Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
The team behind the Arctic Frost investigation subpoenaed years’ worth of records on Kash Patel, who now heads the FBI, according to documents released on March 24.
Former special counsel Jack Smith subpoenaed Verizon for Patel’s phone records from October 2020 through February 2023, the documents, made public by Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee, showed.
Patel was part of the Trump administration from 2019 through January 2021. After the Biden administration took office, Patel began a nonprofit foundation and worked as a consultant, frequently appearing in media to back Trump and his policies.
The subpoenas asked for various details about Patel’s accounts, including financial information and text messages, the records showed. Text and call logs were among the requested details.
Patel disclosed the subpoenas in February, describing them as “outrageous and deeply alarming.”
He said that previous FBI leaders “secretly subpoenaed my own phone records—along with those of now White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles—using flimsy pretexts and burying the entire process in prohibited case files designed to evade all oversight.”
The FBI declined to comment further on Tuesday.
Arctic Frost started in 2022. The effort, which involved Smith and FBI officials, featured subpoenas involving more than a dozen Republican members of Congress and the seizure of a phone used by President Donald Trump, whom prosecutors ultimately charged with interfering with certification of the 2020 presidential election for alleging that voter fraud took place.
The case was dropped when Trump in 2024 won a second term in office.
Smith has defended the investigation, telling lawmakers in January that he properly investigated “attempts to interfere with the lawful transfer of power” and that the subpoenaed records were acquired “to understand the scope of that conspiracy, who they were seeking to coerce, who they were seeking to influence, who was seeking to help them.”
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, first obtained records on Arctic Frost and released them in early 2025.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), chairman of the committee’s Subcommittee on Federal Courts, Oversight, Agency Action, and Federal Rights, said during a hearing on Tuesday that Arctic Frost was “a modern Watergate” that targeted lawmakers and people involved with Trump’s reelection efforts, including Patel and Wiles.
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) said that the subpoenas of Patel made sense, because the FBI director “made himself a fact witness in that investigation” by making comments on podcasts. Whitehouse said that Patel’s grand jury testimony should be made public.