policy has since changed<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\nSenate Democrats, and a former FBI special agent who testified Tuesday, insisted that the subpoenas were lawful.<\/p>\n
FBI Director Kash Patel at an event in Memphis, Tennessee, on Monday, March 23, 2026. AFP via Getty Images<\/p>\n
\u201cPatel made himself a fact witness in that investigation. He went on podcasts bragging about how he planned to post classified information online at Donald Trump\u2019s direction, and how he\u2019d personally witnessed Donald Trump declassify records,\u201d Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) said.<\/p>\n
The subpoenas to Patel\u2019s phone carrier, Verizon, covered all calls between Jan. 1, 2021, and Nov. 23, 2022, the date the request was made. Another request sought phone records from Oct. 1, 2020, to Feb. 22, 2023, the records show.<\/p>\n
The so-called toll analysis, which law enforcement officials have stressed is a routine method for gathering information, included records of calls and text messages sent and received from other numbers as well as the duration\u00a0of verbal conversations\u00a0\u2014 but no content of those calls or messages.<\/p>\n
Sen. Ted Cruz at a committee hearing on Tuesday, March 24, 2026. Getty Images<\/p>\n
As part of the inquiry, information about Patel\u2019s credit and bank accounts used for phone payments were requested, along with his residential and email addresses.<\/p>\n
In a February hearing, Verizon general counsel Chris Miller denied that the carrier had violated lawmakers\u2019 constitutional rights by acquiescing to the subpoena without notifying them.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were compelled to provide this information under the law. And we complied. No matter who is the subject of a subpoena, Verizon cannot ignore a valid legal demand or a court order,\u201d Miller told senators on another Judiciary subcommittee.<\/p>\n
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Then-DC US Magistrate Judge James Mazzone signed off on the November 2023 subpoena via a non-disclosure order appended to the request by Smith\u2019s team.<\/p>\n
The order claimed that the individual whose records being subpoenaed was potentially a flight risk or could tamper with evidence, destroy it, badger other potential witnesses or put the special counsel\u2019s probe in jeopardy.<\/p>\n
New emails released by Grassley also showed that Smith wanted toll records from nearly a dozen additional lawmakers \u2014 including then-Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-NY), who now serves as Trump\u2019s Environmental Protection Agency administrator.<\/p>\n
Grassley dubbed the requests a \u201cwish list\u201d that raises \u201cadditional questions about Smith\u2019s conduct, need for member data and candor to the court and the public.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Iowa Republican also addressed Democrats who have criticized his characterization of Smith\u2019s investigation as a \u201cfishing expedition.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Democrats have criticized us for not bringing Jack Smith before us at the beginning, and you\u2019ve heard that again today,\u201d he said. \u201cIf we followed the Democrats\u2019 premature and ill-advised strategy, we wouldn\u2019t have had a great deal of information we now have that shows Jack Smith misled Congress and the public, if not outright lied.\u201d<\/p>\n
Reps for Verizon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON \u2014 Special counsel Jack Smith subpoenaed hundreds of pages of future FBI Director Kash Patel\u2019s phone records,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":542992,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,12,3319,48296,3,111,21,19,22,20,25,194,24],"class_list":["post-542991","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-donald-trump","tag-joe-biden","tag-kash-patel","tag-news","tag-politics","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-us-news","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/542991","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=542991"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/542991\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/542992"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=542991"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=542991"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=542991"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}