FBI Director Kash Patel has fired the agents involved in spying on nine Republican senators during Special Counsel Jack Smith’s Arctic Frost probe of the mostly peaceful protests at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.
And snooping didn’t just involve the senators’ official business. FBI agents also tracked personal conversations and activities.
Patel acted today, following the revelation by the Senate Judiciary Committee and outrage from GOP committee chief Chuck Grassley of Iowa and other senators.
Spy Operation
“The FBI targeted eight Republican senators’ personal cell phones for ‘tolling data’ as part of its Arctic Frost investigation,” the committee announced yesterday. “One Republican member of the House of Representatives was also impacted.”
The bureau “sought and obtained” three days worth of material — January 4 through January 7, 2021 — from the senators’ personal phones.
The document revealing the spy operation was found in a “prohibited access file.” Those types of files were in “a file system the FBI uses to limit access to certain documents by making some files inaccessible to most FBI agents,” the committee reported.
The victims of the rogue spy operation were, again, all Republicans:
- Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina;
- Senator Bill Hagerty of Tennessee;
- Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri;
- Senator Dan Sullivan of Alaska;
- Senator Tommy Tuberville of Alabama;
- Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin;
- Senator Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming;
- Senator Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee; and
- Representative Mike Kelly of Pennsylvania
The targets of the possibly illegal spy operation were none too happy about it.
“We were surveilled simply for being Republicans,” Johnson wrote on X:
This does not surprise me, but it should shock every American. What the Biden Administration has done is an outrageous abuse of power — it is blatant political persecution. Those responsible must be held fully accountable.
“This was the weaponization of one of our nation’s top intelligence agencies, and those responsible must be held to account,” Blackburn wrote.
“It shows you how out of control, and rotten to the core, and politicized the FBI had become,” she fumed at a news conference:
And how they had absolutely no problem at all whatsoever with political weaponization.
Other Groups Targeted
Raged Hawley on X:
Biden’s FBI spied on my phone calls AND tracked my location
But they didn’t stop there. They also targeted parents, pro-lifers & 92 conservative organizations like Charlie Kirk’s TPUSA
We need a thorough investigation — and there needs to be prosecutions
Of the larger targeting of conservatives, Hawley referred to what Grassley disclosed last month. The Bureau put those groups and individuals “under Arctic Frost’s investigative scope.”
President Trump replied with customary brio and nailed Smith as a “real sleazebag” who “got caught with his hand in the cookie jar.”
Unclear is what partisan, anti-Republican agents might have told top Biden officials about GOP political strategy the senators might have discussed. Worse, they might have divulged private information about their families for sport.
Recall that two other rogue agents, Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, considered Trump “loathsome” and vowed to stop him from becoming president. That pair of jokers was involved in pushing the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign’s Russia Collusion Hoax.
Another rogue Bureau operative, Kevin Clinesmith, who toiled in the General Counsel’s office, doctored an email to help justify a surveillance warrant against Trump campaign advisor Carter Page.
You’re Fired
Thus did Patel deliver the pink slips without, of course, fingering the culprits.
“They tracked the communications of GOP Senators,” Patel wrote on X:
They weaponized law enforcement against the American people. That era is over.
We fired those who acted unethically, dismantled the corrupt CR-15 squad, and launched an investigation.
Transparency and accountability aren’t slogans, they’re promises kept.
Replied deputy bureau chief Dan Bongino: “We promised you transparency and accountability. We will continue to deliver on those promises. You deserve better.”
Patel told Fox News that he and his deputies were flushing years of “rot” out of the Bureau.
“We are cleaning up a diseased temple three decades in the making — identifying the rot, removing those who weaponized law enforcement for political purposes and those who do not meet the standards of this mission while restoring integrity to the FBI,” he said:
I promised reform, and I intend to deliver it.
The CR-15 squad, the Washington, D.C., field office’s public corruption squad, was involved with Smith’s probe of Trump, Fox reported.
Patel did not say how many agents he cashiered. Nor again, did he identify them.
