Floor Remarks by Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa
Senate President Pro Tempore
“Arctic Frost Oversight”
Wednesday, October 8, 2025
On Monday of this week, I invited eight of my colleagues to be briefed on an issue that we just found out about from [Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)] Deputy Director Dan Bongino.
What we learned is very disturbing and outrageous political conduct by the Biden FBI.
As most of you know, this year, Senator Johnson and I made records public relating to our investigation of Arctic Frost.
Arctic Frost was the FBI investigation that became Jack Smith’s elector case against then-citizen Trump.
We’ve shown that partisan FBI agents and Department of Judice (DOJ) prosecutors created and advanced that matter.
And they did so in violation of FBI rules.
We’ve shown the FBI expanded the investigation to almost 100 Republican groups and individuals, even including Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA.
And, we’ve learned that Arctic Frost included the targeting of at least eight Republican senators, the same ones that I invited to that briefing.
In 2023, [the] Biden FBI sought and obtained cell phone “tolling data” about my colleagues’ personal phones.
We’ve been told the date range for that data was January 4th through January 7th, 2021.
This is obviously an outrage, obviously an unconstitutional breach, and Attorney General Bondi and Director Patel need to hold accountable those that are involved in that serious breach and wrongdoing.
And I am confident that those two officials will do just that.
Now, based on the evidence to date, Arctic Frost and related weaponization by federal law enforcement under Biden [were] arguably worse than the Nixon Watergate scandal.
I’ve also been informed that Arctic Frost documents, like the one targeting Republicans, have been hidden in a Prohibited Access file.
Now, let me tell you what I think “Prohibited Access file” is.
It might be legitimate for national security. It might be legitimate for intellectual property. It may be legitimate for personal privacy of American citizens.
But it should never be used for what it was used for, to hide things from the public that would embarrass bureaucrats and government officials, and maybe even political officials.
So, as I’ve made public through my oversight, when files are in a Prohibited Access file, they receive what the FBI calls a false negative search result on their database.
So that means that, if you ask for emails or some records of the FBI and they type it in, it doesn’t show up. So then, it doesn’t exist.
Clearly, this impedes responses to congressional oversight and court cases.?It allows for misconduct.
Because of whistleblowers informing me of this serious problem, the FBI is now reviewing these file types.
And only because of that review, the document about targeting eight Republican senators was located.
Lastly, I started [my] Arctic Frost investigation in July 2022.
Now, it has taken years to get records and to advance the investigation.
Sometimes, my oversight work’s done quietly, outside of the public eye.
But, what the public is now seeing, is the importance of congressional oversight [and] the importance of whistleblowers exposing government misconduct.
My whistleblowers deserve great thanks for what they’ve helped to expose.
We were all shocked and outraged by the unjustified fishing expedition Deputy Director Bongino informed us about.
The FBI told us in our briefing that not a single one of my colleagues on that list was under investigation. So, the FBI did its dirty digging without legitimate predication.
We expect Patel and Bongino to shut this abuse down and do it immediately.
And I want my colleagues and Iowans to know that I won’t give up until I’ve followed all the facts and accountability is delivered for the American people.
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