Jack Smith's prosecutors secretly met with Judge Beryl Howell and got her blessing on their legal strategy before she ruled in their favor on ruling after ruling against Trump.
The documents Grassley just dropped prove it.
And now the whole rotten arrangement is sitting in the middle of a Senate hearing room with Ted Cruz calling it what it is.
What the Documents Actually Show
The briefing notes – prepared for Attorney General Merrick Garland on January 13, 2023, just days after he appointed Smith – describe a prosecutor's team that wasn't just working the courts.
They were working with the courts.
Smith's team told Garland that Howell was already aware an omnibus executive privilege motion was coming and "loves the idea."
Not "will consider it."
Not "may be open to it."
She loved the idea.
The notes went further – Smith's team had already briefed Howell on which Trump officials they planned to sweep into the motion: Mark Meadows, Ken Cuccinelli, and nearly a dozen others whose executive privilege protections she would then rule against.
https://twitter.com/julie_kelly2/status/2036457191129980969?s=20
The documents also show Smith's team had a meeting scheduled with Judge James Boasberg for March 18, 2023 – the day after he was set to succeed Howell as chief judge of the D.C. District Court.
Biden's prosecutors were getting to the new chief judge before the seat was even warm.
The Legal Problem Nobody in the Press Will Say Out Loud
Ex parte communication – a prosecutor discussing strategy with a judge outside the presence of the opposing party – has been prohibited under the ABA's Code of Judicial Conduct since 1924.
It doesn't matter that Howell and Boasberg were chief judges with grand jury oversight responsibilities.
Those rules exist precisely because of situations like this one: a prosecution team pre-briefing a judge on its strategy, naming its targets, and getting back enthusiasm instead of silence.
A California judge was publicly censured in 2024 for texting a prosecutor during a murder trial.
Howell didn't just text during a trial.
She got a full strategic briefing – complete with target lists – and delivered exactly what Smith needed in the rulings that followed.
https://twitter.com/IngrahamAngle/status/2036744176121831792?s=20
The pattern isn't subtle.
Cruz Names the Three-Branch Operation Nobody Wanted to See
Ted Cruz called it correctly at Tuesday's Senate hearing: this wasn't one bad actor or one rogue prosecutor.
Arctic Frost – Smith's codename for the 2020 election investigation – aligned Democrats across all three branches of government.
The Biden Justice Department, through Garland and Smith, weaponized federal investigative power against political opponents.
Obama-appointed judges approved the warrants, issued secrecy orders, and gave Smith's team the deference it needed to keep building the case.
Democrat members of the legislative branch looked the other way.
Cruz put the scale in terms that cut through the noise: Watergate was a break-in at one office.
Arctic Frost reached into approximately 100,000 private communications, the phone records of more than a dozen sitting U.S. senators, and the personal data of over 400 Republican individuals and organizations.
https://twitter.com/SenRonJohnson/status/2036463833418506680?s=20
Kash Patel – now Trump's FBI Director – had two years of his private phone records secretly subpoenaed while he was a private citizen.
Susie Wiles – now Trump's Chief of Staff – had a privileged call with her attorney recorded without her knowledge.
Smith's team went after the people who would eventually be running the agencies investigating them.
Howell Cleared Her Docket Before Anyone Could Stop Her
Trump's legal teams never had a chance in Howell's courtroom – and now we know why.
Howell rushed through a stack of Trump-related executive privilege rulings before her tenure as chief judge expired in March 2023.
Attorney Bill Shipley flagged that pattern as troubling even before this document was released.
The briefing notes confirm she was motivated to do exactly that – and that Smith's team knew it and planned around it.
She wasn't impartial.
https://twitter.com/JoshHall2024/status/2033588550579392807?s=20
She was a participant.
Senate Republicans aren't done.
Grassley has authorized additional Arctic Frost hearings, and the document releases are still coming.
Every filing, every briefing note, every "the judge loved our idea" memo that surfaces makes the case stronger that what happened in Washington's federal courts from 2022 to 2024 wasn't justice.
It was a coordinated operation against a political opponent – run by Biden's DOJ, blessed by Obama's judges, and ignored by Democrats in Congress until the voters ended it.
Sources:
- Ashley Oliver, "Conservatives Accuse Jack Smith of Improper Ties with Judges in Trump Cases After New Document Dump," Fox News, March 24, 2026.
- Ted Cruz, "Sen. Cruz Delivers Opening Remarks on Arctic Frost," U.S. Senate Press Release, March 24, 2026.
- Chuck Grassley, "Grassley Releases New Arctic Frost Records, Raising Additional Questions About Jack Smith's Conduct and Candor," U.S. Senate Press Release, March 24, 2026.
- Gabe Kaminsky, "Newly Released Records Show Expanded Data Sweep Plans of Jack Smith's 'Arctic Frost' Probe," The Daily Signal, March 24, 2026.
- Madison Dibble, "Meet the Judge Who Was Trump's Biggest Legal Nemesis in His First Year," The Daily Caller, January 17, 2026.
