Jack Smith Collecting Obscene Amount of Citizens’ Data Is Met by Media Apathy

 
Brad Slager
Opinion
former Special Counsel Jack Smith

J. Scott Applewhite/AP Photo

My, the Jack Smith Chronicles are beginning to stretch out like Tolkien’s legendarium. The Joe Biden-appointed prosecutor, who was at one time the darling of the media, has been interrogated by Congress over his Arctic Frost investigation into Donald Trump, and the more that gets revealed the more we see a prosecutor who was sorely in need of guardrails.

Chuck Grassley, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, has been regularly coming out with more details of how pervasive and intrusive Smith’s investigation had become. It is clear the man was on more than a witch hunt; he was clear-cutting a forest in his desire to dig up any evidence.

Recently, it was shown how he had cast his net so wide it began to include political donors. Smith was tracking political donations stretching back to 2019, collecting the checks of over 4,700 donors.

Now comes the latest reveal by Grassley and his committee, and the intrusion becomes staggering. In a sign of Jack Smith looking well beyond the scope of his investigation, he collected the personal data of over 600,000 Republican voters and citizens in the country.

“The new findings further corroborate that Smith and his partisan team aimed to map out the entire Republican Party apparatus,” Grassley said.

There really is no other way to describe this, as Smith’s data collection well exceeded any investigatory mandate he held by his Special Counsel’s Office. The full memo outlines that the names collected involved more than campaign personnel. Jack Smith’s SCO targeted volunteers, donors, and even “potential voters,” stretching back as far as 2005.

In a sign of just how pervasive and broad ranging Smith’s obsessive hunt became, the SCO even went so far as to investigate the Trump Campaign shop orders database. This allowed him to gather up the personal information of anyone who may have simply purchased red MAGA hats. Yes…seriously.

In total, more than 639,000 people have their personal details swept up in the criminal investigation, many based on nothing more than buying branded merchandise. Names, dates of birth, home addresses, credit card information, employment details, and other personal data were collected and shared with various agencies connected to the SCO probe.

And where is the media outrage over this level of governmental overstepping of power? For an industry that just loves carping about threats to our democracy and holding those in power accountable, One might think a federal persecutor gathering up the personal data on well over half a million citizens might spark curiosity. Instead, the chorus of crickets coming from the news divisions can drown out a Kacey Musgraves concert.

At least a contributing factor to this silence has to be the collective media body cheering on Jack Smith when he was initially appointed by Joe Biden (in non-partisan, unbiased fashion, of course). Let’s recall, these people were fawning over the fact that Jack Smith was caught on camera ordering a sandwich at a Subway location.

There is little surprise today that the man the press was trumpeting has been exposed as a rogue investigator. His four indictments against Trump have all fallen apart, and today he is shown to have been wildly uncontrolled as he sought out any details on Republicans. And the level of his intrusions may be shown to be even more offensive.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.

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