It's no secret that the Department of Justice and the FBI were weaponized against President Donald Trump and his allies under the previous administration.

Damning new revelations about the FBI's Arctic Frost investigation indicate, however, that the campaign waged by former Attorney General Merrick Garland's lawfare regime to hound and potentially lock up individuals supportive of Trump and/or skeptical of the results of the 2020 election was far worse than previously imagined.

'[Biden] thought basically half of America were domestic terrorists.'

"Arctic Frost was not just an attack on Democracy; it was a coordinated and sustained invasion of it," Mike Howell, president of the watchdog group Oversight Project, said in a statement.

"Everyone responsible should be held accountable and banished from public life," continued Howell. "The long continuum of a decade-long campaign by the Federal government against Trump can get complicated. What you should know is that they were so out of control, and thought they never would get caught, that they named this investigation after an orange to mock Trump."

This week, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and the House Judiciary Committee published thousands of pages of additional documents altogether providing a better sense of the vastness and invasiveness of the Arctic Frost dragnet, which was launched in April 2022.

Grassley published documents earlier this month detailing how the Biden FBI sought private cellphone records from numerous GOP lawmakers during Arctic Frost — an operation greenlit by Garland and former FBI Director Christopher Wray that morphed into at least one case brought against Trump by Garland's special counsel, Jack Smith.

Apparently the covert surveillance of Republican Sens. Ted Cruz (Texas), Marsha Blackburn (Tenn.), and other lawmakers was just the tip of the iceberg.

On Wednesday, Grassley made public 197 subpoenas obtained through whistleblower disclosures showing that Smith and his team demanded testimony, communications, and records related to at least 430 Republican individuals and entities.

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Grassley stated, "Arctic Frost was the vehicle by which partisan FBI agents and DOJ prosecutors could improperly investigate the entire Republican political apparatus. Contrary to what Smith has said publicly, this was clearly a fishing expedition."

Among the recipients of the subpoenas were:

• financial institutions and platforms such as Avidia Bank, Bank of America, Capital One, JP Morgan Chase, TD Bank, BILL, and Wells Fargo;
• various campaign, consulting and legal outfits including the Save America Joint Fundraising Committee, the Republican National Committee, Parscale Strategy, and the Trump Make America Great Again Committee; and
• 34 individuals including former Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale, Trump 2020 communications director Tim Murtaugh, GOP campaign operative Thomas Datwyler, former acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller, and deputy national security adviser Robert Gabriel.

Grassley indicated that Smith and his team squeezed some of these individuals, banks, and businesses for their records concerning and communications with:

• media companies such as CBS, Fox News, OAN, Newsmax, and Sinclair;
• "any member, employee or agent of the Legislative Branch of the U.S. Government";
• White House advisers including Stephen Miller, Dan Scavino, and Lara Trump;
• conservative groups including Turning Point USA and the Republican Attorneys General Association;
• data concerning Republican donors and fundraising efforts; and
• financial data relating to conservative individuals and entities.

'I think they're being sabotaged within.'

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.) said Wednesday that "what is revealed in those 1,700 pages of documents, in those 197 subpoenas, is nothing short of a Biden administration enemies list. I'm old enough to understand how toxic a term that was under Richard Nixon. This is far worse — far worse, orders of magnitude worse."

"People need to understand how politicized the Biden administration turned all these agencies," continued Johnson. "[Biden] thought basically half of America were domestic terrorists."

Johnson emphasized that the records Grassley made public were not obtained from the FBI but rather from a whistleblower and suggested that Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel are being hindered by bad actors within their respective agencies.

"We need to do everything we can to assist Director Patel and AG Bondi in making sure they have the staff to take control over these agencies. They're the heads of them — I don't think they have the control," said Johnson. "I think they're being sabotaged within."

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The House Judiciary Committee released over 230 pages of additional documents on Tuesday providing insights into the nature and origins of Arctic Frost.

Among the heavily redacted documents turned over by Patel is a April 13, 2022, memo issued by the Washington, D.C., field office that discusses the flimsy predicate for the Arctic Frost investigation — a probe allegedly named after a type of orange to mock Trump.

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The memo requesting the investigation alleged that "subjects corruptly conspired to obstruct the United States Congress' certification of the 2020 Presidential election results by submitting fraudulent certificates of electors' votes to the United States Government" and cited supposed evidence that individuals linked to the 2020 Trump campaign allegedly attempted to convince former Vice President Mike Pence to support alternate electors in 2021.

At the time of Arctic Frost's conception, the lawfare regime appeared particularly interested in hounding former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and legal scholar John Eastman.

However, the documents suggest that hundreds of other conservatives may have also been targeted for investigation, including Trump trade adviser Peter Navarro; Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.); Steve Bannon; former Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows; former co-chair of the Republican National Committee Youth Advisory Council CJ Pearson; and the chief operating officer of Turning Point USA. Tyler Bowyer served as COO of TPUSA until recently.

Other documents in the trove provided by Patel indicate that the scope of the Arctic Frost "fishing expedition" grew rapidly such that just months into the probe and days after the agent who requested the opening of the investigation celebrated the indictment of Peter Navarro, investigators requested additional funds and bodies.

"The Arctic Frost team is requesting approximately $16,600 from [the Public Corruption Unit] for travel in June to conduct more than 40 interviews, serve subpoenas, and execute several cellular device search warrants," said an email dated May 25, 2022. "We would be requesting assistance from 11 [Washington Field Office] individuals to travel to various locations, in addition to utilizing individuals from the various field offices."

By January 2023, the Arctic Frost operation — which was formally assigned to Jack Smith in November 2022 — had targeted individuals in at least seven states, interviewed over 150 individuals, served over 400 subpoenas, and secured scores of search warrants, including for lawmakers' phones and Trump's Twitter account.

Missouri Rep. Bob Onder (R) noted that the revelations about the Arctic Frost probe have revealed "an alarming weaponization of government power at the highest levels."

Editor's note: Mike Howell is a contributor at Blaze News.

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