Jack Smith seized the bank records of 4,782 Americans during his prosecution of President Trump. Forty-two of them were Iowans. Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley would like to know why — and Democrats would like him to stop asking.
That's the state of oversight in Washington in October 2026.
In a four-page letter to ranking member Sen. Dick Durbin on Thursday, Grassley laid out the case that his Democratic colleagues spent the September 29 hearing with Smith "falling over themselves" to defend the "unlawful and unconstitutional actions" of the Biden-era special counsel rather than doing their jobs. The letter was a response to Durbin's demand that Republican senators apologize to Smith after Sen. Eric Schmitt of Missouri made a false claim during the hearing — that Smith had attended an Atlanta Hawks game to conspire with prosecutors. The game was actually an Iowa Hawkeye women's basketball game against the University of Maryland, played in Maryland.
Grassley's position on the apology was clear: Smith "should apologize for taking the bank records of 42 Iowans and 4,782 Americans."
Since January 2025, Grassley has released nearly 2,200 pages of records related to what the committee calls "Arctic Frost" — the internal designation for Smith's prosecution. Those records form the backbone of the Judiciary Committee's oversight into how Smith conducted his investigation, what authorities he invoked, and whose privacy he invaded along the way.
"These investigative efforts should've been bipartisan, but your side failed to engage," Grassley wrote to Durbin. He pointed out that Democrats had "every chance to assist" in the committee's constitutional duty to conduct oversight.
They chose to build a shrine instead.
Durbin's spokesperson, Emily Hampsten, accused Grassley of "spinning conspiracy theories" and claimed Republicans "continue to violate Senate Rules." Grassley's response to the rules complaint was direct: "You see, your side can't argue about Rules when your side doesn't play by them." He pointed to the 2018 Brett Kavanaugh confirmation battle and the 2025 fight over judicial nominee Emil Bove as examples of Democrats treating procedural norms as suggestions when it suited them.
Smith's prosecutions of President Trump ended without a conviction. The cases collapsed. The special counsel resigned. The legal theories he advanced were rejected. That's the record. And Democrats are now spending hearing time defending the man behind that record rather than examining how 4,782 Americans had their financial records swept up in a politically motivated investigation.
Grassley transmitted his letter less than 24 hours after Durbin's demand. Four pages. Twenty-two hundred pages of supporting documents already public. A senator who's been doing oversight longer than most of his colleagues have been alive, asking the straightforward question that Democrats keep dodging.
Forty-two Iowans had their bank records pulled by a special counsel investigating a political opponent of the president who appointed him. The senator from Iowa noticed. The party that talks about protecting civil liberties didn't.