A retired Justice Department inspector general agent who worked on the Arctic Frost investigation that later became part of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s probe of President Trump testified that prosecutors never told him the phone records he was subpoenaing belonged to members of Congress, saying he would have raised the issue with his supervisor if he had known.
Brian Burnett told House Judiciary Committee investigators he helped obtain long-distance toll data for a phone associated with then-Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Jim Jordan without being informed of the subscriber’s identity. He only learned of the connection after retiring in late 2024, when news reports surfaced.
“I would’ve subpoenaed the number, but I did not know who the phone number belonged to,” Burnett stated. He added that in his decades at the DOJ inspector general’s office, he had never before been asked to collect congressional phone data.
Burnett also testified that his supervisor rejected an earlier request from prosecutors to have the inspector general’s office seize Rep. Scott Perry’s cell phone with a search warrant. The “absolutely not” decision originated with Inspector General Michael Horowitz and was conveyed to Burnett by his supervisor, Timothy Edmiston, because Perry was neither a current nor former DOJ employee.
The House Judiciary Committee released Burnett’s transcript Tuesday along with five interviews with former Smith prosecutors. The committee said the broader Arctic Frost investigation involved phone records from more than a dozen Republican members of Congress and gag orders preventing lawmakers from learning that their records had been obtained. The committee has cited constitutional Speech and Debate and separation-of-powers protections in its investigation.
