Corporate Media Hypocrites Silent On Jack Smith’s Attack On Free Press

In the left’s quest to stop Donald Trump from winning a second presidential term in 2024, the Biden Department of Justice’s hired goon spied on members of Congress and several news outlets. You would think former “Special Counsel” Jack Smith’s myriad abuses in the political witch hunt known as Arctic Frost would be of concern to the same “journalists” screaming that the Fourth Estate is under attack by the man they love to hate. Nope. After Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, released bombshell revelations last week about Arctic Frost’s tactics, the usual suspects in the accomplice media shrugged off the damning documents. Instead, they wrote the same fatuous story pulled from the Democratic Party’s talking points — a gotcha piece on Missouri Sen. Eric Schmitt’s botched gotcha moment during last week’s Judiciary Committee hearing. “Senator’s basketball mix-up derails ‘gotcha’ moment at Jack Smith hearing,” the Washington Post’s headline snickered. “As Jack Smith Testifies, a Senator’s Accusation of Perjury Falls Apart,” The New York Times sneered. The puns, per usual, were pitiful. “GOP senator airballs perjury claim against Jack Smith over apparent Hawks/Hawkeyes mix-up,” NBC News quipped. And Politico went full-on snarky with its headline, “Eric Schmitt pins down Jack Smith — as a Caitlin Clark fan.” No doubt the Missouri Republican got his facts messed up, on timelines and basketball teams. But Schmitt was right on target when he called the partisan prosecutor a “dirtbag.” And right on cue, corporate media carried water for the unctuous attorney, covering for Smith, with the ubiquitous Schmitt story drowning the stunning revelations from Grassley and the Judiciary Committee. No, you can’t hate the misnamed “mainstream media” enough. ‘Deafening’ Silence As The Federalist reported, whistleblower disclosures to Grassley show Smith “swept up communications from over a dozen national media outlets” in his sprawling “election interference” probe into President Donald Trump’s challenges of the rigged 2020 election. Whistleblower disclosures made to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), show that former Special Counsel Jack Smith swept up communications from over a dozen national media outlets as part of the “Arctic Frost” election investigation into President Trump. The records expose Smith and friends grabbing the communications of nearly 50 journalists, including those of Federalist Editor-in-Chief Mollie Hemingway, Grassley said. Investigators scooped up “messages exchanged with government sources.” The news outlets included: › Fox News › CNN › CBS News (including 60 Minutes) › NBC News › CNBC As well as print and digital news outlets: › The Federalist › The Wall Street Journal ›The Washington Post › Bloomberg › The Los Angeles Times › New York Magazine › The Washington Times Wire Services: › Reuters › The Associated Press Radio: ›The Mark Levin Show › National Public Radio The Media Research Center, which tracks and calls out corporate media bias, also saw its communications picked up in Smith’s fishing expedition. CNN, which has camped out on the fainting couch over Trump pulling its White House press pass for beyond-biased coverage of the administration, had plenty to say about the Schmitt glitch but not much at all about popping up in Arctic Frost files. NBC News reporters spent plenty of ink pushing the noble prosecutor narrative, but the corporate media outlet seems incurious as to why its communications showed up in Smith’s records grab. Politico, also booted from the White House press pool before a judge stepped in, loosely reported on the revelations but turned the attack on freedom of the press on its head. “Grassley’s release of these materials is part of a broader effort by the Iowa Republican and other Trump allies to portray Smith as a reckless or overaggressive prosecutor in his pursuit of criminal cases against Trump during the Biden administration, which many GOP lawmakers believe were politically motivated,” the left-wing publication reported. David Bozell, president of the Media Research Center, said the silence from corporate media “has been so deafening you almost have to think they were in on it the whole time.” “All the coverage of the hearing has been on something to embarrass Sen. Schmitt,” Bozell told The Federalist in an interview. “So he fumbled that, but you can’t discount what Smith had in his possession or what he may still have … It doesn’t seem to bother anybody that a liberal, rogue prosecutor has those communications in his possession.” Bozell notes what is irrefutably true: if the shoe were on the other foot, if a Republican special counsel had done the same in a sweeping investigation of Democrats, the story would be leading every evening newscast for weeks. So it should come as no surprise that these same self-righteous reporters insisting they are saving democracy from dying in darkness don’t seem all that interested in Smith and crew issuing nearly 200 subpoenas for records “relating to 430 Republican individuals and organizations, or the collection of nearly 5,000 checks from mainly small-dollar Trump donors,” as Ben Weingarten reported Wednesday in The Federalist. “It is as unsurprising as it is depressing that legacy media outlets have been silent on Smith’s overreach, even though employees of those outlets had their messages pilfered by zealous FBI and DOJ officials, operating as hitmen for one political party in its effort to eliminate the other political party,” Weingarten wrote. “The same is true of the fact that the journalists silent today over this brazen operation were yesterday screaming bloody murder that the Trump administration revoked the privileged White House access of their leftist apparatchik colleagues.” ‘In Desperate Need’ The Democrat media stooges’ sins of omission include a complete lack of interest in covering some other damning documents The Oversight Project has obtained. Smith’s team, according to emails, were in “desperate” need of acquiring spying tools in July 2023 in their race to knock Trump out of the running. “We are in desperate need of this software and want to have it installed as soon as possible. Let us know if there are any problems or questions,” urges an Arctic Frost investigator’s July 12 email to Axon Investigate in search of evidence-processing software. The system, according to the company, “reviews footage from hundreds of third-party proprietary video formats without altering metadata or risking aspect ratio and frame rate distortions.” Axon Investigate’s parent company operates in the same license-plate detection space as Flock, and it has encountered similar privacy controversies. “Jack Smith turned federal law enforcement against President Trump and Republicans. He needed tools to do it, and Axon Enterprise supplied them,” the Oversight Project posted on X. “New DOJ records from our FOIA suit show Smith’s office in ‘desperate need’ of Axon software, and Axon racing to deliver.” 🧵 Jack Smith turned federal law enforcement against President Trump and Republicans. He needed tools to do it, and Axon Enterprise supplied them. New DOJ records from our FOIA suit show Smith's office in "desperate need" of Axon software, and Axon racing to deliver. pic.twitter.com/XWKJMeqdHK— Oversight Project (@ItsYourGov) October 2, 2026 The government watchdog notes that in late June 2023, Smith’s henchmen reached out to Axon Investigate to covert “all types of video and audio files including lots of proprietary types we receive.” “Whose video? From where? Smith won’t say. DOJ won’t say. Axon won’t say,” the Oversight Project reported. Like The Federalist, Media Research Center is conducting its own investigation to find out exactly what Smith and his team took. “We are keeping every legal option on the table,” Bozell said. “The American people paid tens of millions of dollars for this stuff. It’s important for the Trump administration to release what they can [of Smith’s files].” Matt Kittle is a senior elections correspondent for The Federalist. An award-winning investigative reporter and 30-year veteran of print, broadcast, and online journalism, Kittle previously served as the executive director of Empower Wisconsin. Arctic FoxDavid BozellDonald TrumpJack SmithMedia Research CenterOversight ProjectSen. Eric SchmittSen. Juck GrassleySenate Judiciary CommitteeWhite House