Sen. Rick Scott praised Chuck Grassley’s Senate hearing pressing Jack Smith over secret lawmaker phone-record grabs, calling it a step forward as NDO reform gains steam.

Former Biden-era Special Counsel Jack Smith faced Senate Republicans at a long-anticipated Judiciary Committee hearing over his team’s access to private communications from members of Congress. Florida Sen. Rick Scott, one of the lawmakers whose records were pulled, told the Washington Reporter afterward that the session advanced real accountability.

“Today’s hearing was another important step forward, and I’m glad Chairman Grassley is working to get accountability,” Scott said. “America deserves it.”

Scott has long argued that Democrats turned federal power against political opponents. He placed Smith’s work inside that pattern and said the former prosecutor should face consequences for how the probes were run.

House report details secret Arctic Frost subpoenas and gag orders

Ahead of the hearing, the House Judiciary Committee under Chairman Jim Jordan released findings on the Biden-Harris DOJ investigation of the 2020 election, codenamed Arctic Frost, and the follow-on Special Counsel case. The committee reported that investigators unconstitutionally subpoenaed phone records for over a dozen Republican members of Congress and secured gag orders so those members would not learn their records had been taken.

Those subpoenas and gag orders were obtained ex parte, only the prosecutors appeared before the grand jury and judge, leaving the lawmakers no chance to challenge the moves. The House report further stated that Smith’s team barely weighed the constitutional protections around the material and, to the extent it did, still concluded the subpoenas might be unconstitutional. The team issued them anyway and at one point violated DOJ’s own procedures to review the content of private text messages between 44 members of Congress and executive-branch officials.

Republicans have treated the secret record grabs as a core abuse of power. Parallel House releases of Jack Smith transcripts have already laid out how those subpoenas targeted GOP lawmakers’ phone data without notice.

Scott describes years of targeting and demands real consequences

Scott told reporters he was among those swept up. He framed the episode as part of a longer campaign.

“For years, Democrats weaponized our federal government against the American people, including me. The Clinton administration came after my company when I opposed HillaryCare. I was surveilled after January 6th; my tax returns were stolen and leaked during the Biden administration. Jack Smith is just another tool in Democrats’ playbook to intimidate people like me, my colleagues in Congress, President Trump, and, worst of all, the American people.”

He said Smith must be held accountable because if Democrats and the deep state can do this to a Fortune 50 CEO, a U.S. senator, and the president, they can and will weaponize government against ordinary Americans.

That demand for follow-through fits a broader Republican push for consequences when federal power is misused, including cases where a federal judge referred a district attorney to DOJ over alleged perjury and obstruction.

Smith defends the probes while Republicans press the records issue

At the hearing itself, Smith stood by his charging decisions. RealClearPolitics carried his opening statement in which he said the investigation developed proof beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump engaged in serious crimes, including illegal retention of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago and obstruction to conceal them. Smith said highly sensitive national-security information was held in a bathroom and ballroom at the property and declared, “I stand by my decisions as Special Counsel, including my decision to bring charges against President Trump.”

Republicans focused on the lawmaker records. Reuters reported that Smith’s team obtained phone call logs from several Republican senators around the January 6 Capitol riot and reviewed texts from 44 U.S. lawmakers. Sen. Chuck Grassley said the office also secured records on Republican donors and journalists’ communications with government officials. Sen. Ted Cruz asked why senators were never notified of the subpoenas for their phone records; Smith answered that the secrecy was meant to prevent evidence destruction. Cruz also asked, “Is it a crime to be a Republican?”

Grassley was blunt about the character of the operation. The Iowa Republican, who chairs the committee, said Smith’s work “wasn’t a normal prosecution” and called it “a partisan weapon that broke the rules.”

New York Post coverage of the same hearing showed Republicans accusing Smith of illegally targeting Trump and running a corrupt partisan operation that undermined the rule of law. The paper noted that Smith’s team obtained text messages from the National Archives involving contacts with members of Congress, that he faced perjury accusations over prior testimony on search warrants for lawmakers’ messages, and that the Mar-a-Lago case was later dismissed after a judge ruled his appointment illegal. Grassley also noted the team left a classified facility open during the probe and repeated that the operation “broke the rules, lied to the court, and engaged in bad faith.”

Smith rejected the partisanship charge and told senators he would not be silenced. Breitbart reported his statement: “I will not be silenced by the continued threats of prosecution from the president or others.” The same account detailed how prosecutors secretly obtained toll records, call date, length, and time, of Republican lawmakers in contact with Trump around January 6. Grassley said the election case “ultimately wasn’t just about Trump. It was about partisan agents and prosecutors mapping out the Republican apparatus.” House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan has already referred Smith to DOJ for potential prosecution over alleged misleading testimony about the records.

Oversight pressure of this kind is not limited to one committee. House Republicans have also highlighted other Biden-era enforcement actions, including the case of a pro-life father who secured a federal settlement after a contested DOJ prosecution and predawn FBI raid.

House already passed NDO Fairness Act; public support is clear

Momentum is not limited to hearings. Ahead of Smith’s appearance, the House of Representatives voted unanimously to pass the NDO Fairness Act. The bill is designed to stop future special counsels from quietly accessing lawmaker records the way Arctic Frost did.

Public opinion tracks with that vote. A GrayHouse survey conducted for a nonprofit tied to the Senate Republican Conference found 49 percent of voters support the Senate passing the NDO Fairness Act, while just 22 percent oppose it, a clear plurality in favor of the reform.

Scott and Grassley now want the Senate to finish the job. The Florida senator’s post-hearing comments cast the Grassley session as one more brick in the wall of accountability rather than a one-day spectacle. Similar Republican scrutiny of federal targeting has appeared in other recent fights, including when oversight chair James Comer pressed DOJ investigations tied to members of Congress.

The core facts are no longer in dispute inside the Republican conference: phone records of more than a dozen GOP members were subpoenaed in secret, gag orders blocked notice, private texts involving 44 members were reviewed, and DOJ procedures were breached along the way. Smith continues to defend the underlying Trump cases as solid. Republicans continue to treat the side investigation of Congress itself as the brighter red line.

Taxpayers and lawful officeholders should not need a special act of Congress to keep their phone records and private texts out of a prosecutor’s fishing expedition, yet here we are, and the Senate should finish what the House already started.