By Jana Winter
WASHINGTON, March 24 (Reuters) – A special counsel investigation that began in 2022 of Kash Patel, who is now the FBI director but was then a private citizen, included demands for more than two years of phone records, text messages and financial information, according to two grand jury subpoenas and nondisclosure orders viewed by Reuters.
Special Counsel Jack Smith’s team issued subpoenas to Verizon Communications for Patel’s communications at the time when they were investigating whether President Donald Trump had interfered with the 2020 election and had hidden classified documents at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort. Reuters could not determine the nature of Smith’s investigation of Patel and what allegations of wrongdoing, if any, were being probed at the time.
The new records regarding Patel were authorized for release by Republican Senators Charles Grassley, Ron Johnson and Ted Cruz ahead of a subcommittee hearing Tuesday on the Smith investigation, which was code-named Arctic Frost.
Smith was appointed special counsel in 2022. Reuters previously reported that Smith’s team had subpoenaed the phone records of Patel and White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles while they were private citizens but involved in Trump’s campaign to reclaim the presidency in 2024.
The new documents viewed by Reuters show that the probe into Patel was more extensive than previously reported. In addition to phone, online user names, and text messages, Smith and his team sought mailing and email addresses, billing and IP addresses and bank account information, according to the documents.
The requests included records of calls and texts sent and received but not the contents of those phone calls or messages themselves, the documents show. They also included records of session times and the duration of calls, as well as subscriber information associated with Patel’s accounts.
One subpoena requested records from January 1, 2021 to November 23, 2023. The other was for the time period of October 1, 2020, through February 22, 2023.
Reuters was unable to determine whether the investigation into Wiles was more extensive than previously reported.
FBI spokesman Ben Williamson told Reuters the records show improper actions by Smith and the FBI at the time.
“The FBI under prior leadership was weaponized in ways the American people are only now beginning to fully grasp,” Williamson said.
A spokesman for Smith did not respond to a request for comment. He previously told Congress that his investigators were concerned about possible obstruction of justice. He told lawmakers in January that his office “followed Justice Department policies, observed legal requirements and took actions based on the facts and the law.”
Democrats in Congress have defended Smith from previous GOP criticisms, saying he had acted appropriately in seeking phone records and other evidence they said was necessary to investigate allegations of wrongdoing by Trump and his associates. It is not unusual for investigators to seek phone and other records, even of prominent people, while seeking facts about a case.
Former FBI director Christopher Wray, who ran the bureau during Smith’s investigation, did not respond to a request for comment.
U.S. Magistrate Judge James Mazzone issued a nondisclosure order on November 30, 2022 in the probe of Patel which stated that the court had “reasonable grounds to believe that disclosure will result in flight from prosecution, destruction of or tampering with evidence, intimidation of potential witnesses and serious jeopardy to the investigation.”
Reuters could not determine whether Verizon complied with Smith’s requests, or how that information was used. Verizon did not respond to a request for comment.
“My oversight of Arctic Frost has proven the more you dig, the more you find,” said Grassley, the Republican chairman of the subcommittee probing Smith’s investigation.
Patel publicly said in 2022 that Trump had declassified the documents taken to Mar-a-Lago, a claim prosecutors disputed and Trump’s lawyers did not make in court. Patel was summoned before a grand jury hearing evidence in the case that year after he was given limited immunity from criminal charges.
(Reporting by Jana Winter; Editing by Michael Learmonth, Craig Timberg and Lincoln Feast.)
