Republican Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley criticized his Democratic colleagues during a Tuesday hearing for seeming unperturbed about former special counsel Jack Smith allegedly monitoring the communications of multiple Republican senators.
Smith allegedly monitored the phone calls and personal messages of Hawley and other Republican senators, including Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Tommy Tuberville of Alabama and Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee during his probe of President Donald Trump’s efforts to contest the outcome of the 2020 presidential election, Fox News reported on Monday. Hawley said at the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing that Democrats failed to “express any concern whatsoever” regarding the reporting, which he argued reflected Democratic weaponization.
WATCH:
“I’ve been listening closely in this hearing and I’ve heard over and over from my Democrat colleagues concerns about targeting political enemies. And they’ve accused you of all manner of things and the current president,” Hawley told Attorney General Pam Bondi. “I also heard them say, and I wrote it down because I wanted to be sure I heard it correctly. I’ve heard them say that [former President] Joe Biden never targeted his political enemies. Joe Biden never directed his attorney general to target his political opponents.”
“Huh. That’s interesting. Because I could have sworn that yesterday we learned that the FBI tapped my phone … Gee, it sure looks like targeting political opponents to me. And yet I haven’t heard a word from that side of the dais about any concern whatsoever,” he added. “We’ve got nothing but concerns today, but no concern at all for a Justice Department that is tapping the phones of sitting United States senators because who knows why? They don’t like them. They’re members of the opposition party. They’re Republicans. They’re conservatives.”
The monitoring was conducted as part of the Arctic Frost probe and allegedly involved calls about plans to contest the certification of 2020 electoral votes, Fox News reported.
“It is a disgrace that I have to stand on Capitol Hill and reveal this — that the FBI was once weaponized to track the private communications of U.S. lawmakers for political purposes,” FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino told Fox News Digital. “That era is over.”
Bongino informed affected senators after an oversight request by Republican Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa, Fox News reported.
“This document shows the Biden FBI spied on eight of my Republican Senate colleagues during its Arctic Frost investigation into ‘election conspiracy.’ Arctic Frost later became Jack Smith’s elector case against Trump,” Grassley wrote on X.
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