Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) sued former special counsel Jack Smith, claiming the investigation he led carried a codename chosen to mock President Donald Trump’s complexion.
The lawsuit, filed Wednesday in federal court in Tennessee by the New Civil Liberties Alliance, targets Smith personally and asks for $1 in damages.
It came one day after Smith testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee at a hearing that Politico reported produced Republican insults rather than new revelations.
“The investigation into President Donald Trump, codenamed ‘Arctic Frost,’ which is a type of orange and was chosen to mock Trump’s complexion, served as the vehicle for Defendant Smith to exercise his unauthorized powers …,” the complaint states.
The complaint cites no source for that claim and does not say who picked the name.
By its own account, the FBI opened Arctic Frost before former Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Smith as special counsel in November 2022.
Elsewhere, the filing backs its claims with footnotes to depositions, internal emails and Senate press releases. It marks another allegation as made “on information and belief,” a legal phrase signaling that the lawyers lack firsthand knowledge.
The lawsuit’s central grievance is a subpoena Smith’s team sent Verizon in May 2023 for Blackburn’s phone logs from the days around the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack, according to the filing.
Prosecutors never told the judge the records belonged to a senator, the filing alleges. She was also never informed of the records request.
That, Blackburn argues, denied her a chance to ask a court to block the subpoena under the Constitution’s Speech or Debate Clause, which shields lawmakers’ legislative work from the executive branch.
“[I]nherent in getting [a nondisclosure order] is that at various times, people who might have arguments about why to quash a subpoena won’t be able to make those arguments,” Smith told the House Judiciary Committee in a December 2025 deposition, according to the complaint.
“[G]iven my understanding of the low likelihood that any of the Members listed below would be charged, the litigation risk should be minimal here,” an official in the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section wrote in a May 2023 email signing off on the subpoenas, the lawsuit says.
Smith has defended the subpoenas as necessary to collect evidence that Trump called members of Congress to try to delay certification of the 2020 election, the Guardian reported.
The complaint’s case against Smith personally rests on the claim that his appointment was unconstitutional because the Senate never confirmed him.
Without a lawful appointment, the filing argues, he was “acting as a mere private citizen” when his team sought her records.
That theory allows the lawsuit to rely on an 1871 civil rights law that bars conspiracies, including those among private citizens, to injure people for supporting a presidential candidate, the complaint says.
The complaint also links the subpoena to Blackburn’s politics, noting it came “just over a month after” she endorsed Trump in April 2023. It reproduces her endorsement post on X, which shows her embracing him on stage.
Despite describing alleged “egregious violations of personal liberty and constitutional rights,” Blackburn seeks only $1 from Smith and asks the court to order the Justice Department to return her phone records.
Tuesday’s session was Smith’s third time testifying under oath on Capitol Hill, Politico reported, after two years of Republican promises to expose him.
Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-MO), displaying text messages on a poster, accused Smith of secretly traveling to Atlanta for a Feb. 3, 2024, Hawks game while then-Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who had also charged Trump, faced questions about her conduct, the outlet reported.
“I don’t think you know that we have this stuff,” Schmitt said. “So I’ll give you a second to process it so you don’t perjure yourself.”
Smith eventually said the texts referred to the Iowa Hawkeyes and their star, Caitlin Clark, not the Atlanta Hawks, according to Politico.
“It was because Caitlin Clark was coming to Maryland to play, and so we went to the game,” Smith said.
Schmitt also called Smith a “dirtbag,” according to the report. Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), who fact-checked Schmitt in real time, said his reliance on false information warranted an apology.
“You don’t call someone a dirtbag when you haven’t done your own research, and you don’t have your facts straight,” Klobuchar said after the hearing.
“At this point, I think we kind of know what we know,” Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) told Politico after the hearing, saying he believed Congress’s investigation of Smith had run its course.
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