Senate Memo Says Biden DOJ Obtained MAGA Hat Buyers’ and Republican Donors’ Data

WASHINGTON — Federal investigators working during the Biden administration obtained personal information on hundreds of thousands of Republican supporters, including people who bought red MAGA hats, according to a newly released memorandum from Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley.

The October 14 memo says records obtained through subpoenas in the Arctic Frost investigation and former special counsel Jack Smith’s inquiry included spreadsheets covering more than 639,000 individuals. More than 148,000 rows were identified as donors, generally contributing small amounts, Grassley’s office reported.

The information allegedly included names, birthdates, home and email addresses, Republican registration status, occupations, employers, donation histories and partial credit-card information. Some contributions were as little as $1. The memo also describes records identifying MAGA hat customers, their purchases and shipping addresses.

Those findings have intensified Republican criticism of the investigation into efforts to overturn Donald Trump’s 2020 election defeat. Grassley argues the collection extended far beyond information relevant to the investigation and swept ordinary political supporters into a federal evidence-gathering operation.

Smith’s team “aimed to map out the entire Republican Party apparatus,” Grassley alleged in the memo. That characterization represents the chairman’s conclusion about investigators’ motives, rather than a judicial finding.

The distinction matters because obtaining a person’s information through a subpoena does not, by itself, establish that the person was a suspect. The memo describes information contained in subpoena returns; it does not demonstrate that every donor or merchandise customer was individually investigated for buying a hat or supporting Trump.

Nevertheless, the inclusion of small-dollar donors and retail customers raises questions about how investigators limited their requests, determined relevance and handled information belonging to people unconnected to suspected criminal conduct.

The political reaction has been sharp. Utah Republican Sen. Mike Lee called the collection a “disgraceful weaponization of the justice system for a partisan witch hunt,” according to the Deseret News. Lee sits on the Judiciary Committee and has also criticized investigators’ acquisition of congressional telephone records.

Smith has defended gathering financial information as part of his investigative responsibilities. During recent Senate testimony, he acknowledged obtaining such records but said he could not recount every subpoena his office issued.

“I had a duty to collect facts,” Smith said, explaining that the subpoenas served a criminal investigation into serious allegations surrounding the election.

That general defense does not explain the relevance of each category described in Grassley’s latest memo. Nor does the memo alone resolve whether particular requests were legally justified or whether investigators improperly used the resulting records.

The latest disclosure follows Grassley’s earlier release concerning checks from nearly 5,000 contributors. His office says the newer findings substantially expand the known scope of the collection.

The central questions now concern the subpoenas themselves: what they requested, why the information was necessary and what safeguards governed its use. Grassley is urging Democratic senators to participate in his oversight work. For donors and merchandise buyers, the unresolved issue is how routine political participation became part of an investigative data collection.