Elected Democratic officials are hyperventilating over President Donald Trump‘s alleged “long crusade to weaponize the federal government against his perceived political enemies,” but new documents obtained by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA) reveal that it was former President Joe Biden’s Justice Department that spied on elected members of the opposition party, not Trump’s, and then used internal FBI procedures to cover it up.

New documents given to Grassley by federal law enforcement whistleblowers reveal that at the direction of then-special counsel Jack Smith, FBI agents tracked the personal communications of eight Republican senators, including Sens. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Bill Hagerty (R-TN), Josh Hawley (R-MO), Ron Johnson (R-WI), Cynthia Lummis (R-WY), Dan Sullivan (R-AK), and Tommy Tuberville (R-AL).

Specifically, the FBI obtained what is known as “trolling data” for each of the senators named above, which includes all numbers called, the location of all callers when the call was made, when the call was made, and how long the call lasted. The data do not include the content of the call. The dates targeted for data collection on the senators are around Jan. 6, 2021, including Jan. 4 through Jan. 7. Five of the eight senators targeted for spying co-signed a joint statement on Jan. 2 calling for a delay of the Jan.6 certification of presidential electors.

“What I’ve uncovered today is disturbing and outrageous political conduct by the Biden FBI,” Grassley said at a press conference on Monday. “Based on the evidence to date, Arctic Frost and related weaponization by federal law enforcement under Biden was arguably worse than Watergate.”

Earlier documents obtained by Grassley last month revealed that in addition to spying on opposition senators, the FBI investigated 92 Republican-linked people and Republican groups, including Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA, for alleged wrongdoing in connection with Jan. 6. 

As these pages editorialized at the time of Smith’s unprecedented indictment of Trump for conspiracy to “overturn the legitimate results of the 2020 presidential election,” Smith’s indictment of Trump was “nothing more than a political indictment designed to silence dissent from what the powers that be decide is truth.”

We noted at the time that Trump’s conduct was no different from that of the senators who co-signed the statement calling for the delay of the election’s certification. Now, it turns out that Smith and the FBI were in fact spying on many of those very senators. This is weaponization of law enforcement at its worst.

The FBI’s spying on Republican lawmakers was apparently covered up by the agency’s “Prohibited Access” system, which gives unknown FBI officials the power to render computerized records invisible to other agents. FBI Director Kash Patel, apparently, did not know of the spying program until after whistleblowers notified Grassley’s committee. Without the whistleblowers coming forward, the incident would still be secret.

Senators from both parties and voters deserve to know if the FBI followed its internal procedures before spying on the opposition party. If the procedure was violated, the public deserves to know who did so, and they should be held accountable.

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Unfortunately, our nation’s law enforcement establishment does not have a good track record of holding itself accountable. When FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith was found guilty of falsifying information on a warrant giving the FBI power to spy on Trump’s 2016 campaign, he was given probation and community service. Such a slap on the wrist only encourages more abuse of power for political purposes.

The public cannot allow this latest scandal to be brushed aside as just another bureaucratic misstep. The surveillance of opposition lawmakers strikes at the heart of representative democracy and erodes the public’s faith in impartial justice. If the Biden Justice Department and FBI can secretly monitor sitting U.S. senators without consequence, then no citizen is safe from the partisan abuse of power. Congress must act decisively to uncover the full scope of this misconduct and ensure accountability at the highest levels. Anything less would signal that weaponization of government is now a permanent feature of American politics.

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