Verizon Blames 'Human Error' For Burying A Jack Smith Subpoena From Congress
Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and fifteen colleagues sent a letter to Verizon on Thursday demanding the telecom giant explain how a 2023 grand jury subpoena tied to Jack Smith's "Arctic Frost" investigation vanished from its own paperwork for more than two years - only to resurface after the company chalked the omission up to "human error."
The letter, addressed to Verizon CEO Dan Schulman, is the latest turn in Grassley's monthslong excavation of Arctic Frost - the Biden-era FBI/DOJ probe-turned-Trump-prosecution that has already produced a House criminal referral for Smith himself, revelations that his team accessed the actual text messages of 44 lawmakers, and now a fight over what one of the country's largest phone companies knew and sat on.
What Subpoena?
Back in October 2023, Grassley asked Verizon to search its files for every DOJ or federal law enforcement request touching Senate devices between January 2016 and October 2023, part of his long-running Crossfire Hurricane oversight. Verizon wrote back that it generally keeps legal process on file for four years and had no records predating October 2019.
What it didn't mention: a May 25, 2023 grand jury subpoena issued by Smith's Arctic Frost team for senators' phone toll records, including two numbers belonging to the Senate Sergeant-at-Arms.
Congress didn't learn the subpoena existed until 2025, when Verizon told Grassley's office the 2023 omission came down to "human error." Grassley isn't satisfied with that. His new letter wants to know whether Verizon actually found the subpoena during its 2023 search and stayed quiet, or genuinely missed a live federal legal demand sitting in its own compliance files for two years.
Two of the numbers swept up in that May 2023 subpoena weren't just any senators' lines - they belonged to the Senate Sergeant-at-Arms. Under a contract Verizon signed with the Senate in May 2022, that's supposed to trigger automatic notice to the SAA any time a Senate device or line gets subpoenaed. Grassley's letter effectively asks how a contractually mandated notification simply never happened.
There's also a significant timing gap to explain. The gag orders that typically accompany these subpoenas run about a year. If a standard gag applied here, it would have lifted by mid-2024 - well over a year before Verizon finally volunteered the "human error" explanation in 2025. Once free to speak, nothing stopped Verizon from coming forward. It didn't, until Grassley's office came asking.
What Grassley wants - and by when
The letter, co-signed by Investigations Subcommittee Chairman Ron Johnson (R-WI) and fourteen other senators, demands Verizon:
- Disclose the exact dates Schulman, Hans Vestberg, Craig Silliman, and Vandana Venkatesh were first told about the May 2023 subpoena
- Turn over internal records from May 2023 through October 2025 discussing whether Verizon believed it had a duty to notify Congress or the SAA
- Explain, in more than two words, what "human error" actually means
Verizon has until August 13 to respond. (Schulman only took over as CEO in October 2025, meaning he wasn't at the helm for either the original subpoena or Verizon's flawed 2023 response - which is exactly why senators want to know precisely when he was personally briefed.)
Twelve of the sixteen senators who signed the letter - Grassley included - had their own phone toll records or text messages swept up by Smith's investigators. For most of the people demanding answers here, this isn't abstract oversight.
Other Carriers In The Crosshairs
Verizon isn't the only carrier under scrutiny. Grassley and Johnson's joint oversight has identified more than 400 Republican individuals and organizations swept into the broader Arctic Frost dragnet - including, per Grassley's disclosures, Turning Point USA, founded by the late Charlie Kirk. Separately, the two chairmen have tallied 84 Arctic Frost-related subpoenas sent specifically to Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile, ten of which sought toll records for 20 sitting or former GOP members of Congress.
Notably, Verizon complied with Smith's subpoenas while AT&T pushed back - a contrast Senate Judiciary Republicans have highlighted approvingly. The subpoenas were accompanied by gag orders signed by Judge James Boasberg, an Obama appointee who has repeatedly clashed with the Trump administration on unrelated matters. The House Judiciary Committee, under Chairman Jim Jordan, has opened its own parallel probe into the telecoms.
Smith, for his part, has called the entire controversy overblown, maintaining his office's collection was lawful and noting that special counsel Robert Hur similarly obtained President Biden's toll records, and that DOJ under Trump's first term seized phone records belonging to Reps. Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell.
Last month we reported on DOJ records showing Smith's team bypassed the department's own privilege-screening "filter team" and directly accessed text messages between 44 members of Congress - from both parties - and Trump White House officials including Mark Meadows and Kash Patel, in apparent tension with Smith's own sworn testimony that his office sought "just toll records." Weeks later, House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan escalated matters further, referring Smith to the Justice Department for possible criminal prosecution over the same records dispute.
Verizon's August 13 deadline will determine whether this becomes another entry on Grassley's growing pile of unanswered questions, or the start of the same reckoning AT&T and T-Mobile executives already faced before the Judiciary Subcommittee earlier this year. Either way, sixteen senators - a dozen of whom found their own names in Jack Smith's files - aren't inclined to let it drop.