Special Counsel Seized Thousands of Trump Donor Checks
Special Counsel Jack Smith seized nearly 5,000 personal checks from donors to President Donald Trump, according to whistleblower disclosures. The revelations came from legally protected whistleblower testimony.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Chuck Grassley, R‑Iowa, released the findings Tuesday during a hearing where Special Counsel Smith testified about his law‑focused case against Trump. Grassley called the disclosure a bombshell.
Grassley said the committee obtained at least 4,782 checks from Americans who made mainly small‑dollar donations to Trump between September 2019 and August 2023, according to a committee press release. The checks were acquired via subpoenas.
The subpoenas covered donors in all 50 states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico, with amounts ranging from $5 to $1,000. Each check exposed the donor’s bank account, routing number, signature and home address.
Grassley warned that the information offers no legitimate basis for the investigation and noted that it was omitted from Smith’s public report. He said the Justice Department and FBI will forever possess thousands of donors’ addresses, phone numbers, bank details and copies of their signatures.
The committee also disclosed that Smith’s team subpoenaed text messages from 87 phones used by officials in Trump’s first term. That effort yielded communications from The Federalist and more than a dozen other media outlets as part of what Grassley labeled anti‑Trump lawfare.
Federalist CEO and co‑founder Sean Davis said the outlet is still determining which reporters and journalistic communications were seized. He called the action a revenge plot by Smith and vowed to explore all legal options.
Davis highlighted The Federalist’s history of exposing what it calls Deep State corruption, the Kavanaugh hoax, the Ukraine impeachment probe and alleged election infrastructure breaches in 2020. He said the group will pursue legal remedies against Smith’s lawfare.
Shawn Fleetwood is a staff writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He co‑received the 2025 Dao Prize for Excellence in Investigative Journalism and his work appears in RealClearPolitics and RealClearHealth.
