The prosecutors who pursued a 40-count indictment against Donald Trump for mishandling classified documents may have committed their own security lapses with the very same kind of material, according to newly released internal Justice Department messages made public by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley.
Grassley, an Iowa Republican, released the records alongside a formal oversight letter to acting Attorney General Todd Blanche. The messages, produced by the Trump DOJ in response to Grassley's requests, describe at least three categories of apparent security incidents inside former Special Counsel Jack Smith's office: a sensitive compartmented information facility left unsecured overnight or longer, an individual granted access to classified material without confirmed "need to know" authorization, and uncertainty over whether classified materials stored in a DOJ SCIF had been moved without proper accounting.
The irony is difficult to overstate. Smith's entire classified documents case against Trump rested on the allegation that the former president willfully retained highly classified national defense information after leaving office and failed to properly secure government records at his Mar-a-Lago estate. Now internal communications from Smith's own team suggest his office may have failed to meet the same standard it sought to enforce.
One chain of messages, dated April 18, 19, 2024, captures DOJ employees reacting to the discovery that a SCIF accessible to Smith's office had been left unsecured. One unnamed official wrote that "no one opened it yesterday because no one closed it the day before." A second official responded bluntly: "That's a violation and incident so I need to know the details."
Other messages urged personnel to check the SCIF before leaving because of limited staffing available to oversee the secure facility. The communications identified several members of Smith's Special Counsel Office by name, including senior assistant special counsel Molly Gaston, described as a lead prosecutor in both the classified documents case and the federal election interference case against Trump, along with Thomas Windom, Carli Rodriguez-Feo, Julie Edelstein, William O'Neil, and Stephanie Van Buskirk.
Grassley described Van Buskirk as appearing to have served as an assistant to Smith. Messages identified her as the person who opened the SCIF "the day before" the reported security incident. The senator's letter does not accuse Van Buskirk or any other employee of criminal wrongdoing.
But the questions Grassley posed to Blanche leave little doubt about where the senator believes the trail leads. He asked the acting attorney general to determine whether the SCIF housed evidence used in Smith's prosecution of Trump, to identify everyone granted access to classified materials held by the Special Counsel Office, to explain whether any internal investigation occurred, and to provide the names of those responsible for the reported security failures. He also asked whether Trump's defense attorneys or the federal court overseeing the case were ever notified.
Blanche has until July 22 to respond.
The senator did not hold back. In a statement accompanying the release, Grassley said:
"Talk about the pot calling the kettle black. According to these messages, Biden DOJ personnel may have committed the very offense for which Jack Smith was prosecuting President Trump."
He went further, placing the security lapses in the broader context of how different political figures have been treated by the Justice Department when it comes to classified material. As Newsmax reported, Grassley framed the revelations as part of a pattern:
"These records expose yet another double standard of justice. While Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden escaped accountability for mishandling highly classified information, Jack Smith and the Biden DOJ set out to paint President Trump as a felon and ruin him politically."
That framing resonates because the factual record supports it. Smith secured a 40-count indictment against Trump in June 2023. His prosecutors accused the president of obstructing government efforts to recover classified documents. Yet the internal messages now suggest Smith's own team may have struggled with the basics of classified material security, keeping a SCIF locked, verifying need-to-know access, and tracking the movement of sensitive documents.
These revelations arrive as Grassley has continued pressing for accountability over the conduct of Smith's office throughout the Trump prosecution.
A DOJ spokesperson offered a statement that managed to both defend the institution and distance it from Smith's team. The spokesperson said:
"Every official entrusted with sensitive materials must follow strict security protocols without exception, a standard Jack Smith's team apparently failed to meet as they pursued a politically weaponized prosecution of President Trump."
The spokesperson added that the department is reviewing the concerns raised by Grassley and takes the protection of classified information "very seriously." Alleged security lapses, the spokesperson said, are reviewed through established internal procedures to determine whether protocols were followed, whether classified information was compromised, and whether corrective action is warranted.
That language is notable. The current DOJ is not defending Smith's team. It is characterizing the prosecution itself as "politically weaponized", a striking statement from the department that employed Smith.
The broader pattern of misconduct allegations surrounding Smith's office has only grown. Acting AG Blanche previously disclosed that the DOJ found a room full of Jack Smith investigation documents stored in burn bags, raising separate questions about document preservation and potential destruction of evidence.
The classified documents case against Trump was always the Biden DOJ's most aggressive legal gambit. Smith's indictment alleged that Trump willfully retained national defense information and obstructed efforts to get it back. The case carried enormous political stakes, a sitting president's predecessor and likely 2024 opponent facing decades in prison over document handling.
U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon dismissed the case in July 2024, ruling that Smith's appointment as special counsel violated the Constitution's Appointments Clause. That decision removed the legal threat. But the political damage was the point, critics argued, and these newly surfaced messages add a layer of institutional hypocrisy to that argument.
If Smith's team could not keep its own SCIF secured, if personnel accessed classified material without proper authorization, then the moral authority behind the prosecution erodes further. The question is no longer just whether the case was legally sound. It is whether the people bringing the charges held themselves to any standard at all.
Meanwhile, a former DOJ prosecutor has been indicted for stealing sealed Jack Smith documents and disguising them as cake recipes, yet another episode that raises fundamental questions about the integrity of the special counsel operation from top to bottom.
The security lapses inside Smith's office do not exist in a vacuum. They sit alongside a growing body of evidence that the Biden-era Justice Department and FBI pursued Trump and his allies with extraordinary aggression while applying far less scrutiny to their own conduct.
Just The News reported that the FBI's "Arctic Frost" investigation, which eventually fed into Smith's criminal case against Trump, was initiated with the help of FBI official Timothy Thibault, a figure with documented anti-Trump social media activity who showed willingness to investigate Trump as early as March 2017. Grassley called Arctic Frost "a political fishing expedition to get Trump at all costs."
The scope of that investigation extended well beyond Trump himself. Internal DOJ emails obtained by Fox News revealed that Smith's prosecutors systematically sought phone records for at least 16 Republican lawmakers in January 2023, including figures like Reps. Andy Biggs and then-Rep. Lee Zeldin, who now leads the EPA. One prosecutor's email noted he should "make sure Jack's aware" before firing off subpoenas for so many members' toll records.
That surveillance apparatus, targeting elected officials, sweeping up phone data from nearly 100 GOP-connected groups and individuals, was built by the same office that apparently could not keep its own classified facility locked overnight.
Newly released FBI and DOJ documents have also strengthened a Florida grand jury probe examining an alleged anti-Trump conspiracy within federal law enforcement, adding yet another thread to the widening accountability effort.
Grassley's letter stops short of concluding that classified information was actually compromised. That restraint matters. The senator is not making criminal accusations. He is demanding that the Justice Department answer basic oversight questions that should have been answered long ago.
Were the classified materials in the SCIF related to the Trump prosecution? Was anyone disciplined? Did anyone tell the court? Did anyone tell Trump's lawyers? Was there an internal investigation, or did the Biden DOJ simply look the other way?
Those questions now sit with acting AG Blanche. His response, or lack of one, will signal whether this DOJ intends to hold its predecessor accountable or let the matter quietly fade.
The separate matter of John Bolton's expected guilty plea for retaining classified information shows that the legal system can enforce document-handling rules when it chooses to. The question has always been whether enforcement is applied evenly.
Smith's team spent years building a case premised on the idea that mishandling classified material is a grave offense deserving of criminal prosecution. The internal messages now suggest that same team treated its own classified security obligations as an afterthought. If the people enforcing the rules can't follow them, the rules were never really the point.
