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\n

Senate Judiciary Chair Chuck Grassley is firing back at Democrats on his committee who have criticized the GOP\u2019s treatment of former special counsel Jack Smith \u2014 saying it was Democrats who acted in an embarrassing manner at a recent hearing with Smith by \u201cfalling over themselves\u201d to defend the \u201cunlawful and unconstitutional actions\u201d of the Biden-era prosecutor.<\/p>\n

The Iowa Republican\u2019s letter<\/a> to top Judiciary Democrat Dick Durbin of Illinois, obtained exclusively by Blue Light News, also accuses Democrats of withholding records from Republicans in the past and refusing to engage in legitimate oversight of Smith\u2019s activities.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou see, your side can\u2019t argue about Rules when your side doesn\u2019t play by them,\u201d Grassley wrote to Durbin.<\/p>\n

Grassley\u2019s letter was transmitted less than 24 hours after Durbin demanded<\/a> Grassley apologize on behalf of his fellow committee Republicans for antagonizing Smith, who brought criminal charges against President Donald Trump for seeking to overturn the 2020 election and mishandling classified documents.<\/p>\n

Durbin specifically called out Missouri GOP Sen. Eric Schmitt, who falsely accused Smith<\/a> of attending an NBA game in Atlanta with the subtext that it was used to conspire with local prosecutors on criminal charges against Trump. Durbin said the minority should have had access to those records before the hearing.<\/p>\n

He also scolded Grassley and his team for not sharing those underlying records that Schmitt, as well as fellow Missouri GOP Sen. Josh Hawley, referenced during the hearing relating to a call that took place between Smith and the Public Integrity Section of the Justice Department about a decision to bring an updated indictment against Trump in the 2020 election subversion case.<\/p>\n

In his letter responding to Durbin, Grassley took the opportunity to call out committee Democrats for instances where he believes they ran afoul of Senate rules by withholding or leaking information about nominees \u2014 such as during the confirmation battle for Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh in 2018 and the much more recent fight to seat Emil Bove as a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in 2025.<\/p>\n

And he criticized Democrats for not joining him in a litany of investigative pursuits \u2014 from Smith to alleged corruption among former President Joe Biden\u2019s family members \u2014 and insisting that the heart of his work is based in respect for whistleblowers who come forward to expose injustice.<\/p>\n

\u201cBy now it should go without saying that my Democratic colleagues had every chance to assist in my constitutional duty to conduct oversight of these matters,\u201d he wrote. \u201cThey all failed to lend a hand or request to join my oversight.\u201d<\/p>\n

Grassley also told Durbin that his staff is currently \u201cworking to obtain an agreement to provide you access\u201d to records referenced by Schmitt and Hawley during last month\u2019s hearing with Smith, \u201cand spending considerable time in doing so.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn fact,\u201d Grassley continued, \u201cmy staff have already reached out to yours to schedule a meeting next week to review records as well as the ones you\u2019ve recently written me about.\u201d<\/p>\n

He added, however, that \u201csome records will not be shared with you until a later date,\u201d as he intends to continue his investigation into Smith.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe investigation is active, the hearing is not the end of my work,\u201d said Grassley, who believes Smith weaponized the judicial system to damage Trump and, among other things, illegally obtained lawmaker phone records in the process.<\/p>\n

In a post on X<\/a> Thursday, Grassley said Smith \u201cshould apologize for taking the bank records of 42 Iowans & 4,782 Americans.\u201d<\/p>\n

Spokespeople for Smith and Durbin did not immediately respond to requests for comment.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Senate Judiciary Chair Chuck Grassley is firing back at Democrats on his committee who have criticized the GOP\u2019s treatment of former special counsel Jack Smith \u2014 saying it was Democrats who acted in an embarrassing manner at a recent hearing with Smith by \u201cfalling over themselves\u201d to defend the \u201cunlawful and unconstitutional actions\u201d of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27458","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-congress"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27458","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27458"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27458\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27458"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27458"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27458"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}