Jack Smith Spying On Trump Donors Is Latest Dem Ploy To Chill Americans’ Political Speech

An Iowan donated $10 to President Donald Trump months before the 2020 election. As a result, then-Special Counsel Jack Smith obtained his home address, bank information, and other personal information and handed it over to the Biden administration’s FBI and DOJ, Sen. Chuck Grassley said in a post on X. The donor was one of nearly 5,000 Americans who had personal checks and information snatched up by Jack Smith’s team, according to Grassley. The Iowan from Osage targeted for his minute political donation is a symptom of a “runaway Democrat gov[ernmen]t,” as Grassley put it. But it seems anytime Democrats get power, they run away with it. And it’s not just that this Iowan who made the $10 donation may now think twice before making a political donation; it’s that others will also think twice before giving. It has, as Katie Pavlich pointed out on X, a chilling effect on speech and recalls the IRS’s targeting of the Tea Party, New Jersey’s demands for donor records from pro-life pregnancy, and Arizona’s current attempt to doxx political donors. In each case, the message was clear: Supporting the wrong political cause may cost you in more ways than one. Grassley, who is Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman, released whistleblower disclosures Tuesday that claim that Smith and his team “acquired at least 4,782 checks from Americans who made mainly small-dollar donations to President Trump between September 2019 to August 2023.” The checks, which Smith reportedly obtained via a subpoena, included bank account and routing numbers, signatures, and home addresses. Such lawfare is reminiscent of the IRS scandal under the Obama administration. Lois Lerner, then the director of Exempt Organizations, oversaw staff screening applications for terms such as “Tea Party,” “Patriot,” and the like. The IRS admitted to targeting conservative groups because they had the wrong political opinions. Lerner was ultimately not prosecuted. The IRS targeting conservatives under Democrat leadership should have been a watershed moment that resulted in a curtailing of government overreach. But it wasn’t. As The Federalist’s Jordan Boyd reported, New Jersey’s Democrat-run government targeted First Choice Women’s Resource Centers in 2023 “over seemingly baseless concerns that it was misleading its donors and misrepresenting its services.” The investigation resulted in then-Attorney General Matthew Platkin issuing a subpoena to try and “strong-arm the nonprofit into doxxing its donors and forfeiting information to a state with a strong abortion activism agenda.” But as the Supreme Court ruled this past April, the New Jersey Division of Affairs and the Attorney General’s Office couldn’t produce evidence of complaints against First Choice for allegedly defrauding, misleading, or deceiving any donors. Yet Platkin subpoenaed the pregnancy center and “demanded it ‘disclose documents reflecting the names, phone numbers, addresses, and places of employment of all individuals’ who donated to the nonprofit outside of First Choice’s webpage.” Subpoenas aren’t the only Democrat strategy to get donors’ identities, however, as demonstrated by Arizona’s leftist–backed Proposition 211. The measure requires nonprofits that spend more than $50,000 on statewide media campaigns to disclose where donations greater than $5,000 come from. The Arizona Supreme Court rejected a challenge to the law in June of 2026 but did greenlight part of the challenge brought by the Center for Arizona Policy and the Arizona Free Enterprise Club, along with anonymous donors who say the disclosure would lead to harassment. As Ryan Mills of the Goldwater Institute said in a statement, “Everyone has the right to support causes they believe in without fear of harassment, retaliation, or being canceled.” Mills further stated that the case will allow the plaintiffs to “prove that compelled disclosure chills speech in violation of the Arizona Constitution.” “This is an important victory for every Arizonan who believes people should be free to support the causes they care about without fear of government-compelled disclosure,” said Scott Freeman, senior attorney at the Goldwater Institute. “The Arizona Supreme Court recognized that our state constitution independently protects free speech and that citizens are entitled to prove that compelled donor disclosure violates those protections.” The Goldwater Institute represented the plaintiffs in the case. Americans considering donating $10, $1,000, or $10,000 to political causes they agree with should not have to fear that they will be doxxed or end up on a government list. But each time targeting and doxxing does happen, it makes ordinary citizens consider staying out of politics all together. And if Democrats can’t convince Americans to switch parties, they will try to make them scared of expressing their political beliefs. Brianna Lyman is an elections correspondent at The Federalist. Brianna graduated from Fordham University with a degree in International Political Economy. Her work has been featured on Newsmax, Fox News, Fox Business and RealClearPolitics. Follow Brianna on X: @briannalyman2 ArizonaBarack ObamaChuck Grassleydoxxingfree speechGoldwater InstituteIRSJack SmithJoe BidenKatie PavlichlawfareLois LernerNew Jerseypolitical donationsTea Party