Week 99 Digest: October 3, 2026 – October 9, 2026

October 3rd, 2026.

697 days since, 766 days to go.

Last week, I wrote about Jack Smith's testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, particularly how fiscally irresponsible Republican Eric Schmidt totally whiffed his gotcha moment.

Congressional Republicans are as obsessed with Jack Smith as convicted felon Donald Trump is with Jimmy Kimmel or James Comey.

There's a good reason why they don't like Smith, because he was extremely close to prosecuting Trump for his attempt to illegally overturn the 2020 election.

Part of Smith's investigation involved getting a non-disclosure order, or NDO, from a judge in order to access Congressional Republicans' toll records.

As I mentioned back in January, when Smith testified before the House Judiciary Committee, toll records are logs from phone companies which list out a specific phone call's activity.

This would include things like outgoing calls, incoming calls, when these calls happened, and how long the calls lasted.

It's important to note that toll records do not disclose the content of phone calls.

They're simply a list of who called whom and how long those calls lasted.

The toll records were an important way for Smith and his team to corroborate evidence they'd uncovered.

Smith needed the non-disclosure order to prevent members of Congress, the majority of whom were in on the election subversion plan themselves, from obstructing justice.

The idea being, if any of them knew their toll records were being pulled, they could try to prevent the Justice Department from doing so.

So Smith had a compelling reason to access those toll records, and per DOJ policy at the time, he did not need to inform the judge who signed off on the NDO that some of the phone numbers were for members of Congress.

You won't be surprised to learn that that rule changed once Trump came back to the White House.

Anyway, on Wednesday of last week, a day after Smith's testimony before the Senate, Senator Marsha Blackburn, Republican of Tennessee, sued Smith for violating the Constitution.

The New York Times has more.

Blackburn's argument is that Smith's pulling of her toll records violated the Constitution's speech or debate clause.

Wikipedia has the full text of this short clause, which is included in Article 1, Section 6.

Senators and representatives shall in all cases, except treason, felony, and breach of the peace, be privileged from arrest during their attendance at the session of their respective houses, and in going to and returning from the same.

And for any speech or debate in either house, they shall not be questioned in any other place.

It's interesting that Blackburn is drawing attention to a clause that explicitly calls out treason and felony behavior, but her issue is with the second part of the clause, after the semicolon, the part about how any congressional speech or debate won't be questioned outside of the House or Senate.

This feels like pretty flimsy ground to stand on.

First and most importantly, toll records don't reveal the content of phone calls, so the speech in question is still very much protected from the standpoint that Smith and his team never learned what was said during those calls.

Second, the Times noted that the DOJ's Public Integrity Section, the group who provided legal expertise for issues involving criminal investigations and members of Congress, signed off on Smith's request.

October 3rd, 2026.

697 days since, 766 days to go.

Last week, I wrote about Jack Smith's testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, particularly how fiscally irresponsible Republican Eric Schmidt totally whiffed his gotcha moment.

Congressional Republicans are as obsessed with Jack Smith as convicted felon Donald Trump is with Jimmy Kimmel or James Comey.

There's a good reason why they don't like Smith, because he was extremely close to prosecuting Trump for his attempt to illegally overturn the 2020 election.

Part of Smith's investigation involved getting a non-disclosure order, or NDO, from a judge in order to access Congressional Republicans' toll records.

As I mentioned back in January, when Smith testified before the House Judiciary Committee, toll records are logs from phone companies which list out a specific phone call's activity.

This would include things like outgoing calls, incoming calls, when these calls happened, and how long the calls lasted.

It's important to note that toll records do not disclose the content of phone calls.

They're simply a list of who called whom and how long those calls lasted.

The toll records were an important way for Smith and his team to corroborate evidence they'd uncovered.

Smith needed the non-disclosure order to prevent members of Congress, the majority of whom were in on the election subversion plan themselves, from obstructing justice.

The idea being, if any of them knew their toll records were being pulled, they could try to prevent the Justice Department from doing so.

So Smith had a compelling reason to access those toll records, and per DOJ policy at the time, he did not need to inform the judge who signed off on the NDO that some of the phone numbers were for members of Congress.

You won't be surprised to learn that that rule changed once Trump came back to the White House.

Anyway, on Wednesday of last week, a day after Smith's testimony before the Senate, Senator Marsha Blackburn, Republican of Tennessee, sued Smith for violating the Constitution.

The New York Times has more.

Blackburn's argument is that Smith's pulling of her toll records violated the Constitution's speech or debate clause.

Wikipedia has the full text of this short clause, which is included in Article 1, Section 6.

Senators and representatives shall in all cases, except treason, felony, and breach of the peace, be privileged from arrest during their attendance at the session of their respective houses, and in going to and returning from the same.

And for any speech or debate in either house, they shall not be questioned in any other place.

It's interesting that Blackburn is drawing attention to a clause that explicitly calls out treason and felony behavior, but her issue is with the second part of the clause, after the semicolon, the part about how any congressional speech or debate won't be questioned outside of the House or Senate.

This feels like pretty flimsy ground to stand on.

First and most importantly, toll records don't reveal the content of phone calls, so the speech in question is still very much protected from the standpoint that Smith and his team never learned what was said during those calls.

Second, the Times noted that the DOJ's Public Integrity Section, the group who provided legal expertise for issues involving criminal investigations and members of Congress, signed off on Smith's request.