In recent days, many members of Congress have gained access to Jeffrey Epstein materials that are not available to the public, though with significant limitations. Lawmakers have to physically go to the Justice Department and review the records in a private space, without staff or recording equipment. Members also have to rely on DOJ computers while being supervised by DOJ officials.

But on Wednesday, the story took an unexpected turn: Attorney General Pam Bondi was photographed with a printout showing one Democratic congresswoman’s search history on the Epstein files. The implications were dramatic: It appeared that the Justice Department has been surveilling which documents among the Epstein files the members of Congress were looking for.

Democrats were understandably furious. Republicans, however, were not only largely indifferent to the surveillance, but some also chided Democrats for what GOP officials saw as a double standard. MS NOW reported:

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, said it was ‘pretty rich’ to hear Democrats complain about surveillance ‘after what the DOJ has done to Republican members of Congress under Jack Smith.’

Jordan has the entire story backward. In fact, I don’t understand what it is that the Ohio Republican doesn’t understand. Plenty of arguments surrounding federal law enforcement and surveillance are complex, but Jordan shouldn’t have much trouble with this one.

As part of Smith’s work as a special counsel, he and his team acquired the phone records of a variety of figures — which, as The New York Times reported in October, “is a common investigative tactic.” The report added, “Such toll record information does not include the contents of conversations, which would require a court-approved wiretap.”

A related analysis from CNN explained that there was nothing especially surprising about any of this.

We already knew that the phone records of some lawmakers were seized in Smith’s probe, because the Justice Department had to overcome legal hurdles posed by the Constitution’s Speech or Debate Clause. And it’s difficult to understand how Smith ever could have conducted such a probe without obtaining some phone records of lawmakers. That’s because Trump’s pressure on lawmakers was a key part of his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. … It would seem very difficult to piece together a case without understanding who was talking to whom, and when.

MS NOW’s Ken Dilanian emphasized a related point, noting that the former special counsel’s final report, released earlier in 2025, made note of these same toll records.

Plenty of other independent observers drew a similar conclusion. “It actually seems sort of obvious that if you’re investigating a former president of the United States for trying to subvert an election, you’d probe some of contacts he and alleged co-conspirators had with people he was trying to enlist/pressure to overturn the results,” Politico’s Kyle Cheney noted.

Jordan — who has chaired the House Judiciary Committee for more than three years, giving him ample opportunity to familiarize himself with basics details like these — thinks Democrats are guilty of hypocrisy, expressing concern about improper DOJ surveillance in the Trump era while expressing indifference about improper DOJ surveillance in the Biden era.

This would be far more persuasive if Smith had done something wrong — but he didn’t. In fact, the only person who’s guilty of hypocrisy in this story is the one making accusations of hypocrisy: If Jordan were concerned about DOJ overreach in response to routine phone record requests in a legitimate investigation, why isn’t he speaking up now about unjustified DOJ overreach affecting his own House colleagues?

This post updates our related earlier coverage.