U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA), Chairman of the GOP-led Senate Judiciary Committee, held a press conference this week about Arctic Frost, the FBI’s 2022 investigation into alleged efforts by allies of President Donald Trump to overturn the results of the 2020 U.S. presidential election.
[Note: The Artic Frost probe involved FBI “preliminary toll analysis” (phone log checks) of several Republican U.S. lawmakers, including Grassley, as part of the post-2020 election inquiry. The FBI sought the call logs of numerous Trump-aligned politicians around the time of the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.]
Grassley claims the investigation was an attempt by President Biden’s DOJ “to take down President Trump and his supporters,” including Steve Bannon, Jeffrey Clark, and John Eastman, who spoke at the Trump rally preceding the Jan 6 Capitol attack, among others.
According to Grassley and the subpoenas he said he received from a whistleblower, all the FBI inquiries “appear to be aimed at Republicans,” an unsurprising assertion, as Democrats weren’t suspected of trying to change the results of an election that Biden won.
Legal expert Gregg Nunziata, a bona fide conservative who has served as policy counsel to the Senate Republican Policy Committee, general counsel to Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), and as a prosecutor in the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, slammed Grassley and the entire Republican Party for the press conference.
Nunziata wrote on social media: “I’ve never been more ashamed to be a Republican than to see this performative, dishonest outrage over ‘Arctic Frost’ by people who know better.”
He added: “We’re supposed to be appalled that limited toll data of GOP Congressmen was sought by the FBI for the days around a criminal attack on our Constitution. Really?”
I’ve never been more ashamed to be a Republican than to see this performative, dishonest outrage over “Arctic Frost” by people who know better.
— Gregg Nunziata (@greggnunziata) October 30, 2025
Nunziata added: “In my time on the Hill when the Left lost its mind about the PATRIOT Act we very patiently explained toll data and the various limits on federal surveillance. Now, to be a Republican is to be an extreme civil libertarian, always selectively.
“People cheering Trump’s political indictments with ‘nobody is above the law, not even politicians’ are outraged that DOJ would seek the call logs of politicians around a specific criminal event they might have had a role in, even as a bystander?
“These people fake outrage about the above and close their eyes and ears to Trump’s naked politicization of the justice system. They tolerate @Kash_Patel and @FBIDDBongino at the FBI and @EdMartinDOJ as the Admin’s chief against weaponization.” Note: Trump’s Pardon Attorney Ed Martin defended many of the 1500+ prosecuted Jan6 rioters, almost all of whom were later pardoned by Trump.