Newly declassified materials reveal that the FBI under the Biden administration monitored the communications of nine Republican members of Congress. As part of a large-scale investigation by the Department of Justice concerning events following the 2020 presidential election, eight senators and one Republican congressman became subjects of surveillance in 2023.
Information about this fact was made public by Senate Republicans during a press conference held on Monday. A discovered internal FBI document, related to a project with the codename Arctic Frost, indicates that the results of the investigation, initiated during the Biden era, formed the basis for the charges brought by Special Counsel Jack Smith against President Trump in the case of alleged election interference. The Arctic Frost project, launched in 2022, was aimed at establishing the circumstances that led to the January 6, 2021, unrest at the US Capitol building. Telephone records obtained by the FBI through covert operations cover the period from January 4 to January 7, 2021, and are most likely related to the vote by Republican lawmakers on the certification of the 2020 presidential election results. Senator Charles E. Grassley, a Republican from Iowa, characterized the disclosed information about the surveillance as surpassing the Watergate scandal in its scale.
An FBI document from September 27, 2023, containing partially redacted information, states that an unnamed special agent of the FBI analyzed records of telephone calls and data associated with Senators Lindsey Graham (South Carolina), Bill Hagerty (Tennessee), Josh Hawley (Missouri), Dan Sullivan (Alaska), Tommy Tuberville (Alabama), Ron Johnson (Wisconsin), Cynthia Lummis (Wyoming), and Marsha Blackburn (Tennessee).