House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan has formally referred former special counsel Jack Smith to the Justice Department for possible criminal prosecution, alleging Smith lied under oath about his team's access to lawmakers' private text messages, a charge Smith's attorneys flatly reject as politically motivated.
Jordan sent the referral letter Wednesday to Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, citing what the Ohio Republican called "strong evidence" that Smith "knowingly made false statements" during an eight-hour closed-door deposition before the committee on December 17, 2025. The letter points to newly obtained DOJ documents, provided to the committee on July 14, that Jordan says contradict Smith's sworn answers about whether his investigators accessed the content of congressional text messages during the federal probes into President Donald Trump.
The Justice Department confirmed receipt of the referral and stated it "will investigate all evidence of criminal conduct." Smith's legal team, led by lawyers at the firm Covington, fired back in their own letter, calling the referral baseless and accusing Jordan of twisting the record.
The dispute centers on a specific exchange during Smith's December deposition. Asked whether he and his team had sought a search warrant for the content of any text messages from members of Congress, Smith answered: "No, I don't recall." Asked whether records his team requested included the content of phone calls, he said "No." Asked whether they included the content of text messages, he again said "No."
Jordan's referral letter argues those answers painted a false picture. DOJ records turned over months later show Smith's team obtained text-message content from more than 40 members of Congress, 40 Republicans and four Democrats, through a subpoena to the National Archives, according to the New York Post. The messages covered communications between lawmakers and White House employees from October 2020 through January 20, 2021.
Jordan wrote that Smith's responses "gave the impression that neither Mr. Smith nor his team had access to the content of members' privileged text messages. We now know this to be false."
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley separately disclosed the scope of the records haul. Jordan's referral alleges Smith's team also bypassed a DOJ "filter team", a group designed to screen out privileged communications before investigators could review them, and allowed prosecutors to view potentially protected exchanges directly.
The scale of Smith's investigation, internally dubbed "Arctic Frost," was itself striking. The Washington Examiner reported that the probe involved 197 subpoenas to 34 individuals and 163 businesses, with records requests targeting more than 430 individuals and organizations, a sweep that appeared aimed almost entirely at Republicans.
Sen. Ted Cruz put it bluntly:
"When you have the Biden Department of Justice subpoenaing 20% of the Republicans in the Senate, it is an egregious abuse of process. It is a fishing expedition, and we need to have a full and thorough investigation and accountability for every executive branch official who signed off on weaponizing the government."
Smith's defense team at Covington pushed back hard. In a letter to Jordan and Blanche, attorneys Peter Koski and Lanny Breuer argued that the referral rests on a manufactured premise.
"The referral is made not because Mr. Smith made a false statement, the letter concedes he did not, but because he did not proactively disclose information that was not responsive to a question asked," the Covington lawyers wrote. They added:
"This referral reflects a chilling eagerness to weaponize the justice system by attacking a career, nonpartisan public servant who faithfully and fearlessly performed his duties by following the facts and the law."
Their argument turns on a narrow legal distinction. The toll-record subpoenas that were the subject of the committee's questions sought communications metadata, who called whom, when, and for how long, not the actual content of calls or texts. Smith answered those questions accurately, his lawyers contend. The text-message content came through a separate subpoena to the National Archives, which the committee's questions did not address.
Jordan anticipated that defense. His letter argues that a witness who gives technically true but misleading answers is still lying. "A statement containing some truthful information becomes affirmatively false when it represents that the partial information is complete," Jordan wrote.
The distinction matters because false statements to Congress carry criminal penalties. If the DOJ concludes Smith's answers were narrowly truthful but not misleading, the referral goes nowhere. If prosecutors decide Smith created a false impression to conceal the scope of his investigation, the legal exposure is real.
Rep. Jamie Raskin, the Maryland Democrat who serves as the Judiciary Committee's ranking member, issued a statement dismissing the entire exercise. "This referral deliberately distorts and misstates the facts, including what questions the Republicans actually asked at Mr. Smith's interview," Raskin said.
He went further, accusing Jordan of expecting Smith to read minds: "The Republicans fault Mr. Smith for not reading the minds of congressional investigators and for not volunteering information they didn't ask for. This is absurd. Mr. Smith may be telegenic but he is not telepathic."
Raskin predicted the referral would collapse if tested in court. "This referral, if ever brought before a judge, will get laughed out of court," he said.
Jordan, for his part, has been building toward this moment for years. He began investigating Smith and his criminal probes into Trump as far back as June 2023. In October, after revelations that Smith's team had obtained non-content toll records and communications metadata from nine Republican members of Congress regarding calls in the days before and after January 6, Jordan demanded Smith testify about his probes. That demand led to the December 17 deposition now at the center of the referral.
The broader backdrop of the Smith investigation has already produced criminal cases of its own. A former DOJ attorney was indicted for allegedly stealing sealed documents tied to the Smith probe, raising separate questions about the integrity of the special counsel's operation.
The factual core of Jordan's case rests on what DOJ records show Smith's team actually did versus what Smith told Congress his team did. Just The News reported that Jordan accused Smith of lying both about access to text-message content and about whether he ever subpoenaed the text messages of members of Congress.
The records indicate Smith's investigators reviewed text messages from 44 members of Congress obtained from the National Archives rather than from telecom providers. Jordan described some of those communications as potentially privileged, a legal designation that would normally shield them from prosecutorial review without special safeguards.
The allegation that Smith's team bypassed the filter team adds another layer. Standard DOJ procedure requires a separate group of lawyers, uninvolved in the investigation, to review seized materials first and flag anything protected by attorney-client privilege or other legal shields. Newsmax reported that Jordan's referral alleges Smith's investigators reviewed potentially privileged communications before the filter team screened them.
If that allegation holds up, it raises questions beyond Smith's personal testimony. It suggests a structural problem in how the special counsel's office handled constitutionally sensitive material, communications between elected officials and the White House during a contested presidential transition.
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche now faces the decision of whether to open a formal investigation. Blanche, who accepted the attorney general nomination amid a wave of DOJ enforcement actions, has not publicly commented on the referral beyond the department's confirmation of receipt.
Smith was appointed special counsel by the Biden administration in November 2022. He brought two federal criminal cases against Trump in 2023, one related to alleged mishandling of classified documents, the other to alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. Both cases were wound down after Trump won re-election in 2024, and Smith resigned in January 2025, ahead of Trump's inauguration.
Since Trump returned to the White House, his administration has launched a review of Smith and his investigations. The administration also ordered the suspension of security clearances held by lawyers at the firm that represented Smith, a step that signaled the political and legal reckoning was far from over.
That reckoning has extended beyond Smith himself. A former federal prosecutor was indicted for allegedly disguising Smith's sealed report as a cake recipe to send it to a personal email account, one of several cases that have raised questions about conduct within the special counsel's orbit.
Jordan's referral letter framed the issue in terms of congressional authority: "This information calls into question the completeness and accuracy of statements that Mr. Smith made under oath to the committee regarding his team's access to the content of members' texts." Whether Blanche's DOJ agrees, and acts, will determine whether this remains a political dispute or becomes a criminal one.
Congress asked Smith direct questions under oath. He gave direct answers. Now DOJ records suggest those answers left out the most important part. If a witness can hide the truth behind narrow phrasing and walk away clean, congressional oversight is just theater, and the people who sat for those depositions know the rules apply to everyone else.