Sen. Johnson REVEALS how he learned he was surveilled in Biden-era probe

But first, there's this bombshell, a revelation about the Biden-era FBI. Former special counsel Jack Smith was allegedly tracking the private communications and phone calls of nine Republican senators, surveilling senators as part of his probe into January 6th. A declassified document released by Senator Chuck Grassley shows that Jack Smith and his so-called Arctic Frost team were tracking Senators Lindsey Graham, Marsha Blackburn, Ron Johnson, Josh Hawley, Cynthia Loomis,

Bill Hagerty, Dan Sullivan, Tommy Tuberville, and Mike Kelly. And they were understanding and following who they were calling, when they were calling them, the times, the content. FBI Director Kashter Tal recently finding this September 2023 document called CAST Assistance, which refers to the agency's Cellular Analysis Survey Team. Joining me now is Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson. Senator, thanks so much for being here.

You are one of those Republican senators that was being surveilled. You were briefed about this yesterday by the deputy FBI director Dan Bongino. What have you learned? What can you tell us?

Good morning, Maria. Well, you know, in my 10 years investigating the FBI, dating back to, you know, the exoneration memo of James Coley for Hillary Clinton, the results of all those investigations, this doesn't surprise me. It should shock, it should outrage every American. Quite honestly, by now, it should be obvious to every American that it's not the Republicans

that are a threat to our democracy. It's President Obama, it's President Biden, it's the radical leftists that have served and support them. This is outrageous, what has happened. We did not learn much. I appreciate the fact that the director and Diane Bongino notified us of this and briefed

us. What we know is that this isn't exactly like the partisans who remain in the Justice Department and the FBI are voluntarily coming forward and confessing their crimes. This just happened to surface when the individual who initially got these records, in applying for recertification to this CAAS team, listed this as an accomplishment. You know, I'm apparently proud of the fact that this particular agent subpoenaed eight

members of the Senate and one House member. So, again, that either shows just a complete lack of knowledge on the part of that particular agent or such a cavalier attitude inside the agencies that there's no big deal of just totally violating the separation of powers here and surveilling members of Congress and busting that separation of powers. I mean, this is—again, it should shock and outrage every American. It will probably shock and outrage about half of us.

The other half are, again, just living in a daydream, quite honestly, believing what the Democrats tell

them.

I mean, it's unbelievable how the names that were being surveilled—I mean, you were investigating the FBI. So, it's wrong. It's completely unconstitutional and criminal. But you were investigating—I mean, what was Marsha Blackburn doing? What was Lindsey Graham doing?

You know, like, how did they choose which senators to surveil?

That's what we need to find out. Again, it's a very odd group of people that they pulled their phone records on. Right. We don't know a predicate. There's no chain of approval on this thing. Apparently, they evaded the normal chain of approval to do something like this by saying

that we're not a target or a subject of the investigation. So using a grand jury, they apparently avoided an awful lot of the very rigorous approval that would normally be required if you're going to subpoena a member of Congress that was a target or that was subject to investigation. So again, there are many tricks that these partisans can play to do things that I believe are unconstitutional.

But we need to get fully to the bottom of this. You know, Senator Grassley and I have already requested all the files, all the records on Arctic Frost. This is going to, you know, rededicate ourselves to making sure we get it. If some of this information is being held because of the secrecy requirements of grand jury information, we're going to need to have a judge unseal those records.

We need to understand exactly what happened, exactly who was involved, and make sure the American public understands what happened. Expose this so that the American people really do understand who and what party is the threat to democracy. Here's a hint. It's not Republicans.

And, Senator, when you say, you know, they were tracking the communication of the phone calls, what specifically did they get? Did they know who you were calling?

What specifically does that mean, tracking the communication and calls calls as you know it? So they got access to our phone records from January 4th to January 7th of 2021. They got who was called, the date and time and length of call. So apparently no content. Again, but that's serious enough. I mean, that is snooping on a separate branch of government. It should not have happened.

And we need to understand exactly who was involved and exactly how this all happened, how it all got approved, and who all, in the end, knew about it. It sounds like people pretty high up had to know about this, but, again, I can't tell you that right now. I do know that Dan and Cash are going to be looking into this. But, again, it's also important to understand, they are having a significant challenge inside

the FBI and Department of Justice. These people aren't coming out of the woodwork to provide this information. It's like pulling teeth trying to get this information, and it's only through whistleblowers and just this very strange set of circumstances where somebody was trying to recertify for this cast team that this thing surfaced.

And when you say people high up had to know about, you mean Merrick Garland, the attorney general, and Lisa Monaco, the deputy attorney general.

Well, it was interesting that Lisa Monaco, a month and a half later, changed the procedure of the Department of Justice in terms of how these kind of records could be obtained. So she must have found out about this, realized that—again, I'm speculating here, but it's just—the timeline is interesting. President Trump gets—the Mar-a-Lago raid occurs in August of 2022. He gets indicted in around August of 2023.

We get our records pulled in September 2023. In November of 2023, the attorney—the deputy attorney general, Lisa Monaco, changed the procedure on how these kind of records can be obtained from a member of Congress. So somebody eventually found out what happened here. But from my standpoint, this is Jack Smith, I think a complete rogue prosecutor, a extreme partisan, but, again, appointed by the Biden administration to conduct lawfare

against President Trump. Once they had him indicted, once they got a target, they went on a fishing expedition to other members of Congress, and I can't really describe what they're looking for.

Unbelievable. And, you know, when you mention this timeline, it's very important now, because I do believe that the DOJ is going to be bringing charges of conspiracy as it relates to the Russia collusion story. And Devin Nunes told me that that includes the Mar-a-Lago raid, which Merrick Garland and Lisa Monaco had to know all about.

And he wants to know what was the origins of that raid, what specifically were they looking for. Was it this, which I have now, because it was declassified, the majority staff report on the intelligence community assessment of Russia's campaign targeting the 2016 election? More on that coming up. But look, Chuck Grassley also revealed the FBI's Arctic Frost probe investigated dozens

of Republican entities, including the late Charlie Kirk's Turning Point USA. Your colleague, Missouri Senator Eric Schmidt, joined me on Sunday morning Futures. Here's what he said about that.

Watch.

It was a coordinated campaign by the FBI to go after, after January 6th, anybody, any Republicans. They had wide-ranging subpoena power that was likely unconstitutional to go after Charlie Kirk's organization, Turning Point USA. I was on the executive board of the Republican Attorneys General Association at the time. They were going after that organization.

Really this massive sweep to try to pull in the Republican apparatus for criminal prosecution. And so, you put that in the context of what happened in 2016 with the Russiagate and everything that they did there and everything kind of trying to sideline a presidency there. You then go into 2020 with the FBI involved with the Hunter Biden laptop, you know, trying to debunk that or pre-bunk that. So this is part and parcel of an FBI that was corrupted by a lot of people, and there

needs to be accountability.

Now, at 9 a.m. this morning, there will be Chuck Grassley in the Senate hearing, and his opening remarks we want to listen for to see if there's new information about what they did to people like Peter Navarro as well, Senator. But what I want to get out here is whether or not we are going to see new charges against people like Jim Comey, John Brennan, on conspiracy, because that's what Devin Nunes said took place here, on conspiracy, because that's what Devin Nunes said took place here,

a conspiracy beginning with Russia collusion, on to the Mar-a-Lago raid, on to the January 6th cover-up. Watch this. He joined me on Sunday.

Watch.

It was all designed to target and take down one of your political enemies, so much so that they actually raided his home, his private, a private home of a former president at that time. If you have intelligence agencies that are effectively working with the fake news, working with nonprofits, all to benefit one political party, and that's what you've had. So it was a conspiracy.

It is a conspiracy. And so whether or not you can make those charges, I'm not a lawyer, never been a prosecutor, but I've done a lot of these investigations and to me, really what matters is the court of public opinion. What matters are the statutes and law and I would, from my vantage point, it's pretty clear that there was conspiracy on a number of fronts. Most importantly, I think lying and misleading, I think that's a key word, misleading Congress

and other investigations. One was in August of 2016, in the Obama White House with Biden and a bunch of other cast of characters there, including Comey, including Brennan, where they are told by Brennan that, hey, there's a hoax going on, that's my word.

They knew that in August of 16. Now, how is it possible that all of these cast of characters that were interviewed by multiple not only the House House Intelligence Committee, but also in the Senate and Horowitz and and all the way to Durham, they just had amnesia, just forgot about this. They all those years went by and they don't remember that this was a coverup for the Hillary Clinton email campaign.

Nonsense.

So what do you think, Senator? What about this conspiracy charge coming?

I think it absolutely was a conspiracy. I think crimes were committed. What they're going to be able to successfully be convicted of, I can't tell you. But just look at the damage they have done to our democracy. I mean, Russia, China, they couldn't even begin to hope to do as much damage as people

like Comey and Clapper and Brennan and that whole cast of characters did. It's important to understand, the only reason we got that list of 100 Republican organizations that they targeted was because of a whistleblower. We got this information because somebody applied for a recertification on the Cass team. The point I'm trying to make is the partisans, the partisan deep state actors that were engaged in this, many of them are still in the Department of Justice. They are still in the FBI.

They are going to continue to frustrate and cover up their own actions, and they're going to cover up for these other people, as well. We have an enormous problem. Cash Tell, Dan Bongino, Pam Bondi have an enormous challenge, because, for one thing, Chuck Schumer has basically blocked confirmations. But all the lawfare has been conducted.

For example, Judge Troop is in Wisconsin. He's in about a million dollars of legal fees, because he represented the president for two months and they're trying to destroy him personally. So you don't have to do that to too many people to make it very difficult, then, to staff the Department of Justice and FBI with people that are loyal to this president. So again, the left is relentless.

They are incredibly effective. We're just seeing the tip of the iceberg of the damage they have done to these institutions and to America. No, they're criminals. They need to be fully prosecuted. I'm not sure what they can be convicted of, particularly not in courts here in D.C.

The jury pool is going to be heavily Democratic. So, no, we've got a real problem. The first step in accountability is we need to expose this. And, again, I want to work closely with Cass, Fattel, Dan Bongino, Pam Bondi. I want—I'm going to get to the bottom of this. I've been targeted before. I know I'm a thorn in their side.

I have no idea what these other—why these other senators were targeted. And we'll use that term, OK? We were targeted by Jack Smith. I'm going to get to the bottom of this. I don't know. It's going to be difficult to do so. Again, the deep state does not give up in secrecy easily, even when you're in charge of it.

Unbelievable. I mean, it's just extraordinary the limits that they have gone and will go to stop President Trump, who was an outsider coming in, and it was because they did not want their grip on power loosened in any way. They knew an outsider, a businessman like Donald Trump would do just that because he told everybody what he was going to do.

They still have a lot of power. They still, they're still trying to maintain that grip. We've got to, we've got to loosen that grip.

And now they're shutting down government. So there's that. I mean, do you, do you have any confidence that government will reopen any time soon? Are you going to have to give on the Obamacare subsidies?

We better not. Again, the reason premiums are increasing is because of the faulty design of Obamacare. Throwing more money at it will just exacerbate the problem. So Republicans better not agree to fund, you know, the failed Obamacare experiment. What we need to do is just pass the House resolution.

Clean, continuing resolution, its funding levels that Democrats voted for under Biden. This is truly the Schumer shutdown. My guess is eventually they're going to have to relent because public pressure is definitely running against them right now.

All right, Senator, thanks very much for your work. We'll be watching your work closely. We appreciate your time this morning.

Thank you. Thank you.

Have a great day.