Jack Smith Spying On Trump Donors Was Ploy To Chill Speech– thefederalist.com

An Iowan donated $10 to President Donald Trump months before the 2020 election. As a result, then-Special Counsel Jack Smith obtained his home address, bank information, and other personal information and handed it over to the Biden administration’s FBI and DOJ, Sen. Chuck Grassley said in a post on X. The donor was one of nearly 5,000 Americans who had personal checks and information snatched up by Jack Smith’s team, according to Grassley.

The Iowan from Osage targeted for his minute political donation is a symptom of a “runaway Democrat gov[ernmen]t,” as Grassley put it.

But it seems anytime Democrats get power, they run away with it. And it’s not just that this Iowan who made the $10 donation may now think twice before making a political donation; it’s that others will also think twice before giving. It has, as Katie Pavlich pointed out on X, a chilling effect on speech and recalls the IRS’s targeting of the Tea Party, New Jersey’s demands for donor records from pro-life pregnancy, and Arizona’s current attempt to doxx political donors. In each case, the message was clear: Supporting the wrong political cause may cost you in more ways than one.

Grassley, who is Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman, released whistleblower disclosures Tuesday that claim that Smith and his team “acquired at least 4,782 checks from Americans who made mainly small-dollar donations to President Trump between September 2019 to August 2023.” The checks, which Smith reportedly obtained via a subpoena, included bank account and routing numbers, signatures, and home addresses.