The House Judiciary Committee has requested interviews with four DOJ officials tied to subpoenas for phone toll records around Jan. 6, 2021, ahead of former special counsel Jack Smith’s private testimony. Emails show Molly Gaston sought "narrowly-tailored" grand-jury subpoenas covering Jan. 4–7, 2021, citing outreach by Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani to some lawmakers. Senate Republicans previously disclosed that the FBI obtained toll records for nine GOP senators and one representative in 2023; those records reflect metadata only. Smith will testify privately about his prosecutions; House Democrats are pressing for release of the sealed second part of his final report.
House Judiciary Expands Probe — Demands DOJ Interviews Over Jan. 6 Phone-Record Subpoenas Ahead Of Jack Smith Testimony
Special Counsel Jack Smith arrives to deliver remarks on a recently unsealed indictment including four felony counts against Donald Trump on August 1, 2023. - Drew Angerer/Getty Images/File
The House Judiciary Committee has broadened its inquiry into the Justice Department's handling of records connected to the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack by requesting interviews with four current and former DOJ officials who were involved in seeking phone toll records for members of Congress. The committee made the interview requests a day before Republicans are scheduled to question former special counsel Jack Smith.
Who Was Asked To Testify
The committee sent requests to Raymond Hulser, Kenneth Polite, Timothy Duree and Molly Gaston for a December 30 meeting. House Judiciary Chair Rep. Jim Jordan said in the letters, obtained by CNN, that the officials "possess information vital to our constitutional oversight responsibilities." CNN has contacted representatives for the four officials for comment.
What The DOJ Emails Show
DOJ emails shared with Senate Judiciary Chair Chuck Grassley show that on May 17, 2023, Molly Gaston wrote to a small group seeking consultation on "narrowly-tailored subpoenas" for toll records belonging to Members of Congress. Gaston said the proposed subpoenas would cover Jan. 4–7, 2021, and described an investigative inference that then-President Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani had contacted certain members to delay certification of the electoral vote.
"I'm writing to consult with PIN on some narrowly-tailored subpoenas that we plan to issue for toll records belonging to Members of Congress," Gaston wrote. She added that the subpoenas were intended to probe outreach that "in some cases" occurred on the night of Jan. 6, in the hour before Congress reconvened.
Hulser appears on the same email chain and responded at points, including writing, "cleared. Thanks for doing this." The correspondence indicates internal DOJ discussion about using narrowly targeted grand-jury subpoenas to seek call metadata from phone carriers.
What Republicans Have Said
In October, Senate Republican leaders announced that the FBI used court orders in 2023 to obtain toll records for nine Republican senators and one House member as part of Smith's Jan. 6 investigation. The lawmakers named in GOP disclosures included Sens. Lindsey Graham, Bill Hagerty, Josh Hawley, Dan Sullivan, Tommy Tuberville, Ron Johnson, Cynthia Lummis and Marsha Blackburn, and Rep. Mike Kelly.
It remains unclear precisely what investigators sought to determine by collecting those records, and there is no public indication the listed lawmakers were formal targets of the investigation. The records obtained via a grand jury reflect call metadata (numbers called, time and duration) rather than the content of calls. Republican sources have been the principal public disseminators of information about the subpoenas and related court orders.
Jack Smith's Testimony And Related Developments
Rep. Jordan, who is leading the committee's inquiry, disclosed in November that his own phone records over a two-year span were collected as part of Smith's probe. Smith is scheduled to testify privately on Capitol Hill about his prosecutions of Donald Trump related to alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election and alleged mishandling of classified documents. Smith dismissed both cases in November 2024 after Trump returned to office, but he has said that dropping the charges does not amount to exoneration.
The deposition was negotiated over months and is occurring in private; Smith had pushed to testify publicly to address, in his words, "the many mischaracterizations" surrounding his investigations. Meanwhile, House Democrats are urging the Justice Department to release the sealed second part of Smith's final report on the classified-documents matter.
Committee staff and the DOJ have not publicly released additional details about the planned interviews or the scope of the subpoenas. The House Judiciary Committee's requests mark an escalation in a broader partisan dispute over whether federal law-enforcement actions in recent years were appropriately limited or were improperly directed at political opponents.
