Jack Smith team read messages between Trump officials, dozens of lawmakers of both parties: Ran roughshod over the Constitution

WASHINGTON — More than 40 members of Congress had their text messages viewed by former special counsel Jack Smith’s team amid a probe into President Trump, a move that Republicans say “ran roughshod over the Constitution.”The Department of Justice released records to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) on Tuesday revealing that the special counsel’s office had accessed communications between Trump White House personnel and 44 lawmakers from both parties.Sen.Cory Booker (D-NJ), Rep.

Adam Smith (D-Wash.), the current ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee, and former Rep.Lee Zeldin (R-NY), now the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, were just some of the new names whose messages were seen.Smith’s office had established a so-called “Filter Team” to ensure they weren’t accessing privileged documents when reviewing messages that had been sought by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA).The archives had sought all messages between the lawmakers and White House employees between October 2020 and Jan.

20, 2021.Follow The Post’s live coverage of President Trump and national politics for the latest news and analysisThe filter team was supposed to evaluate evidence obtained as part of “Project Coconut,” which was looking into Trump’s efforts to reverse the 2020 election, and “Project Cranberry,” which concerned Trump’s alleged hoarding of national security documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate.An Aug.21, 2023, internal DOJ email included in the records Grassley received shows that Smith’s team discussed directly obtaining “54 excel files with text messages from White House phones,” which were placed in a shared drive.Assistant Attorney General Patrick Davis told Grassley in the letter that Smith’s team “bypassed the Filter Team and directly accessed these text messages.

The FBI then identified the people whose phone numbers sent or received the texts.” Morning Rep...