Prepared Opening Statement by Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa
Chairman, Senate Judiciary Committee
Executive Business Meeting
Thursday, October 9, 2025
Good morning.
On today’s agenda, we have seventeen nominations listed; we’ll vote on eleven of them. We’ll vote on Rebecca Taibleson to be a circuit judge and on David Bragdon, Lindsey Ann Freeman, Matthew Orso and Susan Courtwright Rodriguez to be district judges in North Carolina. We’ll also vote on Sara Carter to be Director of National Drug Control Policy, and five nominees to be U.S. Attorney. Each of these nominees is highly qualified, I look forward to supporting each of them.
We’ll hold over the remaining nominations listed on our agenda for later consideration.
Before we get to our agenda, I want to address the recent surge of political violence and domestic terrorism from predominantly left-wing extremists. In recent weeks, our country has been torn apart by numerous tragedies, including:
the assassination of Charlie Kirk;
a sniper attack on an ICE facility in Texas;
a vehicle attack on federal law enforcement officers in Chicago;
the threatened bombing of a Catholic mass here in D.C.; and
the murder of the Minnesota Speaker of the House.
These are only a few of the many instances of political violence. And although we don’t know all of the details surrounding each of these events, it’s obvious that our country is facing a crisis.
Violent crime should be met with an equally strong response. Instead, we’ve seen judges and politicians placing criminals ahead of victims.
Just last week, a Biden-appointed judge gave a lenient sentence to a man who attempted to murder Justice Kavanaugh and other members of the Supreme Court for their decision in Dobbs.
What kind of message does that send to would-be assassins? Will my Democratic colleagues agree with me that this sends the precisely wrong message?
And now we’ve seen horrific text messages promoting the murder of Republicans, their children and police officers from the Democratic candidate for Virginia Attorney General. This is obscene. Every elected official should be willing to stand up and say that it’s unacceptable for a candidate for a state’s chief law enforcement job to encourage and condone this violence.
I’d also like to speak about this Committee’s oversight hearing.
We’ve repeatedly heard from Democrats that the current DOJ has diverted resources away from crime to immigration. Nothing could be further from the truth.
As General Bondi testified, federal law enforcement has assisted Homeland Security in taking thousands of criminal aliens off the streets. And we hear there’s been less drug prosecutions? Well, of course there are going to be less prosecutions when you’re taking thousands of these criminals off the streets and deporting them. It just proves how effective the Trump Administration has been in securing our borders and our country.
And, in regard to diverting resources, we never heard a peep from the other side when the Biden FBI used its Special Operations Group – a unit that’s reportedly supposed to deal with terrorists – to surveil and publicly arrest Peter Navarro. That’s just disgusting behavior that the other side appears to be okay with.
At the hearing, I also spoke about the Biden FBI targeting eight Republican Senators’ personal cell phones for tolling data, including Senators on this very Committee. This was done as part of Arctic Frost – a politically weaponized investigation.
The FBI told us many of the records associated with this matter are hidden behind grand jury secrecy rules. Attorney General Bondi must take immediate steps to seek a waiver and produce records to the Committee.
I urge my Democratic colleagues to join us in further uncovering this unconstitutional breach by the Biden Administration and hold accountable those involved in this serious wrongdoing.
I also want to address requests for the committee to hold oversight hearings on Arctic Frost and Jack Smith. We’re not ready for that yet.
We’ve yet to receive enough records from the Justice Department. I’ve requested records, but the Department hasn’t come through in the volume needed. Before public hearings, the foundation needs to be set and strong.
Rest assured, this investigation is yielding results thanks to whistleblowers. I’ve done four public document productions about Arctic Frost. Starting with the information that has been made public, it’s exposed historic political misconduct to the American public. As a result, the FBI is investigating and has fired agents for misconduct. And the CR-15 unit at the Washington Field Office, which originated Arctic Frost, has been shut down. So, there’s already been some accountability because of Director Patel, and I would expect more will come.
My investigation is very active and I’ll have more to share this month.
-30-