DOJ Records Allege Special Counsel's Team Skipped Safeguards — White House Texts Seen Early

Seite 1 / 2

News (1 / 1) 16.07.2026 23:02 / Tim

A fresh batch of Justice Department records has Capitol Hill whispering: internal files suggest Special Counsel Jack Smith's investigators may have accessed White House text messages before the office's filter review was complete. Read on to discover the full story!

Explosive document dump

Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley and Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations Chairman Ron Johnson released a DOJ letter and internal records detailing the Special Counsel's "Project Coconut" and "Project Cranberry" probes — names used for the January 6 and Mar-a-Lago classified documents investigations. The department says filter teams were created to block prosecutors and FBI agents from seeing privileged material until an independent review finished.

How access allegedly happened

The records recount that on June 11, 2023, permission settings in the document-review software allowed premature access. Months later, on August 21, 2023, the National Archives produced spreadsheets of White House texts. According to the DOJ letter, Senior Assistant Special Counsel Thomas Windom downloaded those files and shared them, and investigators then circulated individual messages internally. The documents say the team "apparently bypassed the Filter Team."