Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) accused the Justice Department under former President Joe Biden of secretly subpoenaing phone records tied to sitting members of Congress during a politically sensitive Jan. 6, 2021, investigation, saying the effort bypassed constitutional safeguards and blocked lawmakers from asserting their rights.

Grassley made the remarks at a two-hour hearing on Tuesday of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology, and the Law, chaired by Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), during which senior legal executives from Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile testified about how they responded to subpoenas issued during the Biden-era Arctic Frost investigation. That inquiry served as the backbone for what ultimately became former special counsel Jack Smith‘s indictments against then-former President Donald Trump during the Biden era.