Court says Boasberg didn’t know Arctic Frost subpoenas hit lawmakers, Grassley calls that ‘deeply troubling’
FIRST ON FOX: A top federal court official defended Judge James Boasberg’s gag orders that hid subpoenas related to the FBI's Arctic Frost investigation, saying this week that the chief...
By Fox News · Fox News
FIRST ON FOX: A top federal court official defended Judge James Boasberg’s gag orders that hid subpoenas related to the FBI's Arctic Frost investigation, saying this week that the chief judge in Washington would likely have been unaware that the subpoenas' intended targets were members of Congress. The administrative office for the federal courts indicated that the chief judge in D.C. routinely blindly signed gag orders when the Department of Justice requested them, including during Arctic Frost, the investigation that led to former special counsel Jack Smith bringing election charges against President Donald Trump. The administrative office's director, Robert Conrad Jr., provided the explanation on behalf of Boasberg to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, in a letter first obtained by Fox News Digital. REPUBLICANS FEUD OVER 'ARCTIC FROST' ACCOUNTABILITY MEASURE, BUT CRITICS OFFER NO CLEAR ALTERNATIVE The letter came in response to Grassley, Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., and Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, demanding an explanation from Boasberg about why he authorized the one-year gag orders, which barred phone companies from telling Republican Congress members that their records were subpoenaed by Smith in 2023. Conrad said he could not address those specific subpoenas and gag orders, in part because some of the material was sealed, but that he could help the lawmakers "understand relevant practices" in place during Arctic Frost. The DOJ’s requests for gag orders, also known as non-disclosure orders, "typically do not attach the related subpoena; rather they identify the subject accounts only by a signifier — e.g., a phone number," Conrad wrote. "As a result, [non-disclosure order] applications would not reveal whether a particular phone number belonged to a member of Congress." Grassley reacted to the latest correspondence from the court by faulting the Biden DOJ for seeking the gag orders from Boasberg without notifying the judge that they pertained…