Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee Charles Grassley (R-IA) used the occasion of his opening statement to the Committee hearing on Kash Patel’s nomination as Director of the FBI to announce the release of whistleblower records, revealing that the 2022 federal case against Donald Trump for his alleged conduct following the 2020 election (Special Counsel Jack Smith’s “Elector Case") was initiated within the FBI by then-FBI agent Timothy Thibault. Thibault, who was ousted from the FBI for his overtly public anti-Trump stance, in violation of the Hatch Act, not only began the investigation which came to be called “Arctic Frost,” but also acted outside of established protocol to approve the opening of his own case. Grassley and Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), Chairman of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, together released the documentation, which includes a series of internal FBI emails and other supporting documents.