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Verizon Blames 'Human Error' For Burying A Jack Smith Subpoena From Congress

Zero Rss
1 week ago
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.

Tyler Durden Sat, 08/01/2026 - 12:50
Tyler Durden

Leftists Now Claim US And Israel Behind The Migrant Invasion Of Spain

Zero Rss
1 week ago
Leftists Now Claim US And Israel Behind The Migrant Invasion Of Spain

A clear pattern is emerging:  When the political left or their favorite pet migrants wreak havoc and commit heinous crimes, the immediate canned response from the activist fold is to blame the "right wing" or blame those devious Israelis.  Why do they do this?  Because it works. 

Progressive politicians and third world invaders always seem to dodge accountability while conservative movements in-fight over the source of the problem. 

There a people on both sides of the aisle that maintain a distaste for Israel, sometimes to the point that they attribute almost godlike abilities to the Israeli government.  They seem to be downright omnipresent; everywhere all at once and always ten steps ahead.  It's positively astounding.  

Strategists within leftist and elitist movements understand very well that many conservatives and independents are suspicious of Israeli influence and they use this built-in paranoia as a weapon to divert attention away from their own machinations.  While there are plenty of valid criticisms to be made against Israel, some claims dive deep into the absurd.

For example, the political left is spreading a new narrative across social media asserting that the migrant invasion of Spain's Ceuta enclave is part of a vast US/Israeli conspiracy to destroy the country.  In other words, they believe that tens-of-thousands of Muslim migrants are taking marching orders from a Jewish-run government. 

Truly, this is an unprecedented level of progress in Islamic/Israeli relations.

Spain's Transportation Minister supported the theory on social media while Gabriel Rufián, a spokesperson from the Spanish Congress, asserted that it was the US and Israel flooding Europe with migrants to "blackmail" the country.  Meanwhile, Hollywood actor Javier Barden took to Instagram to claim that the Israelis and the "far right" in the US were "turning migration into a weapon" to harm Spain and to make Muslim migrants look bad. 

Hollywood actor Javier Bardem shares Instagram post blaming ISRAEL for 50,000 Moroccan migrant men storming into Spanish territory.

“Spain has been Europe’s loudest voice against Israeli and US war crimes in Palestine, Lebanon and Iran.”

The actor reposted an Instagram post… pic.twitter.com/BYiYxYOehM

— Oli London (@OliLondonTV) July 31, 2026

It should be noted that the level of projection here is off the charts, but we'll get to that in a moment.

The "evidence" used to support this theory is based on two incidents:  A speech by Benjamin Netenyahu from April in which he accused Spain of waging a “diplomatic war” against Israel. He concluded with words to the effect:

“I am not prepared to tolerate this hypocrisy and this hostility. I do not intend to allow any country to wage a diplomatic war against us without paying an immediate price.” 

The fact that Morocco is a member of the Abraham Accords is also used to play up the theory that Morocco is taking orders from the Israelis.  However, Netanyahu's statements were in direct reference to ambassador recalls and lawsuits waged by Spain.  The "immediate price" was the removal of Spanish representatives from the Civil-Military Coordination Center which is working to secure a ceasefire in Gaza. 

There is zero evidence that the US or Israel is working with Morocco to organize a Muslim invasion of Spain, though such a feat of cooperation with Islamic migrants would be quite impressive.  

Another piece of evidence used to support the idea of an Israeli engineered migration event is a post on Twitter from 2019 by Netenyahu's son (Yair Netanyahu) in which he specifically cites Ceuta as a place Muslims should invade.  Surely, this is damning evidence...

Dear Arabs and Muslims. Want to free occupied Arab Islamic lands? Here’s a good start! pic.twitter.com/Ci5R0dOXN7

— Yair Netanyahu🇮🇱 (@YairNetanyahu) May 25, 2019

Context matters, however, and correlation is not causation.  This post was made as a rhetorical jab in direct response to a debate with Spanish officials over the West Bank and the accusation that Israel is a "colonial power" that should leave the region.  Yair, in a bid to expose Spain's hypocrisy, pointed out that their definition of "colonialism" also applied to their lands held in Northern Africa, including Ceuta. 

In other words, he was arguing that if it's okay to demand that the Israelis give up lands in the West Bank to Muslims, then it's fair to demand that Spain give up their land holdings in Ceuta to Muslims.  One can disagree with the comparison made in the post, but it's not some genius attack plan laid out seven years in advance to destroy Spain.  

🇪🇸 A woman in Ceuta describes being surrounded and harassed by dozens of Moroccan migrants:

“I’m scared, I’m surrounded and trembling. We need help.”

“It’s catastrophic. Today it’s Ceuta, but tomorrow it’ll be the Canary Islands or Tarifa.”

Follow: @europa pic.twitter.com/D8tusyShgG

— Europa.com (@europa) July 31, 2026

It's important to set aside biases in geopolitics if one is to understand why things happen the way they do.  Understanding the truth requires evidence, not feelings and knee-jerk reactions.  

For anyone looking for the real culprits behind the mass third world invasion of Spain, they need look no further than Spain's own political leaders and their socialist policies.  It was the Spanish government that passed two separate amnesty measures that would give citizenship over half-a-million illegal migrants starting in 2026.  When you reward criminality en masse, more and more criminals are going to show up to abuse you.

Third world migrants will now pour into Spain under the assumption that the far-left government will simply pass another amnesty in the near future.

Another problem is a Spanish Supreme Court ruling from June which restricted "hot returns" (forced and immediate deportations) of migrants who arrive by sea.  If you're wondering why so many thousands of migrants were swimming to Ceuta instead of simply crossing the border, this is why.  Spanish courts created a loophole which migrants falsely assumed they could exploit by swimming to Spanish territory. 

To drive the point home, Spanish Primer Minister Pedro Sánchez condemned the migration event while at the same time calling for "coexistence" with the invaders.  He enthusiastically supported more open immigration standards only months ago.

    

The reason why Spanish leftists are taking opposition to the Ceuta incident is because it garnered far too much international attention and exposed the greater multiculturalist left as destructive.  Head of the European Union, Ursula von der Leyen, was more concerned about how the event "looked" in the media than the dangers that naturally come with third world immigration.  

Again, the political left happily encourages open borders, they just don't want to take responsibility for what happens after the foreign invaders start pillaging and raping.  Hence, the blame game with the US and Israel.  By extension, no one forced these migrants to act the way they did in Ceuta.  No one made them attack locals, loot stores and homes, or burn down buildings.  They did all that on their own. 

Maybe it's time for socialists and third worlders to start taking the blame for a change.  No more excuses.  No more scapegoats.  

Tyler Durden Sat, 08/01/2026 - 12:15
Tyler Durden

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