New names emerge in Jack Smith's wide-ranging bid for GOP lawmakers’ phone records, unearthed emails show

FIRST ON FOX: Internal Department of Justice emails obtained by Fox News Digital show prosecutors working for special counsel Jack Smith sought phone records in 2023 for a wide-ranging group of Republican lawmakers, including newly revealed names such as a current Trump administration official.

The email exchanges between prosecutors beginning Jan. 9, 2023, show Smith’s team mapped out a web of House and Senate lawmakers who interacted with key people in Smith's probe into the 2020 election, including figures like President Donald Trump's former chief of staff Mark Meadows and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who led many of Trump's unsuccessful legal challenges to the election results.

New names within the emails obtained by Fox News Digital include Rep. Brian Babin, R-Texas, Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., and then-Rep. Lee Zeldin, R-N.Y., who now leads the Environmental Protection Agency.

"I’d like to seek [the Public Integrity Section’s] concurrence to get phone tolls for several MOCs who had contact with pertinent parties in our investigation," wrote former DOJ lawyer Timothy Duree. "I’ll keep the timeframe tight—probably October 1, 2020, to January 31, 2021."

The emails were part of Smith's investigation and prosecution of Trump over the 2020 election, which initially began as an FBI probe called Arctic Frost. Ongoing House and Senate Judiciary Committee investigations have revealed through various public disclosures that the Biden DOJ targeted a large web of Republican people and entities with subpoenas during the probe, but the lawmakers' records requests have become a top source of scrutiny.

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Duree produced 16 names and said he wanted to discuss whether to "subpoena these all at once." The list included Babin and Biggs and now former Reps. Mo Brooks, Matt Gaetz, Paul Gosar, Louie Gohmert, Zeldin and Jody Hice. The list also included Gohmert’s chief of staff Connie Hair, and seven senators whose names were previously revealed through public disclosures, such as Sens. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn.

Public disclosures previously showed that some of the 16 members' phone records were indeed subpoenaed, but the new emails with new names, including Babin, Biggs and Zeldin, do not make clear if Smith ultimately executed subpoenas for their phone records. The phone records, also known as toll records, would have included dates, times and phone numbers but not the content of calls and messages.

Raymond Hulser, a prosecutor on Smith’s team, responded at one point in the January 2023 email chain by acknowledging the scale of the subpoena request.

"And please there’s no hurry this morning, [Duree]" Hulser wrote. "It just occurred to me that before we tell Main we are going to fire off subpoenas for so many members tolls I should make sure Jack’s aware."

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Smith, who has since testified to the House Judiciary Committee about his work, has stood by the subpoenas, saying they were "entirely proper" and followed DOJ protocol. The Republicans who were targeted have, however, condemned the subpoenas as egregious violations of the Constitution's speech or debate clause, which gives Congress members an added layer of immunity from investigations.

In addition to members of Congress, public disclosures by the congressional committees revealed that Smith targeted hundreds of Republican-affiliated people and entities as he pursued charges against Trump. Smith eventually brought four criminal charges against the then-Republican presidential candidate alleging he illegally attempted to overturn the 2020 election results. But he dropped the case after Trump won the 2024 election, citing a DOJ policy against prosecuting sitting presidents.

In another email from the January 2023 email chain, Hulser directed Duree to check the Jan. 6 Committee’s report for members who interacted with Trump and Giuliani on Jan. 6, the day of the U.S. Capitol breach, underscoring how Smith’s prosecutors used the investigative work of the committee to help with their probe. Republicans have widely dismissed the since-disbanded Jan. 6 panel as hyper-partisan as it comprised seven Democrats and two vocally anti-Trump Republicans.

Hulser later said Smith wanted to "narrow" down the list of 16, leading Duree to provide a bolded list of names "we should get in the first round."

No. 1 on the list, for instance, read "Brian Babin (texts with Meadows; calls with Chip Roy, [Scott] Perry, Ratcliffe, and Meadows)." Other names noted on the list followed a similar structure. Roy and Perry were known targets in Smith's probe and previously revealed that they had their records subpoenaed by the special counsel's team.

Fox News Digital reached out to a Smith representative for comment, as well as the current House lawmakers mentioned in the emails and Zeldin's office.