92 Republicans Targeted in FBI ‘Arctic Frost’ Investigation

Congressional investigators collected a stunning 30 million lines of phone data mapping contacts between conservatives and the Trump White House in the name of investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol breach, a massive dragnet that raises civil liberty concerns about the lack of limits on the ability of lawmakers to snoop on Americans' private phone calls.

The mountainous collection of phone records were revealed to the FBI led by Chris Wray in late 2023 by former Rep. Adam Kinzinger, a GOP member on the Democrat-run House Jan. 6 select committee. The cache was offered to the bureau on the eve of the 2024 presidential election as evidence without requiring a warrant, according to an FBI document memorializing the offer that was reviewed by Just the News.

The memo says Kinzinger told the FBI that the phone data had been collected by then-former Rep. Denver Riggleman, an ex-Republican who was a staffer on the Capitol riot committee and who later helped Hunter Biden’s legal team in its efforts to cast doubt on the laptop belonging to Joe Biden’s son.

Congressional powers used to conduct lawfare against Trump

The FBI memo does not reveal whether the bureau ever took Kinzinger up on his offer, but it does reveal the sheer magnitude of a phone surveillance project the Democrats ran by using congressional subpoenas to gather phone records about Americans' contacts with the Trump White House.

Kinzinger told the FBI that the J6 committee “collected and linked a substantial amount of telephone data, and noted the FBI may already possess such data. While former congressman Denver Riggleman worked with the Select Committee he (Riggleman) had a contact and was able to obtain toll information including for White House root or switchboard numbers via congressional subpoena,” the FBI agents wrote in their memo summarizing the offer.

“Kinzinger noted that he (Kinzinger) did not conduct the analysis himself but that Riggleman had identified certain telephone connections between numbers identified as being associated with the White House and certain individuals,” the memo continued.

In a post Wednesday on his substack, Kinzinger confirmed he had the conversation with the FBI in December 2023 alerting agents to the data but said he believed the collection of phone records was old news because the congressional subpoenas were public.

"Congress used lawful subpoenas to obtain phone metadata in 2021. It was routine. It was reported. It was discussed openly," Kinzinger wrote. "In 2023, I had a brief discussion with members of the FBI reminding them of this data if they needed it in their investigation. Regardless, they didn’t seem interested and that was that."

While the Jan. 6 committee's subpoenas records were public, the size and scope of the data was not mentioned in those subpoenas nor was the contact with the FBI. Previously, an investigator for the committee estimated in a book that the data was 18 million lines of data. Kinzinger offered a much larger size of the data in his FBI interview at 30 million lines of data.

GOP Senators, Congressmen and other leaders targeted

It was revealed last week that Special Counsel Jack Smith and the Biden-era FBI collected the private phone records of eight Republican senators and one GOP House member as part of his investigation into the Capitol riot of Jan. 6, 2021.

The FBI’s Arctic Frost investigation also targeted dozens of GOP officials and organizations, according to documents released by Republican Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley in September.

The newly-released memo on Kinzinger and Riggleman was recently uncovered by current FBI Director Kash Patel and has garnered significant attention inside the bureau because of the timing of the contact between the agents and the former lawmaker in December 2023.

By that time, Kinzinger had already left Congress and the committee he worked for had ended its probe a year earlier. But the 2024 presidential election between Donald Trump and Joe Biden was heating up with the first presidential primaries just weeks away from starting.

Agents noted that Kinzinger seemed eager to help the FBI at that moment and that Congress had not figured out what to do with the massive collection of data.

“Kinzinger indicated that Riggleman may have never received direction on what to do with the toll data, which included approximately 30 million lines of data,” the FBI memo stated. “Kinzinger believed it was in an electronic format but did not know if it was the original subpoena returns."

The agent who interviewed him said “that she would contact Kinzinger if any additional information was requested,” the memo stated.

Kinzinger did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent to him through the speaker’s bureau contact listed on his personal website. Riggleman did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent to him through his LinkedIn page.

January 6 Committee and FBI’s Arctic Frost conduct sweeping investigation into Trump World

An unearthed FBI record from 2023 indicated that investigators at the bureau had “conducted preliminary toll analysis on limited toll records” tied to phone calls related to GOP Sens. Johnson, Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.; Bill Hagerty, R-Tenn.; Josh Hawley, R-Mo.; Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska; Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala.; Cynthia Lummis, R-Wyo.; Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn.; and GOP Rep. Mike Kelly, R-Pa.

“Deranged Jack Smith got caught with his hand in the cookie jar. A real sleazebag!!!” Trump said on Truth Social last week in response to the news.

Patel: "Baseless monitoring of members of Congress" under Biden

“This document shows the Biden FBI spied on 8 of my Republican Senate colleagues during its Arctic Frost investigation into ‘election conspiracy’ Arctic Frost later became Jack Smith's elector case against Trump,” Grassley said in a Monday afternoon tweet as he shared the FBI record that had been provided to him by Patel. “BIDEN FBI WEAPONIZATION = WORSE THAN WATERGATE.”

The once-secret FBI record, dated late September 2023, has the title of "CAST Assistance" — a likely reference to the bureau’s cellular analysis survey team. The case ID for the record is "ARCTIC FROST — Election Law Matters — SENSITIVE INVESTIGATIVE MATTER — CAST."

“As a result of our latest disclosure about the baseless monitoring of members of Congress by the prior leadership team of the FBI, we have already taken the following actions: We terminated employees, we abolished the weaponized CR-15 squad, and we initiated an ongoing investigation with more accountability measures ahead,” Patel tweeted on Tuesday.

Grassley's office said last week that "the FBI in 2023 sought and obtained data about the senators’ phone use" from January 4, 2021 through January 7, 2021 (the day after the Capitol riot). The senator's office said that "that data shows when and to whom a call is made, as well as the duration and general location data of the call" although not the contents of the calls themselves.

The Senate chairman's office revealed that the FBI document "was found in a Prohibited Access file in response to Grassley’s oversight requests."

The revelation that the FBI snooped on the phone records of Republican members of Congress during its January 6 investigation is bringing greater scrutiny on Wray, during whose tenure the bureau's effort occurred, and to Smith, who was leading the Biden Justice Department’s investigation against Trump.

These revelations are also putting the spotlight on former key FBI official Timothy Thibault, whom Republicans argue showed extreme anti-Trump bias, demonstrated a willingness to target Trump early in his first term, attempted to slow walk or block the FBI’s investigation into Hunter Biden, and in April 2022 helped spark the investigation dubbed "Arctic Frost" — later carried on by Smith — which led to criminal charges against Trump related to the Capitol riot.

FBI's "targets" listed in document

Trump and other Republicans repeatedly alleged that Smith and the FBI were themselves engaging in election influence by trying to bring charges, hold trials, and obtain convictions against Trump ahead of the 2024 election.

An FBI document from the Arctic Frost inquiry dated January 2023 showed that the investigation’s “targets” included Donald J. Trump for President Inc., Turning Point USA, the Republican Attorneys General Association, the America First Policy Institute, the Save America PAC, the Conservative Partnership Institute, and more.

“In total, 92 Republican targets, including Republican groups and Republican-linked individuals, were placed under the investigative scope of Arctic Frost. On that political list was one of Charlie Kirk’s groups, Turning Point USA,” Grassley said last month.

“In other words," Grassley added, "Arctic Frost wasn’t just a case to politically investigate Trump. It was the vehicle by which partisan FBI agents and DOJ prosecutors could achieve their partisan ends and improperly investigate the entire Republican political apparatus.”

Kinzinger’s late 2023 approach to the FBI about the data which Riggleman had collected occurred a few months after the date of the FBI’s congressional snooping document.