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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 Texas Rep. Brian Babin, Arizona Rep. Andy Biggs and then-New York Rep. Lee Zeldin.
“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 DOJ lawyer Timothy Duree. “I’ll keep the timeframe tight—probably October 1, 2020, to January 31, 2021.”
JACK SMITH DEFENDS SUBPOENAING REPUBLICAN SENATORS’ PHONE RECORDS: ‘ENTIRELY PROPER’
Jack Smith, former special counsel, arrives for a closed-door deposition before the House Judiciary Committee in Washington, DC, on Wednesday, Dec. 17, 2025. (Kent Nishimura/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Duree produced 16 names and said he wanted to discuss whether to “subpoena these all at once.” The list included Reps. 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 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.
Raymond Hulser, an adviser on Smith’s team, responded at one point in the January 2023 email chain by acknowledging the scale of his 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.”
DEM REP DEFENDS DOJ OBTAINING GOP SENATOR CALL RECORDS IN 2023: ‘YOU WEREN’T SURVEILLED’
The subpoenas for lawmakers’ records have been a top source of scrutiny as House and Senate Judiciary Committee members continue to investigate Smith’s work. Smith has stood by them, saying they were “entirely proper” and followed DOJ protocol. The Republicans who were targeted have, however, condemned them as egregious violations of the Constitution’s speech or debate clause, which gives Congress members an added layer of immunity from investigations.
US Senator Chuck Grassley announces an FBI whistleblower says the FBI during the Arctic Frost investigation had subpoenaed the records of Republican elected officials in Congress, during a press conference on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, Oct. 6, 2025. (SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images)
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 Trump alleging he illegally attempted to overturn the 2020 election results but 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.”
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No. 1 on the list, for instance, read “Brian Babin (texts with Meadows; calls with Chip Roy, Perry, Ratcliffe, and Meadows).” Other names noted followed a similar structure. Roy and Perry were known targets and 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 the office of Zeldin, who now leads the Environmental Protection Agency.
