a RadioShack. I said to him, I am not an expert in this area in any way whatsoever, but I want to help you if I can. I want it to be a bipartisan effort. And we worked together for years. I never, ever questioned Bob Mueller's devotion to our nation or his personal integrity. How did President Donald Trump respond to news of Robert Mueller's passing? I quote the President. Good, I'm glad he's dead. Let me repeat that. The President said when notified of Robert Mueller's passing, good, I'm glad he's dead. Those reprehensible words should be condemned by every member of the committee on both sides of the aisle. Unfortunately, under Republican leadership, this committee has been complicit in the attacks on Robert Mueller, spending years spreading debunked conspiracy theories about his investigation into Russia's interference in the 2016 election. We're here today to attack another special counsel investigation led by another honorable public servant. As the title of this hearing makes clear, the majority is wasting this committee's time and resources on another baseless partisan witch hunt. President Trump spent months attempting to unlawfully overturn his 2020 presidential election loss. It was known as the big lie. We heard it over and over again. It culminated in a deadly attack on the Capitol, which many of us lived through on January 6th. Then President Trump removed hundreds of pages of classified documents from the White House and as a private citizen, held them at his Mar-a-Lago residence, some next to a toilet, refusing for more than a year to return these documents. Despite this unprecedented and egregious conduct, my Republican colleagues claim the Watergate-level scandal is the actual investigation into Trump's brazen transgressions, not his historically dangerous action. It would have been a dereliction of duty for any prosecutor investigating the effort to overturn the 2020 election not to subpoena organizations like Turning Point USA, an organization that helped plan the so-called Stop the Steal rally that led to the January 6th deadly attack on the United States Capitol. Similarly, any prosecutor worth his salt would have subpoenaed Kash Patel, who was a material witness in the classified documents case. Patel even infamously claimed to be the sole witness of President Trump's supposed blanket declassification of classified documents. Now, if my Republican colleagues were serious about this issue, they would have called Special Counsel Jack Smith to testify under oath before this committee. The Democrats on this committee notified the chairman in October of last year, six months ago, that Smith was not only available to testify, he would do so under oath and answer the questions raised in this hearing. What has happened in the last six months? No action by the Republican leadership of this committee to bring the sole major witness of this event before the committee under oath to ask specific questions. Why? Why is this committee afraid to bring Jack Smith before it under oath? For six months, they have avoided it. You want to know why? They can continue the sham hearings over issues that don't exist. The majority is also refused to support committee Democrats' request to release volume two of Special Counsel Smith's report, which Senator Whitehouse noted. Let me draw attention to the issues the committee should be addressing instead of this farce today. Over the past year, President Trump, Attorney General Bondi, and Director of the FBI Patel have systematically dismantled the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the premier law enforcement agency in the United States, if not the world. These purges are making every American less safe. Most recently, Patel reportedly fired at least six agents and several other FBI personnel who'd been assigned to work related to President Trump's mishandling of classified documents. These terminations were seemingly to save face with President Trump in response to the negative press Director Patel received for his embarrassing appearance chugging beer at the Olympic Games. Several of the fired agents were reportedly part of a global counterintelligence squad, which Senator Whitehouse has referred to, particularly appropriate at time we are war with Iran. In other words, Director Patel's political retribution has weakened the FBI's ability to counter Iranian threats at the exact time that not only America, but certainly the men and women in uniform needed them to keep themselves safe. Watergate is a story of a president who engaged in a vast illegal conspiracy to remain in power and use his control of the levers of government to obstruct investigations into his own misconduct. Back then, the Senate stood up for the Constitution and the rule of law, exposing Nixon's corruption by investigating the serious allegations against him. Today, today Senate Republicans waffle between indifference to outright celebration of President Trump's brazen misconduct, despite the real dangers it opposes. We cannot continue on this course. The American people face real challenges from citizens being summarily executed for exercising their First Amendment rights to the skyrocketing price of the cost of living under this administration. This hearing will not help a single person other than Donald Trump. And the Republican majority should do better for their constituents. A senator from Texas should know a dead horse when he sees one. This hearing is an attempt to throttle a dead horse to a gallop. There aren't enough giddy-ups in the world to accomplish that goal. I yield.

For a Chicago man, that was an awful lot of rodeo references. Uh, on Chairman, I don't quite know how to do this, but, um, I would like to ask that this transcript be made an exhibit in this proceeding. It's 22 pages of examination of the witness in which only these words are public. So, upon the advice of counsel, I'll be invoking my Fifth Amendment privilege. The whole rest of it is redacted. I assume that it can go in as an exhibit with the image of all the redactions and if that's the case, I'd like to ask that it be made an exhibit in this proceeding. Without objection, it will be admitted. Also on behalf of Chairman Grassley and Senator Johnson, chairman of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, I enter into the record 30 newly uncovered and significant investigatory documents regarding Arctic Frost that shed light on the decision making of the Biden Department of Justice. This includes 197 subpoenas targeting over 400 Republican individuals and entities that former Special Counsel Jack Smith and his team issued as a part of the indiscriminate election case against President Trump. These are not routine materials. These are internal investigative records that shed light on how and why the Biden Department of Justice authorized and carried out this operation. They detail the scope of the subpoenas issued, the categories of the 400 individuals and organizations targeted, and the decision-making process inside the department at the highest levels. In short, they allow us to see clearly and for the first time how this investigation was conducted from the inside. This new information would not have been known but for congressional oversight. I will now introduce the witnesses at this hearing. First witness is Mr. Will Chamberlain, who currently serves as senior counsel at the Article III Project. Mr. Chamberlain graduated from University of the Pacific in 2010 with a BA in economics. He received his JD magna cum laude from Georgetown University Law Center in 2015. After graduating Georgetown, he joined Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan in Los Angeles as an associate, where he practiced complex commercial litigation. Mr. Chamberlain later worked as an attorney at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, focusing on class action litigation. In 2019, he revived Human Events, the nation's oldest conservative magazine, where he served as publisher and editor-in-chief. Mr. Chamberlain is also vice president of external affairs at the Edmund Burke Foundation, which organizes national conservatism conferences around the world. Christopher O'Leary retired from the Federal Bureau of Investigation as a member of the Senior Executive Service in September 2023 after two decades of leading counterterrorism investigation and operations. Mr. O'Leary's last assignment was serving as the U.S. government's Director of Hostage Recovery, where he led an interagency task force dedicated to the mission of safely bringing home Americans taken hostage by terrorist organizations. Mr. O'Leary is also a former United States Marine Corps gunnery sergeant and Iraq War combat veteran. Thank you for that, sir. Mr. O'Leary holds a bachelor's degree in Middle Eastern studies from Rutgers University, a master's degree from Georgetown University's McDonough School of Business, and a master's degree in government and national security from Harvard University. Our third witness is Margot Cleveland, an attorney, legal analyst, and investigative journalist and former academic. After graduating from the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prize, the law school's highest honor, Ms. Cleveland served for nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Ms. Cleveland is a former full-time university faculty member at the University of Notre Dame, where in 1998 she received the Frank O'Malley Undergraduate Teaching Award, the highest award for undergraduate faculty members. Ms. Cleveland currently serves as The Federalist's senior legal correspondent, where she helped lead The Federalist's reporting on the Russia collusion hoax, which won the Dow-Grand Prize for investigative journalism in 2025. Ms. Cleveland is also counsel for the New Civil Liberties Alliance, where she practices constitutional law and is co-authored several Supreme Court amicus briefs and a petition for certiorari. And Mr. Chamberlain, we'll start with you. You're recognized. where she practices constitutional law and has co-authored several Supreme Court amicus briefs and a petition for certiorari. And Mr. Chamberlain, we'll start with you, you're recognized.

Thank you, Chairman Cruz, Ranking Member Whitehouse, and members of the committee. Thank you for the opportunity...

And actually, hold on a second. Before we do that, I need to ask each of you to stand and raise your right hand. Do you swear that the testimony that you are about to give before this subcommittee is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?

I do.

All of you have answered affirmatively. Please be seated. And now, Mr. Chamberlain, you're recognized.

Thank you, Chairman Cruz, Ranking Member Whitehouse, and members of the committee. Thank you for the opportunity to testify today. On February 26, 2025, Reuters broke a remarkable story. They reported first that in 2022 and 2023, Jack Smith and the Biden Justice Department subpoenaed toll records of calls from Kash Patel and Susie Wiles as part of the now infamous Arctic Frost investigation. Both were private citizens at this time, and the surveillance continued while Wiles was co-managing President Trump's election campaign. This was troubling, but sadly it wasn't shocking. This committee has been investigating Smith's abuse of his subpoena power against a slew of Republican senators alongside Judge James Boasberg's unlawful non-disclosure orders that hid the existence of those subpoenas from those senators. But Reuters, if anything, buried the lead. The article also revealed that in 2023, the Biden FBI had surreptitiously recorded a phone call between Susie Wiles and her attorney. This was a remarkable breach of attorney-client privilege. The Reuters article, relying on two FBI sources, claimed that Wiles's attorney had been aware of the surveillance and the phone call, which, if it were true, would have been a shocking ethical breach by Wiles's lawyer. The following day, however, Wiles's lawyer denied having ever consented to any such recording, stating correctly that, quote, "if he ever pulled a stunt like that, he wouldn't and shouldn't have a license to practice law," end quote. His denial is in my view credible. What lawyer in their right mind would secretly consent to law enforcement recording a privileged phone call with their client? But the lawyer's denial raises more questions than it answers. Why then did two FBI sources tell Reuters that the lawyer had consented? Were the sources lying, or were they relying on false records created by FBI agents working with Smith? It wouldn't be the first time FBI personnel have falsified records in their pursuit of President Trump. Remember that Kevin Clinesmith, a former FBI lawyer, pled guilty to intentionally falsifying information to obtain a FISA warrant in the Russiagate investigation. The scandal isn't merely that this phone call was recorded, it's also about how the records of the recording were hidden. The FBI's primary digital case management system is called Sentinel. Within it, investigators can apply a special designation to a file called prohibited access. Files coded this way become completely invisible in standard Sentinel searches. If an agent runs a keyword search that should hit these documents, the system returns a false negative, it reports no responsive documents even though they exist. While this prohibited access designation might make theoretical sense for files dealing with the most sensitive classified matters, it clearly does not make sense that records of Susie Wiles's phone call being surveilled would qualify. The agents who marked these records prohibited would have known that. If Wiles's lawyer had been aware of the recording, it would have constituted consensual monitoring. Monitoring such a call would likely require DOJ approval, but it could be lawful. But if Wiles's lawyer did not consent to the recording, we are likely looking at an illegal wiretap of a phone call between a presidential campaign manager and her own lawyer, one where the agent or agents who conducted the wiretap lied about Wiles's lawyer's lack of consent and then coded it as a prohibited file in the hopes that no one would ever find out about it. This would be a more brazen FBI intervention into domestic politics than anything during the Russiagate investigation, which is certainly saying something. We often hear liberal law professors complain about the Trump administration undermining the DOJ and FBI's independence. Sophisticated listeners should immediately translate independent as unaccountable. Illegal wiretaps and inappropriate prohibited file classifications are the fruits of an independent FBI that acted with impunity because it was not subject to the democratic accountability that our Constitution demands. The president is tasked with the responsibility to take care that our laws be faithfully executed, not to submit to the FBI and DOJ transforming themselves into an unaccountable fourth branch of government. And this body can help by providing essential oversight and scrutiny. I welcome any questions.

Thank you. Mr. O'Leary, you're recognized.

Chairman, Ranking Member, and distinguished members of the committee. Thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today. In his farewell address to the nation, President George Washington warned that the health and survival of our republic required leaders who exercise virtue and resist the pull of partisan division. It is in that spirit that I offer my testimony today. I come before you not as an advocate for any political party or position, but as a non-partisan former special agent of the FBI where I served for over two decades. My intent is to provide the committee with a clear, experience-based understanding of how the FBI operates. Its investigative standards, institutional culture, and the professional norms that guide its work. The men and women of the FBI have long stood as a quiet bastion between order and chaos, guided not by politics or public acclaim, but by an enduring commitment to the Constitution and the rule of law. Their character is forged in an environment where integrity is not aspirational, it is required. Every day, often without recognition, they make decisions that demand moral clarity, professional restraint, and personal courage. These are not abstract virtues within the FBI. They are lived expectations, reinforced through training, supervision, and deeply rooted in institutional culture. The FBI's investigative process is grounded in predication, facts, intelligence, and evidence, not ideology or affiliation. Agents are trained to clearly articulate and document the factual basis for opening and continuing investigations, and those decisions are subject to multiple layers of supervisory and legal review. Equally important is the internal culture of the FBI. The bureau I served had no tolerance for political ideology or personal bias influencing investigative work. This was not simply a matter of formal policy, it was an expectation reinforced through leadership, peer accountability, and institutional norms. The credibility of the FBI, both in court and in the eyes of the public, depends on that neutrality, and FBI professionals understand that their work must withstand scrutiny, not only in the moment, but years later. Allegation that the FBI has engaged in broad coordinated conspiracies to investigate individuals based on political affiliation or ideology are inconsistent with my experience and unsupported by evidence or reason. Yet the absence of credibility to these claims has not deterred Director Kash Patel from pursuing what can only be understood as a campaign of retribution against his own personnel. When agents and analysts are removed not for misconduct, but for their lawful participation in duly authorized investigations, the conclusion that such actions are politically driven is self-evident. This form of retaliation against the dedicated professionals of the FBI has eroded trust in leadership, damaged morale, introduced uncertainty across the workforce, and disrupted the continuity of ongoing operations. Equally concerning are the national security implications with the loss and marginalization of experienced personnel and diminished institutional knowledge drastically impacting the FBI's ability to effectively confront threats from terrorism, espionage, and cyber adversaries. Left unchecked, Director Kash Patel's actions risk inflicting generational harm on an institution central to the safety and security of the nation. In closing, I would emphasize that the strength of the FBI and our broader system of justice depends on its independence from political influence. It's a principle that those who serve within the bureau understand as fundamental to their duty. Being an FBI agent is neither a job nor a profession, but rather a vocation. Service to the nation is not a slogan within the FBI, it's a calling. A steadfast commitment to the cause of freedom, democracy, and justice. This ethos is rooted in a tradition of excellence that spans generations. The legacy of the G-man is not merely a cultural artifact but a standard, one that reflects professionalism, discipline, and an unyielding pursuit of truth. Each new generation of G-men and women inherit not only the responsibilities of the role, but the weight of that legacy and the obligation to uphold it. Day after day the men and women of the FBI answer the call and choose duty over comfort, principle over expediency, and service over self. Their work is often unseen and their successes unheralded, but the nation is safer because of their steadfast commitment, their adherence to the rule of law, and their fidelity to the ideals that define the FBI. Thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today. I look forward to answering your questions.

Thank you. Ms. Cleveland, you're recognized.

Chairman Cruz, Ranking Member Whitehouse, and members of the subcommittee. Thank you for the opportunity to testify concerning the grave constitutional violations inflicted as part of Arctic Frost. After the 2020 election, an anti-Trump FBI agent named Tim Thibault attempted to use the Justice Department to destroy the president. Thibault's efforts led to the launch of Arctic Frost. Soon after, Merrick Garland tapped Jack Smith, a hyper-aggressive prosecutor known to overstretch the meaning and intent of the law, to serve as special counsel. Smith proved himself true to form, indicting Trump for allegedly violating a statute enacted in the aftermath of Enron, based in part on a theory of criminal liability the Supreme Court would later hold invalid. The Supreme Court would later also halt Smith's efforts to prosecute Trump for actions that fell within the president's official duties. Beyond being a partisan in his own right, Smith stacked his team with partisan Democrats, such as J.P. Cooney and Ray Hulser. Cooney and Hulser served as Smith's top deputies, and in them, we see the clear double standard and political bias that permeated the DOJ and FBI. Before joining Smith's team, Cooney crafted an outrageous sentencing memorandum that sought to send Trump advisor Roger Stone to prison for seven to nine years. Cooney's sentencing recommendations were so unhinged that the then Attorney General William Barr intervened. Cooney responded by spreading unfounded rumors that Barr and the acting Attorney General, excuse me, the acting U.S. Attorney, were being improperly political, with media leaks furthering that narrative, eventually leading to an Inspector General investigation. The IG cleared the Trump administration but chastised Cooney. Hulser, for his part, demonstrated his partisan proclivities when he headed up the public integrity section and refused the FBI's request to open an investigation into the Clinton Foundation. But Hulser's partisan protection racket went further when he withheld a six-page timeline of the Clinton Foundation investigation from the then U.S. Attorney operating out of Little Rock. Instead, he provided an abbreviated two-page summary that omitted all references to interference from the DOJ and the FBI leadership. In contrast, when the target was Trump, Hulser, along with Cooney, drafted a memorandum to justify subpoenaing the toll records of about a dozen members of Congress, notwithstanding internal email discussions acknowledging a clear speech or debate clause problem. They then hid the details of those subpoenas using the prohibited access functionality of Sentinel, which ghosted the FBI records. As this committee well knows because many of you were victims, Smith approved the subpoenas and obtained the toll records of Senators Blackburn, Graham, Hagerty, Hawley, Lummis, Johnson, Kennedy, Scott, Sullivan, and Tuberville. Only Senator Cruz escaped the invasion into his privacy and the violation of the speech or debate clause because his cell phone provider questioned the subpoena. From this subcommittee's January 7 hearing, you also know that Smith's team sought a non-disclosure order from Chief Judge James Boasberg, apparently without informing him that the targets were members of Congress. I say apparently because Chairman Cruz's request for the non-disclosure application to be unsealed has been ignored. Yet again we see the double standard and the weaponization. Judge Boasberg has still failed to order Smith and his prosecutors to show cause for why they should not be held in contempt for concealing the members of Congress were the ones who were being targeted. This fact should not be ignored if you are to believe Smith and the administrative office of the court's testimony that Judge Boasberg did not know that your identities were involved. It makes absolutely no sense that Boasberg would not enter a show cause order to hold Smith accountable for violating your rights, given Judge Boasberg's nearly year-long crusade to hold a member of the Trump administration in contempt. We now know that Smith violated the speech or debate clause, rubber-stamped by Judge Boasberg. He went further and he subpoenaed the toll records of Kevin McCarthy, former speaker, and Chairman Jim Jordan, again under cover of a non-disclosure order. Add that, add to that the hundreds more served on individual Republicans, including Trump's attorneys, Republican organizations such as Charlie Kirk's Turning Point USA, and they didn't seek merely toll records but also bank records, which revealed the donor base. The breath of these constitutional intrusions is unprecedented. But to recap, Smith unconstitutionally was appointed special counsel in violation of the appointments clause. The subpoenas of the toll records violated the speech or debate clause. The vast and unjustified subpoenas to Republicans and the organizations that were connected to them violated the First Amendment associational rights. The targeting of Trump's attorneys implicates the Sixth Amendment right to counsel. And using prohibited access to bury records is a huge due process violation that raises potential violations of Brady. Smith and his team must be held accountable. Thank you.

Thank you. Let's start with the foundation. Ms. Cleveland, Jack Smith issued nearly 200 subpoenas, is that correct?

Yes.

Those subpoenas targeted over 400 Republican individuals and organizations, correct?

Correct.

Many of whom had no connection to those who entered the Capitol on January 6, correct?

Absolutely.

And in fact, some of those organizations didn't even exist on January 6, is that correct?

It is.

So we're not talking about a narrow investigation, we're talking about a sweeping operation targeting virtually the entirety of the other side politically.

It was a fishing expedition.

So let's turn to the Constitution, subpoenaing the toll records of members of Congress, does that raise serious constitutional concerns?

Absolutely, and in fact, we have the PIN who notified the special counsel's office of those concerns, and Jack Smith had apparently said that he was going to consult with the solicitor general, according to the release of the information from Senator Grassley this morning, yet when he was deposed by the House and was specifically asked if he spoke with the solicitor general, he said, on this discrete issue, no.

Among other issues it raises significant issues with the speech and debate clause, correct?

Absolutely.

So much so that as you noted, when when Jack Smith subpoenaed AT&T to get my toll records, AT&T refused to comply with the subpoena because they concluded that it violated the speech and debate clause, is that correct?

Absolutely correct and they backed down.

Jack Smith did not try to enforce that subpoena, did he?

He did not.

He did not go to court and litigate the matter, did he?

He did not.

Does that suggest as it does to me that he knew damn well what he was doing was illegal and would not be upheld in court?

It does suggest that.

When the federal government subpoenas donor lists, internal communications, organization records, does that implicate the First Amendment and also freedom of association in particular?

It does, and the Supreme Court made that clear in the NAACP case.

Mr. Chamberlain, aside from the legal violations, what specific crimes, if any, were actually uncovered as a result of the Arctic Frost investigation?

I'm not aware of any crimes that were uncovered.

Would the senators, donors, organizations, and individuals who were surveyed and subpoenaed have ever learned about the Arctic Frost investigation had Trump not won in 2024?

Probably not, mainly because of these non-disclosure orders, but also I mean the fact that a lot of these records are we're now just learning about them because they were in these prohibited access files only available to the FBI director. So if the FBI director was a Democrat, there's no reason to think we'd know about them.

How would you compare the scope of the violations in Arctic Frost to Watergate?

I think if anything it might even be greater. I mean the scope of this in terms of the sheer number of people and organizations affected, and as I discussed, I mean this brazen violation of attorney-client privilege, wiretapping of a phone call between Susie Wiles and her lawyer, these are egregious offenses and you know if Watergate was just about a single break-in, I mean this is effectively a you know compound that by 200.

All right, Mr. O'Leary, I appreciate your service. One of the things you testified is you said quote, "the effectiveness and legitimacy of the FBI depend on its independence from political influence." I very much agree with that and I will say as an alumnus of the Department of Justice, I am deeply saddened and frankly I'm angry that under President Biden the Department of Justice and the FBI were weaponized and its integrity badly, badly compromised. You're right, that's how the FBI is supposed to behave and that's how the Department of Justice is supposed to behave. So Jack Smith was not investigating a crime based on evidence. He issued subpoenas to get the toll records of the following senators: Mike Lee, seated to my right; Josh Hawley; Lindsey Graham; John Kennedy, seated to my right; Marsha Blackburn; Ron Johnson; Rick Scott; Bill Hagerty; Dan Sullivan; Tommy Tuberville; Cynthia Lummis; and myself. That's over 20 percent of the Republicans in the United States Senate. Mr. O'Leary, is it consistent with the obligations of the Department of Justice and the FBI to issue subpoenas with no factual basis and no legal basis?

Senator, it is not, and in my experience FBI agents would never approach a matter without the proper justification and articulable facts to open their investigation.

Okay good, so you said they would never do that. Judge Boasberg signed an order, I'm holding the order right here, in which he concludes and I'm going to read: "reasonable grounds that such disclosure will result in destruction of or tampering with evidence, intimidation of potential witnesses, and serious jeopardy to the investigation." Are you aware of any factual basis whatsoever that a dozen senators will destroy evidence?

I am not, but I will tell you that non-disclosure orders are routine part of investigations.

Based on facts. Give me, give me any, any hypothetical fact. By the way, do you know any facts that I will destroy evidence? Let's take it me personally.

I cannot, you know...

Because Jack Smith went into court and said, I will destroy evidence if I know about the subpoena. And this clown signed the order one after the other after the other. Are you aware of any basis? Look, I'm a member of the bar. I take my obligations seriously. The FBI signed off on that? Mike Lee concluded he would destroy evidence? John Kennedy? Well, Louisiana maybe. I will say, I'll give a special dispensation for the great state of Louisiana. But there is no basis. By the way, is it consistent with DOJ's obligation to also ask a judge to violate the law and not inform the judge of it?

No, it would not be.

Well, 2 USC section 662A explicitly bars non-disclosure orders applying to the Senate. And yet in the lawless Department of Justice, I assume they didn't tell Judge Boasberg, hey, we're asking you to violate the law, would you sign this? Do you assume that as well?

You would have to ask the DOJ that, but you make a good point, Senator.

Thank you. Ranking Member Whitehouse.

Just to follow up on that point, Mr. O'Leary, is the reason that a prosecutor would pursue a non-disclosure order for a toll records subpoena necessarily that it is the subject of the subpoena who would attempt to interfere with or obstruct the investigation as opposed to the subject of the investigation who would attempt to interfere with and obstruct the investigation?

Senator, it depends on the investigation. It could be the subject of the investigation, it could be associates. The idea of a non-disclosure order is to not really let an individual know that they're under investigation because they could change their behavior.

But one cannot infer from the existence of a non-disclosure order any accusation that the subject of the order was intending to interfere or obstruct. It could just as easily be that it was actually the subject of the investigation, one of the conspirators, for instance, who the court was concerned about, who the prosecutor was concerned about.

It certainly could be, but as I was communicating to Senator Cruz, non-disclosure orders are a routine part of FBI investigations.

Understood. Understood. So in your view, what has happened to the FBI and DOJ's national security capabilities in the last 15 months?

They've been decimated. There's been generational damage done.

And with respect to the quiet bastion you referred to and the standards of virtue and integrity that you spoke so passionately about, were those standards of virtue and integrity, the fidelity, bravery, and integrity of the FBI, met by agents who Kash Patel then turned on and fired?

There is rampant morale degradation, uncertainty amongst the ranks, and really disheartened career federal public servants who've been dismissed without cause.

Because in fact their colleagues understood that they in fact met those standards for fidelity, bravery, and integrity and were nevertheless fired, correct?

Correct.

DOJ and the FBI run under close institutional checks and balances designed to protect the integrity of the organization. Were those applicable to special counsel?

I would assume so. I wasn't involved in that investigation at all, but I can speak to the process that Washington Field Office would follow and those are the agents that supported that investigation.

And they would follow traditional regular FBI guidelines.

The documents that I was able to review demonstrated that.

Are you aware that the Trump Department of Justice in the first term subpoenaed information from members of Congress and members of Congress's staff, including toll records?

Senator, the FBI conducting public corruption investigations has been part of its mission for years. I know it's probably disconcerting to any member of Congress or public official, but the FBI does it with the same integrity that it conducts any investigation. I would say to a fellow Irishman, we would probably work with them on an investigation, but, you know, the FBI pursues these despite what side of the aisle you're on.

And they did in the first Trump term of office and that included getting non-disclosure orders so that the members of Congress did not know their toll records had been subpoenaed, correct?

That is correct, it's routine.

Tell me a little bit as we wrap up here about the work of the CI-12 unit and what condition it is now in as hostilities with Iran exist.

So CI-12 is a foreign counterintelligence squad in Washington Field Office, and the agents that were dismissed from there and from the counterintelligence division at FBI headquarters work a variety of counterintelligence priorities. Iran is one of them, and dismissing some of these people just days before the war with Iran kicked off creates problems with sustained focus and could impact operations.

And in fact some of the FBI's institutional knowledge is contained in the knowledge and experience of senior FBI agents. And so when they are purged for political reasons, that component of the bureau loses something fairly significant.

That is true, Senator. So there were some senior leaders at headquarters that were removed, and then in this last year alone, two assistant directors from Washington Field Office were both removed.

My time is up. Thank you, Chairman.

Thank you. Without objection, I'd like to enter... sorry.

With respect to the question of the NDOs and the reason for that, I'd like to put into the record the letter that I wrote to Speaker Johnson giving what I consider to be the accurate background related to that dated January 15, 2026.

Without objection, it'll be entered into the record.

Thank you.

Also without objection, I want to introduce into the record a November 2, 2023 letter from Chairman Grassley to the DOJ Office of Inspector General raising concerns that in 2017 DOJ subpoenaed personal phone and email records of Republicans and Democrat congressional staff. I'm also entering into the record a November 8, 2023 letter from me, Chairman Grassley, and Senator Lee to Attorney General Garland raising similar concerns and requesting information on the subpoenas of congressional staff. Contrary to what Senator Whitehouse said in his opening, Republicans did raise concerns about the DOJ obtaining records from congressional staff of both parties. And I will say just a minute ago, Mr. O'Leary, you were being asked by Senator Whitehouse about investigating members of Congress, and it is certainly true that DOJ has a long tradition if there's evidence of particular misconduct, for example our former colleague Senator Menendez is currently incarcerated in prison for corruption. And if you've got evidence of criminal conduct of one individual, the Department of Justice has an obligation to investigate that. Would you agree that's qualitatively different than a fishing expedition targeting 20 percent of the Republicans in the Senate? Would you agree that's qualitatively different?

I am not familiar with the details of either investigation, so I wouldn't want to speculate.

But let me ask you this, would you be troubled if tomorrow the Trump Department of Justice issued a subpoena for the phone records of every Democrat that sits on the Judiciary Committee?

Not if it was based on factual evidence, specific and articulable facts.

Well, let me be clear, I'd be damn troubled. And that would be an abuse of power, and I'm going to predict not a single Democrat's going to say even a word about the abuse of power on their side, and that double standard is troubling. Senator Lee.

Thank you very much, Senator Cruz, for convening this hearing. It's an important topic. About a half a century ago, President Nixon resigned. He did so under pressure on the basis of public outrage that stemmed from a break-in at DNC headquarters. It's an act of lawfare you might say, or maybe better said political espionage. Today the media and my Democrat colleagues have fallen conspicuously silent when confronted with a scandal that in some ways is of much larger proportions because it involves the official law enforcement apparatus of the U.S. government in a much more direct way than that one did. President Biden's systematic weaponization of the Department of Justice and federal law enforcement against his political opponents is a development of staggering proportions. And by development, I mean scandal. Just like the Watergate break-in, Arctic Frost was ultimately an attempt to sway the results of a presidential election. But this comparison may even be unfair to President Nixon, who never attempted to quash dissent by putting the opposition candidate in prison for trumped-up charges. Now thankfully the Biden administration failed in that misguided effort. President Trump was elected by the people to become the 47th president of the United States, but we have to ensure that this kind of lawfare can't occur again. Mr. Chamberlain, I'd like to start with you. Your testimony focuses among other things on an FBI recording of a 2023 phone call between Susie Wiles, who was at the time managing President Trump's presidential campaign, and her lawyer. Now according to the FBI, the lawyer was aware of the recording, but isn't it true that the lawyer denied that he had ever consented to that arrangement?

That's true, that was widely reported.

And if in fact the lawyer did not consent, your testimony today is that this would have been and was an illegal wiretap by the FBI in the absence of her lawyer's consent with the FBI.

That's correct.

And the FBI designated this as a prohibited file to prevent anyone from finding out about it.

That seems to be correct, yes.

Okay, so they did something they weren't supposed to do, then they designated as a prohibited file to cover it up. Now in general, should the president be able to direct the FBI to spy on the campaign of his political opponent?

Absolutely not.

And isn't listening to a private conversation between a presidential campaign manager and her lawyer in many ways much more serious as an abuse of government power than an attempted wiretap of the DNC headquarters in Watergate?

Correct, because there's two interests being invaded. First is just the wiretap generally, but then it's doubly invasive because it's supposed to be a privileged conversation.

A privileged conversation, which regardless of who's involved in it, is supposed to be privileged. And that takes on additional flavor, additional degrees of seriousness when that person happens to be a client represented by a lawyer who happens to be managing the presidential campaign of the then incumbent president's lead and exclusive challenger effectively. Ms. Cleveland, you referenced the FBI's use of protected access tag for Arctic Frost subpoenas. What is this functionality and why does it raise due process concerns in your mind?

So prohibited access is a functionality which makes the records invisible. So when there's an investigation going on, the FBI agents are doing searches maybe by keywords of names, it will come back and say there are no results. They will believe there are no results. We already have evidence that this has been used in the investigation of Trump. We also have evidence that it has been used in other investigations that were high profile. From the due process concern, a lawyer is entitled to have evidence that is exculpatory to their clients. If there is exculpatory evidence or even evidence that calls into credibility the credibility of one of the witnesses, that has to be turned over. It can't possibly...

For Brady and Giglio purposes, yes.

Exactly, Brady Giglio. It can't be turned over if they don't know about it. That's a huge problem from the due process perspective.

Right, so you're forestalling upfront what would be part of the defendant's due process in the event of eventual criminal proceedings. Now, really quickly before my time expires, tell me whether to what extent Judge Boasberg knew or would have had reason to know what the NDOs were actually covering.

So without seeing the application, it's impossible to say he should have known. But this morning when Senator Grassley released his documents, it indicated that Smith's team was speaking with the prior Chief Justice, I mean Chief Judge of the D.C. District Court about subpoenas and executive privilege. So that raised the concern of was this conversation going on with Judge Boasberg as well? If not, did Smith's team actually decide not to have the same kind of conversations because they were concerned that Judge Boasberg wouldn't go along with it? So we don't know what Judge Boasberg knew, but we do know he didn't demand Smith come in and explain himself as he has done time and time again with the Trump administration and trying to hold someone in contempt there.

Okay, so this would be out of outside the norm, not only for this type of action, but out of norm even for what Judge Boasberg has done in other cases.

In the contempt and calling them in for contempt, absolutely.

Thank you.

Senator Durbin.

Thank you, Senator Lee. Ms. Cleveland, you've given a pretty lengthy bill of particulars in reference to the special prosecutor Jack Smith. I tried to keep up with your statement. You've accused him of being a hyper-aggressive prosecutor, partisan, deputies who are politically partisan, running some sort of partisan protection racket, unconstitutionally appointed, a litany of constitutional misconduct, guilty of a fishing expedition and on and on. Would there be value for you to be able to ask Mr. Smith questions about your assertions?

Only after I've seen enough background information to pose good questions, such as Senator Grassley's release this morning revealed for the first time that he...

No, I'm just asking in general terms and not to get specific.

Well, as a lawyer, I have to give you the specific answer.

Well, I'd like you to do it very briefly because I have a limited period of time. I'm just asking you if you had a chance to ask Jack Smith questions.

Not until I've seen the documents that will inform the questions and be able to confront him. You don't do a deposition until you've done document review.

Of course, I think that goes without saying in the practice of law. But let me ask you if you could ask him questions under oath whether that would be more value than just general questions.

Again, after I've seen the documents.

You don't think being under oath puts any special obligation on a person who is asked a question?

You can be under oath and if you're not confronted with the evidence, the answer is not going to be as informative.

It sounds like you're afraid to face him.

Not at all.

Well, good. Let me ask you this question. If you could do it in the setting of say the Senate Judiciary Committee and you had a chance to ask those questions under oath, do you think that might be of value?

After I've reviewed all of the relevant documents, including the ones hidden in prohibited access.

How about we make sure that that meeting of the Judiciary Committee is public so America can witness the questions and answers? Would that be of value?

After all of those documents have been released, yes.

Oh, you're going to... you wouldn't want to testify... you wouldn't want to question him until all the documents have been released?

The relevant documents that are hidden in prohibited access absolutely need those before you question him.

That may be a luxury which most attorneys and others would not have access to.

Well, they shouldn't have been hidden in the first place.

Well, it isn't a question of hiding as much as legal access. The point I'm getting to is that for the last six months, the Democrats on this committee have said to the Republicans on this committee, bring Jack Smith into this room, sit him down in front of that microphone, put him under oath and ask whatever questions you have. All these assertions, the bill of particulars that's been issued by some of the witnesses today, would have to be confronted by him directly under oath in a public hearing for the American to see. Of course, any lawyer who's been on a law school more than 15 minutes knows that there's value to the circumstances of asking those questions. But they won't do it. For six months, the Republican majority wants to hear hearing after hearing of what's wrong with Jack Smith and the one person they should ask that of directly, Jack Smith, they won't call before this committee. What are they waiting for? If this is worse than Watergate, as some senators have asserted, isn't it about time that we get to the primary source, Jack Smith under oath, under penalty of criminal perjury or perjury if he fails to testify? I don't get it. What are they waiting for? They'd rather have the hearings than have the answers. And that to me doesn't help. Mr. O'Leary, how many years of service did you give to the Federal Bureau of Investigation?

Over 20, sir.

Did you retire?

I did. Yes, sir.

And you said quite a bit about what the Federal Bureau of Investigations means and what they stand for. One of the things I noted that you didn't have time to read into the record, I want to make sure is noted, and that is your statements about Robert Mueller. What you had to say about him is amazing. You say, the example set by Robert Mueller established a standard of quiet professionalism, integrity and discipline leadership that permeated every level of the Bureau. That is high praise. I feel the same way about him and I hope I made it clear in my opening statement. Where are we now? We're 15 months into this new president's 48-month term. Damage has been done to the Federal Bureau which you've described as generational damage. What's the future of the FBI?

What the FBI deserves and needs is an unbiased leader, somebody with investigative and operational experience and leadership experience and a commitment to public service and justice. Unfortunately, I do not see that in the current director. He does not have any background of experience and he lacks the character and the disposition to carry out the duties that the American people deserve and the country's less safe under his leadership.

I agree with your conclusion and a great deal has to be done to rehabilitate and resurrect this great agency. Thank you very much.

Senator Kennedy.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chamberlain, I believe four telephone companies received these subpoenas for the phone records, the metadata of 20 members of Congress. Is that your understanding?

I... that sounds right to me, yes.

Okay. I don't have time to talk about all of them. Let me just pick one, Verizon. About 90,000 employees, I think, $140 billion worth of revenue. Does Verizon hire dummies to work in its legal department?

I should think not. They've probably got a good reservoir of lawyers to pick from.

Okay. Let's suppose you were one of the lawyers at Verizon and you don't strike me as a dummy.

Well, thank you. I appreciate that.

And you got a subpoena from Jack Smith with an NDO, non-disclosure order, signed by Judge Boasberg. Do you think a reasonably incompetent lawyer or reasonably competent lawyer at Verizon would know who Jack Smith was?

Yes, I think so.

Do you think a reasonably competent lawyer at Verizon would know who Judge Boasberg was or would inquire about him?

Yeah, I think you could pretty quickly Google him and if you were concerned that maybe he wasn't actually a federal district judge, I think it's pretty obvious that you'd be able to figure out what's going on.

I mean, it was pretty widely known that President Biden instructed the Attorney General to sue President Trump and that he hired Jack Smith. Wasn't it? That was on the front page of every paper. If you were an attorney at Verizon and you got a subpoena like this, wouldn't you say maybe I need to check and see who Mr. Smith is subpoenaing here?

Yeah, and especially once I found out it was a representative, it would immediately raise that flag of like maybe there's a legal exception here that doesn't apply in other cases.

Do we know if the employee who received this subpoena at Verizon even sought a legal opinion from an attorney at Verizon?

I do not know.

Well, let's just assume for a second that Verizon, sophisticated company that it is, is not so incompetent that they wouldn't have had a lawyer look at this. Lawyer looks at it, says, huh, Jack Smith. Lawyer looks at it and says NDO signed by Judge Boasberg. Lawyer looks at the names as a reasonably competent lawyer would. Hmm, they're members of Congress. If that was you, what would you do?

Well, I'd make a few phone calls, I'd do legal research to confirm that complying with this order was obviously lawful and I might, you know, gently try and push back on the subpoena to try and understand, you know, what was going on.

Well, and in fact, you would probably discover the law, being the very competent lawyer that you are, that said no judicial order can bar Verizon from picking up the phone and calling the member of Congress. Wouldn't you?

That's right. You'd probably find that statute.

Mhm. And if you did find that statute, in order to protect Verizon as their lawyer, wouldn't you have filed a motion to quash?

That's exactly what I'd do, yeah.

But Verizon didn't do any of that, did they?

Apparently not.

They just sucked all this information up like a Hoover Deluxe.

Yeah.

They didn't even look at, that we know of, to see if these were members of Congress.

That's right.

What kind of liability does Verizon have here?

That's a good question. I'd need to read the statute more clearly to see what the actual penalties are, but my guess is there would be some pretty reasonable civil penalties for having done so.

What kind of remedies, if any, are there for the fact that Judge Boasberg said that he had reasonable grounds to believe that these members of Congress would destroy evidence, and that he made that conclusion without holding a hearing?

I think the only remedy to that is political and impeachment. I don't think there's a unique, you can't sue Judge Boasberg for damages for his judicial decision-making, so the only remedy is political.

Would you consider it to be grossly incompetent if Judge Boasberg had not even inquired who these people were and whether they were members of Congress?

Oh, yes, extremely incompetent.

Okay. That's all I've got, Mr. Chairman.

Senator Hirono.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Well, here we are once again. Once again with a hearing espousing Republican conspiracy theories and once again focusing on Jack Smith. How many times do we Democrats have to say, why don't we just bring Jack Smith before this committee? Why do we not put him under oath? Why don't we just ask him questions? The witnesses this morning are speculating as to what Jack Smith knew or what he told the judge, speculating about what the judge was told by Jack Smith. I mean, instead of all these speculations, why don't we just call Jack Smith? See, that has never been adequately answered in my view. I think it's time, rather than continuing to go down this rabbit hole. And really, the term milking a dead cow or beating a dead horse comes to mind because this is what this exercise is. It is milking a dead cow, which describes, I looked that up, describes a completely futile, pointless, or waste of effort that will yield no results. It implies trying to extract value, information, or result from a source that is already dead, exhausted, or incapable of providing anything further. So the further providing of information should come directly from Jack Smith. So I'm going to repeat what some of my colleagues have said. There are three things that we can focus on with the work of this committee rather than wasting our time like this. First is, call Jack Smith. Second, he has already offered to testify, so we're not going to get much resistance from him. He's already testified before the House and he issued some reports and we should access, we should get access to volume two of Jack Smith's report. So not only should we call him to testify, but we should get our hands, talking about getting information that would be good for us to have, volume two of Jack Smith's report. And then thirdly, there's been a focus on Kash Patel. After he received immunity, he did testify to the grand jury and we've been trying to access that testimony. And Director Patel has stonewalled and lied to this committee saying that he can't provide that testimony. Yes, he can. And once again, my Republican colleagues don't seem to care that he lied to this committee. So we have, as far as I'm concerned, a refusal to confront the truth. And I'm really disheartened by what is happening to an institution called the FBI, not to mention the Department of Justice, but the FBI that had, I would say, a reputation for doing the work that protected the American people, and that is not the case that we're seeing. Are people being fired not for lack of competence, in fact, they were very, very competent, not for misconduct, but because they happened to question the leader, Donald Trump. This continuous effort on the part of my Republican colleagues to just bow down to this president who does not believe that the rule of law applies to him is amazing. And you know what, the American people are getting it. And that is why millions, millions of them, in fact, I think this Saturday, there's going to be another rally, No King's Rally. Millions of Americans are saying, hey, Donald Trump, you are not our king. You cannot run this country through executive orders. You cannot act as though the rule of law does not apply to him. And by the way, no thanks to the Supreme Court. I think their decision on his immunity was one of the worst decisions that this court, and there are many. So let me just ask one question of Mr. O'Leary. Thank you very much for testifying. In your experience, and I know there are some very fine FBI agents who either were fired or left, over 1,000. Can you go over again the fact that all these very, very experienced people who were engaged in white-collar crime investigations, cyber attacks, etc., their departure, tell us how their departure is making our country safer.

Senator, the loss of agents and analysts and professional staff across the FBI is impacting a variety of programs from white-collar crime, protecting the integrity of our financial markets, and public corruption, cyber, the head of the cyber division was fired, an exceptional agent that I served with for years, the head of the Critical Incident Response Group, who was the acting director in the beginning of the Trump administration, Brian Driscoll, was fired just this last August because he refused to fire one of his employees without cause as directed by Kash Patel. Brian Driscoll demonstrated the courage and the integrity that you would expect from a leader and he refused to do so. He in turn was fired himself, thrown out of the FBI after years of service. He is a recipient of the Shield of Bravery and the Shield of Valor, Shield of Valor for being on a joint hostage recovery operation in Syria with a special operations task force to rescue an American citizen. These are the kind of individuals we're losing and those who are not being fired...

Thank you, Mr. O'Leary, for standing up for an institution that deserves our support and instead we have a director who parties around, who flies around in a plane, who visits his girlfriend, give me a break.

Senator Blackburn.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. O'Leary, I want to stay with you if I may. Now, my colleague across the aisle seems to have a problem with Kash Patel and you made a statement that you think he's made our country less safe. Do you own that statement?

Yes, I do, ma'am.

You do own that statement. Have you heard of Memphis, Tennessee?

Yes, ma'am, I've been there many times.

Good. Are you fully aware of what the FBI and the federal government has accomplished in Memphis, Tennessee?

I think using FBI agents as part of a joint task force to reduce violent crime is very important and I'm aware of their effectiveness there, yes, ma'am.

And you're aware that Director Patel has been very involved in planning, organizing, implementing this. Is that correct?

I'm not personally aware of that, but if you say so, yes, ma'am.

Well, let me make you aware of that. Are you aware that there have been over 9,000 arrest of violent criminals?

If you say so, yes, ma'am.

And would you say that arresting 9,000 violent criminals makes the country more or less safe?

It certainly makes that jurisdiction, Memphis, a safer community.

Makes the entire country more safe. Would you say that finding 150 missing children helps make this country more safe?

Yes, it does, and the FBI's been doing that for decades, ma'am.

And in Memphis, it's 153. You can stop being snarky too. That would help. There have also, we've seen a 43 percent drop in overall crime, 36 percent drop in murder, and a 68 percent drop in carjackings in Memphis. Now, I wanted to bring all of this up because I think it's important that we focus on what we've been able to accomplish in the line of public safety when we appropriately use resources from the federal government and when we're not having the DOJ weaponize itself and go after private citizens like Susie Wiles and Kash Patel were, when all of their records were subpoenaed in 2022 and 23, when we don't see the FBI going after 400 different conservative organizations, which they did, simply because they didn't like Donald Trump and they didn't like a lot of us, myself included. But you seem to be fine with that weaponization. You seem to think that it is okay. And Mr. O'Leary, I find it unconscionable that you would sit there and defend them going after the records of private citizens, of elected officials, and weaponizing the Department of Justice. But that is what they did. I think it is really unfortunate that this type weaponization appears to what we had come to expect out of the Biden administration. Mr. Chamberlain, I want to come to you. Talk for a minute about that danger of the expectation of weaponization, the effect and the impact, pardon me, that that has on conservatives and what Congress needs to do to make certain this doesn't happen to anybody, whether it's a liberal or a conservative. It seems that we have a witness who is fine with it happening to conservatives, but I'm sure he would not be happy if it happened to a liberal.

Well, it's a very big worry that you're effectively, you know, demeaning the First Amendment because you're crushing the rights of people to engage in political advocacy if the underlying threat is, if you do this for the wrong side, we're going to set, you know, bring federal law enforcement to bear upon you.

And Mr. O'Leary, are you okay with it being weaponized to go after conservatives? Does that suit you? Did you think that was a justifiable use of taxpayer money and time?

Senator, absolutely not, and let me just tell you, politics in the FBI workspace are absent. Nobody understands or knows or cares...

Oh, it's absent? You want to own that statement? No, it's my time. Ms. Cleveland, what do you have to say about that?

That's laughable. It is absolutely laughable that it has no place after everything we saw with Crossfire Hurricane, after what we're starting to see in the Arctic Frost from the prohibitive files. It might be that you worked with a very few who were not political, but it is replete everywhere. We had Ray Holstler, who wrote an op-ed, I believe it was in the Washington Post after he was fired, complaining about him being fired for no reason. But what do we now know? He was the one who refused to investigate the Clinton Foundation and he's the one who turned over to the US Attorney who was actually doing the investigation, a abbreviated summary of what was going on so that it hid all of the DOJ and FBI's protection and what they were doing to stop the investigation. It's laughable to say that there's no politicization of the FBI. Or maybe there isn't anymore because they fired the groups that were doing it. investigation. It's laughable to say that there's no politicization of the FBI. Or maybe there isn't anymore because they fired the groups that were doing it.

Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.