# Post ts_117316991845409643

- Post ID: `ts_117316991845409643`
- Platform: Truth Social
- Posted: 2026-09-22T22:13:52.016Z (UTC)
- Deleted: no
- Repost: no
- Canonical URL: https://trump.fm/post/ts_117316991845409643
- Analysis page: https://trump.fm/post/ts_117316991845409643/analysis
- Audio narration: https://static.trump.fm/audio/ts_117316991845409643.mp3 (a synthesized voice reading the post text, not a recording)

## Post text

> Agent in Jack Smith case says he was kept in dark that subpoenaed phone data belonged to Congress: https://justthenews.com/accountability/political-ethics/agent-jack-smith-case-says-he-was-kept-dark-subpoenaed-phone-data

## Engagement

- Likes: 13,042
- Reposts: 4,079
- Replies: 1,441
- Views: unknown
- Metrics collected: 2026-09-29T22:01:31.492Z (UTC)

# Analysis

_Machine-generated by trump.fm on 2026-09-22T22:40:59.592Z (UTC): a model's reading of this post, not his words. Its psychological terms describe the language, not a clinical assessment of him._

## Summary

A bare Just the News headline and URL, posted at 6:13 PM Eastern in New York with no comment and no sign-off — the second unannotated drop from the same outlet in one day. The formatting, the absent first-person voice, and the incompatibility with the previous day's discursive screed point toward staff posting, though the subject matter is one the subject tracks personally.

What is clinically notable is the selection criterion. The chosen headline does three things a first-person complaint could not do as cleanly: an FBI agent, not the defendant, speaks; the passive 'kept in dark' places concealment at an unnamed level above him; and the injured party becomes 'Congress' rather than Donald Trump. A personal grievance is thereby restated as an institutional one with a law-enforcement witness attached.

Affect is absent, which distinguishes this from the day's other posts ('The cowards and traitors would love to say the United States is low on munitions'). The persecution schema is being maintained at minimal expressive cost rather than discharged. Paranoid features carry the profile; narcissistic and sadistic features are barely expressed here.

The underlying records collection is documented; the framing omits that the data were carrier toll records rather than content. Inbound sourcing is a closed loop — the same friendly outlet twice, one day after describing CNN, Politico and MSNBC as litigants against him. No directive, no named action. The value of the entry is cumulative: a file kept open on a prosecutor.

## A headline he chose but did not write

The entire post is a Just the News headline reproduced verbatim — "Agent in Jack Smith case says he was kept in dark that subpoenaed phone data belonged to Congress" — plus the URL, and nothing else. The missing element that carries weight is the sign-off: two other posts from the same day close with "President DONALD J. TRUMP" and "President DJT," and this one closes with a link. That matters for what can and can't be read from it. Not a word of it is his own composition, which puts stylometry and cognitive-status reading out of reach for this item entirely — there is nothing here but a copy-paste and a timestamp. What he contributed was the decision to place this particular story in front of the feed at 6:13 PM Eastern in New York, where he had been the previous day ("While in New York City, I'm on the way to... Gracie Mansion").

The same hand appears to have dropped the EPA story earlier the same day, headline-and-link, no comment. Two Just the News drops inside one day, both unannotated, both slug-accurate, sits with staff posting rather than with the man who wrote the previous day's 200-word run at "Fake News CNN, Politico... and MSNOW (formerly known as MSDNC!)" with its mid-sentence turn onto Jim Acosta having "disappeared from the Planet." Those two registers do not come from the same session at the keyboard. Authorship leans aide; the editorial choice is still plausibly his.

## What the choice of this story does

The headline carries a three-part structure that a first-person complaint could not carry as cleanly. An investigator — "Agent in Jack Smith case" — is placed as an unwitting instrument; "kept in dark" strips him of intent and relocates it upward, unnamed but obvious; and the object of the surveillance is not a person but an institution, "Congress." A grievance about the prosecution of Donald Trump is thereby restated as a grievance about an attack on the legislative branch, with a career law-enforcement witness rather than the defendant as its source. That is the persuasive work being done, and it is done entirely by selection.

The underlying matter is real. Senate Judiciary disclosures in autumn 2025 established that the FBI's "Arctic Frost" predicate investigation obtained call-detail records for phone lines of several Republican senators. The headline's framing elides what those records were (toll metadata, obtained by subpoena to carriers, not content) and leaves the impression of a deliberate concealment that the specific agent account would have to establish.

## A persecution schema kept warm at low heat

Across the day's posts the affect is distributed unevenly: the munitions post runs hot ("The cowards and traitors would love to say the United States is low on munitions"), the Johnny Damon post runs warm ("You are a total winner!"), and this one runs at nothing. Suspiciousness organizes the content without any accompanying arousal, and the telling gap is that he does not appear in his own grievance — the man the investigation was aimed at is the one party the post declines to mention. That rules out reading this as discharge. In a subject whose baseline for this topic is sustained fury, an unembellished forward is the low-cost maintenance mode of the same schema: the Jack Smith file stays open, another brick is added, and no energy is spent.

Projection is worth naming with the caution that the post gives little to quote. The reproduced complaint is that an investigative apparatus secretly collected data on political figures — voiced by an administration whose Justice Department was, in the same week, litigating a prosecution of James Comey. The post does not make that comparison; it depends on the reader not making it.

## Sourcing

Two of the day's link-shares come from the same outlet, one day after a post attacking CNN, Politico and MSNBC by name and complaining that a judge "appointed by 'TRUMP'" had been drawn. Inbound information is being taken from a single friendly channel while the adversarial channels are described as litigants against him. That is a closed loop, and it is visible in the posting record rather than inferred.

## What is absent

The absence that changes the reading is the absence of any call — no suggestion of what a reader should do about the concealment the headline alleges. A grievance can be filed and left to accumulate, and this one is filed. The accumulation is the thing to watch longitudinally: a retribution track built from forwarded third-party reporting reads as merely curatorial on any single day.

## Fact Verification

| Claim | Verdict | Evidence |
|-------|---------|----------|
| "Phone data belonging to members of Congress was subpoenaed in the course of Jack Smith's investigation." | **Mostly True** | Senate Judiciary Committee disclosures in autumn 2025 established that the FBI's 'Arctic Frost' investigation, the predicate probe that fed the special counsel's January 6 case, obtained call-detail records for phone lines used by several Republican senators through subpoenas served on telephone carriers in 2023. The records were toll metadata rather than call content, and some lines were Senate-issued. The headline's core factual premise holds; its implication of a covert intercept does not. |
| "An agent who worked on the Jack Smith case has stated he was not told that the phone data being subpoenaed belonged to members of Congress." | **True** | Confirmed against the primary source document, not just the Just the News report. The agent is J. Brian Burnett, a retired Justice Department Office of Inspector General senior special agent. The House Judiciary Committee released the redacted transcript of his transcribed interview on September 22, 2026, as one of six transcripts (the others being former Smith team prosecutors J.P. Cooney, Molly Gaston, Ray Hulser, Tad Duree, and Thomas Windom) tied to the Arctic Frost investigation. I downloaded the committee's own PDF (burnett-transcript_redacted.pdf) and extracted the text. The transcript cover page reads 'INTERVIEW OF: J. BRIAN BURNETT,' Committee on the Judiciary, U.S. House of Representatives, Thursday, June 25, 2026, room 2237 Rayburn House Office Building, commencing 10:28 a.m.

The decisive exchange appears verbatim in the transcript. Asked about an April 25, 2022 DOJ subpoena for then-ranking member Jim Jordan's phone records with an associated non-disclosure order, and an email Burnett sent Verizon on May 1 conveying it, Burnett answered: 'Yes, only because -- I would've subpoenaed the number, but I did not know who the phone number belonged to, who the actual subscriber was.' He continued: 'It was not until I had been retired and this was on the news and there was conversation about Mr. Jordan's toll records being subpoenaed and then there was a subpoena that came up on the internet... So I was only assuming -- that had my name on it -- that that was his number. But I do not know, as we sit here today, if that was his number or not.'

Questioner: 'So prosecutors never told you that you were going to be serving a subpoena for, at the time, the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee's phone records?' Burnett: 'No. I don't have any recollection of that.' Asked whether knowing would have given him pause, he said: 'It would've been something I would've brought up to my supervisor, if there was a different process or something we needed to be doing if we were going to do that. But I was not aware.'

He described the routine the same way later in the interview: asked whether prosecutor Tad Duree would normally tell him the identity behind a number, Burnett said 'Not that I recall. I would just get the phone number, because we didn't know who -- to my knowledge, because I was looking up who the carrier was, we didn't know who the phone belonged to.'

On his connection to Smith: Burnett joined DOJ OIG in August 2009 and retired November 15, 2024, holding special agent and then senior special agent titles under Inspector General Michael Horowitz. He confirmed he worked the investigation until his retirement, and answered 'Yes' when asked 'Did you work the investigation with the special counsel's team after it was stood up?' after Smith's November 18, 2022 appointment. He said he never met Jack Smith. He also confirmed this was the first investigation of his career in which a member of Congress was a potential witness to criminal wrongdoing.

Two caveats that do not change the verdict but refine the framing. First, Burnett was a DOJ OIG agent detailed to the probe, not an FBI agent, though the claim as worded says only 'agent,' which is accurate; the first-pass analysis excerpt's characterization of him as FBI is the imprecise part. Second, the specific Jordan subpoena he was questioned about is dated April 25, 2022, which predates Smith's appointment as special counsel, so that individual subpoena issued from the predecessor DOJ investigation even though Burnett continued on the case under Smith's team afterward. The Just the News headline's 'Agent in Jack Smith case' is therefore fair as to the person, slightly loose as to that one subpoena's timing.

The account is corroborated as an event by independent outlets. Fox News reported the same day on the release of transcripts from 'five Smith prosecutors and a former DOJ watchdog agent' in the Arctic Frost records fight, though it did not name Burnett. The House Judiciary Committee press release lists all six transcripts with direct PDF links, including Burnett's. Context on the underlying collection is consistent with prior verified reporting: the data at issue were toll records, meaning call metadata such as times, durations, and numbers dialed, not intercepted call content, and the records of roughly nine to a dozen-plus Republican lawmakers were obtained under grand jury subpoenas paired with non-disclosure orders.

One limitation on interpretation, not on the verdict: Burnett's statements are recollections hedged with 'I don't have any recollection of that' and 'not that I recall,' given in an interview conducted by a Republican-led committee that is adverse to Smith, and no counter-testimony from the prosecutors on this specific point surfaced in the searches. But the claim as stated is only that such an agent made the statement, and the official transcript establishes that conclusively. |

Overall Veracity: 90%

## Authorship Analysis

**Uncertain** (score: 35%)

### Indicators

- Headline reproduced verbatim from the source with no added commentary, no sign-off ('President DONALD J. TRUMP' / 'President DJT' appear on two other posts the same day but not this one)
- No first-person voice, no capitalized emphasis, no typo or dropped preposition
- 6:13 PM Eastern in New York — end of the working day, not the 10pm-6am window
- Second unannotated Just the News link-drop of the same day, a batched pattern consistent with staff posting
- Register is incompatible with the previous day's authentic-looking screed ('MSNOW (formerly known as MSDNC!)', 'seems to have disappeared from the Planet')

## Psychological Profile

### Traits

**Big Five:**
- Extraversion: 35%
- Agreeableness: 30%
- Conscientiousness: 40%
- Neuroticism: 50%
- Openness: 25%

Strongest facet: low trust (Agreeableness) — vigilance toward concealed institutional action

**Motives:**
- Agency: 60%
- Communion: 5%

Primary drive: revenge

### Narrative

- **Role:** Absent from the text; positioned by implication as the target of an investigation now shown to have overreached
- **Arc:** redemption
- **Contrasting:** Jack Smith and the prosecutorial leadership that allegedly concealed the subpoenas' subjects

### State

**Vulnerable State**

**Trigger:** Maintenance — Exposure (Just the News report on the Arctic Frost congressional phone records)

Sentiment: -0.35

### Clinical

**Malignant Narcissism:**
- Narcissistic: 20%
- Antisocial: 10%
- Paranoid: 50%
- Sadism: 5%

**Defense Mechanisms:**
- projection (immature)
- rationalization (neurotic)
- splitting (immature)

**Cognitive Complexity:**
- Complexity: 50%

**Parasocial Techniques:**
- Third-party validation: the accusation arrives in a reporter's and an agent's voice rather than his own
- Serial disclosure — the feed as an unfolding file on an adversary, each item small

## Fact Checks (2)

_The model's verdicts from 2026-09-22._

> Phone data belonging to members of Congress was subpoenaed in the course of Jack Smith's investigation.

**MOSTLY TRUE**

Senate Judiciary Committee disclosures in autumn 2025 established that the FBI's 'Arctic Frost' investigation, the predicate probe that fed the special counsel's January 6 case, obtained call-detail records for phone lines used by several Republican senators through subpoenas served on telephone carriers in 2023. The records were toll metadata rather than call content, and some lines were Senate-issued. The headline's core factual premise holds; its implication of a covert intercept does not.

Sources: Senate Judiciary Committee disclosures on the FBI 'Arctic Frost' investigation (2025)

> An agent who worked on the Jack Smith case has stated he was not told that the phone data being subpoenaed belonged to members of Congress.

**TRUE**

Confirmed against the primary source document, not just the Just the News report. The agent is J. Brian Burnett, a retired Justice Department Office of Inspector General senior special agent. The House Judiciary Committee released the redacted transcript of his transcribed interview on September 22, 2026, as one of six transcripts (the others being former Smith team prosecutors J.P. Cooney, Molly Gaston, Ray Hulser, Tad Duree, and Thomas Windom) tied to the Arctic Frost investigation. I downloaded the committee's own PDF (burnett-transcript_redacted.pdf) and extracted the text. The transcript cover page reads 'INTERVIEW OF: J. BRIAN BURNETT,' Committee on the Judiciary, U.S. House of Representatives, Thursday, June 25, 2026, room 2237 Rayburn House Office Building, commencing 10:28 a.m.

The decisive exchange appears verbatim in the transcript. Asked about an April 25, 2022 DOJ subpoena for then-ranking member Jim Jordan's phone records with an associated non-disclosure order, and an email Burnett sent Verizon on May 1 conveying it, Burnett answered: 'Yes, only because -- I would've subpoenaed the number, but I did not know who the phone number belonged to, who the actual subscriber was.' He continued: 'It was not until I had been retired and this was on the news and there was conversation about Mr. Jordan's toll records being subpoenaed and then there was a subpoena that came up on the internet... So I was only assuming -- that had my name on it -- that that was his number. But I do not know, as we sit here today, if that was his number or not.'

Questioner: 'So prosecutors never told you that you were going to be serving a subpoena for, at the time, the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee's phone records?' Burnett: 'No. I don't have any recollection of that.' Asked whether knowing would have given him pause, he said: 'It would've been something I would've brought up to my supervisor, if there was a different process or something we needed to be doing if we were going to do that. But I was not aware.'

He described the routine the same way later in the interview: asked whether prosecutor Tad Duree would normally tell him the identity behind a number, Burnett said 'Not that I recall. I would just get the phone number, because we didn't know who -- to my knowledge, because I was looking up who the carrier was, we didn't know who the phone belonged to.'

On his connection to Smith: Burnett joined DOJ OIG in August 2009 and retired November 15, 2024, holding special agent and then senior special agent titles under Inspector General Michael Horowitz. He confirmed he worked the investigation until his retirement, and answered 'Yes' when asked 'Did you work the investigation with the special counsel's team after it was stood up?' after Smith's November 18, 2022 appointment. He said he never met Jack Smith. He also confirmed this was the first investigation of his career in which a member of Congress was a potential witness to criminal wrongdoing.

Two caveats that do not change the verdict but refine the framing. First, Burnett was a DOJ OIG agent detailed to the probe, not an FBI agent, though the claim as worded says only 'agent,' which is accurate; the first-pass analysis excerpt's characterization of him as FBI is the imprecise part. Second, the specific Jordan subpoena he was questioned about is dated April 25, 2022, which predates Smith's appointment as special counsel, so that individual subpoena issued from the predecessor DOJ investigation even though Burnett continued on the case under Smith's team afterward. The Just the News headline's 'Agent in Jack Smith case' is therefore fair as to the person, slightly loose as to that one subpoena's timing.

The account is corroborated as an event by independent outlets. Fox News reported the same day on the release of transcripts from 'five Smith prosecutors and a former DOJ watchdog agent' in the Arctic Frost records fight, though it did not name Burnett. The House Judiciary Committee press release lists all six transcripts with direct PDF links, including Burnett's. Context on the underlying collection is consistent with prior verified reporting: the data at issue were toll records, meaning call metadata such as times, durations, and numbers dialed, not intercepted call content, and the records of roughly nine to a dozen-plus Republican lawmakers were obtained under grand jury subpoenas paired with non-disclosure orders.

One limitation on interpretation, not on the verdict: Burnett's statements are recollections hedged with 'I don't have any recollection of that' and 'not that I recall,' given in an interview conducted by a Republican-led committee that is adverse to Smith, and no counter-testimony from the prosecutors on this specific point surfaced in the searches. But the claim as stated is only that such an agent made the statement, and the official transcript establishes that conclusively.

Sources: https://justthenews.com/accountability/political-ethics/agent-jack-smith-case-says-he-was-kept-dark-subpoenaed-phone-data; https://judiciary.house.gov/media/press-releases/judiciary-republicans-release-transcripts-former-jack-smith-prosecutors-and; https://judiciary.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/republicans-judiciary.house.gov/files/evo-media-document/burnett-transcript_redacted.pdf; https://www.foxnews.com/politics/house-republicans-drop-jack-smith-transcripts-explosive-arctic-frost-records-fight; https://yournews.com/2026/09/22/7203298/house-judiciary-releases-six-jack-smith-team-transcripts-in-arctic/; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_Frost_investigation; https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/arctic-frost; https://www.cnn.com/2025/10/06/politics/jack-smith-january-6-gop-lawmakers-phone-records; https://www.cbsnews.com/news/jack-smith-republican-lawmakers-phone-data-chuck-grassley/; https://www.grassley.senate.gov/news/news-releases/grassley-demands-answers-from-telecom-companies-who-turned-congressional-phone-records-over-to-jack-smith

Overall Veracity: 90%

## Tags

- link-share (95%)
- jack-smith (90%)
- persecution-schema (75%)
- law-enforcement-delegitimization (70%)
- source-laundering (65%)
- aide-authored-likely (60%)
- low-affect (60%)
- surveillance-grievance (55%)

## That day

_From trump.fm's machine-generated digest of the day, not his words._

**The UN address went unmentioned all day; the one post he clearly wrote denied a munitions shortage in absolute terms**

Trump was in New York for the opening of the UN General Assembly and never posted about it once. Five posts all day, mostly other people's material: two bare links to the same friendly news site, a repost about household income, and a quick thank-you to former ballplayer Johnny Damon for refusing to apologize for supporting him. The one post he clearly wrote himself came in the morning, insisting the US has more munitions than it could ever use and calling anyone who says otherwise cowards and traitors. He then went quiet for eleven hours, which is what a day of speeches and bilateral meetings looks like, and closed the evening with an uncommented link about an FBI agent in the Jack Smith investigation. By his standards a very slow day, with one sharp moment in it.

Full digest for 2026-09-22: https://trump.fm/date/2026-09-22/analysis

## Citation

- APA: Trump, D. J. (2026, September 22). Agent in Jack Smith case says he was kept in dark... [Social media post]. Truth Social. trump.fm. https://trump.fm/post/ts_117316991845409643
- MLA: Trump, Donald J. "Agent in Jack Smith case says he was kept in dark that..." Truth Social, 22 Sep. 2026. trump.fm, https://trump.fm/post/ts_117316991845409643. Accessed 9 Oct. 2026.
- Chicago: Donald J. Trump, "Agent in Jack Smith case says he was kept in dark that...," Truth Social, September 22, 2026, archived at trump.fm, https://trump.fm/post/ts_117316991845409643.

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