Picture this. You’re a sitting member of Congress. You’re going about your business — making calls, sending texts, doing the job voters sent you to do. And somewhere in a windowless DOJ office, Jack Smith’s team is vacuuming up your phone records like a Roomba with a warrant and zero shame.

That’s not a hypothetical. That’s what happened. At least 84 subpoenas went out during the Arctic Frost investigation. At least 20 current or former Republican members of Congress had their records scooped up. And the phone companies? They handed it all over like it was a lunch order.

“We Didn’t Know”

That was the defense. Verizon’s general counsel Chris Miller sat in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday and essentially said his company’s subpoena analysts don’t bother checking who they’re handing data over on. They get a legal demand, they comply, they move on. No questions. No curiosity. No spine.

Verizon complied. T-Mobile complied. The only company that even raised an eyebrow was AT&T — and only because Ted Cruz’s campaign account was obvious enough that somebody in their legal department thought, “Hey, maybe we should ask about this.”

They asked Smith’s team if the subpoena might violate constitutional protections. Smith’s team never responded. Silence. The DOJ equivalent of leaving someone on read.

Kevin McCarthy: One of 2,000

AT&T’s general counsel David McAtee dropped a detail that’s almost funny if it weren’t so disturbing. When Smith subpoenaed Kevin McCarthy’s records, AT&T didn’t flag it because — and this is real — they have over 2,000 Kevin McCarthys in their system. The former Speaker of the House was just another name in the pile.

When they want to bill you, they can find you instantly. When the government comes knocking for your data? Suddenly you’re a needle in a haystack. Senator Josh Hawley put it perfectly — these companies couldn’t hand over records fast enough, but protecting your privacy? Nowhere to be found.

The Contract They Forgot

Here’s where it gets worse. Verizon had a contract with the Senate. An actual agreement that required them to notify Congress when someone requested records tied to official lines. They didn’t do it. They just turned everything over.

Lindsey Graham looked Verizon’s lawyer dead in the eye and said, “You failed me. You failed to honor the contract protecting all of us.” And for once, Graham wasn’t being dramatic. He was being accurate.

Smith’s Admission

Jack Smith already testified before the House Judiciary Committee in January. Under questioning, he admitted that Kevin McCarthy wasn’t a flight risk — which is supposedly one of the justifications for keeping subpoenas secret. So why the secrecy? Smith’s answer was a masterclass in bureaucratic tap-dancing: the nondisclosure orders “aren’t necessarily associated with the subscriber to the phone, they’re the risks of the investigation.”

Translation: We didn’t hide it because of McCarthy. We hid it because we didn’t want anyone to know what we were doing.

Over 400 Republican organizations and individuals were targeted. Four hundred. That’s not an investigation. That’s a dragnet. That’s a political fishing expedition with a federal budget and zero accountability.

What Comes Next

Senator Marsha Blackburn called it “the worst weaponization of government in American history.” Tuesday’s hearing was just the first. The Senate Judiciary Committee has a whole series planned for this year, and Arctic Frost is about to get the full autopsy treatment.

Democrats, predictably, tried to redirect. Dick Durbin complained that the telecom executives shouldn’t be the ones testifying — Smith should. Which is funny, because Smith already did testify, and his answers made things worse.

Here’s the bottom line. The federal government secretly subpoenaed the phone records of elected officials, and the companies Americans trust with their most personal data rolled over without a whimper. If they’ll do it to a sitting congressman, what do you think they’ll do with yours?

Sleep tight.