Arctic Frost is the FBI’s 2020-election probe that later fed Special Counsel Jack Smith’s elector case. This page is the Scott Perry phone docket, not a theory about the whole probe.
A later D.D.C. memorandum opinion in No. 22-sc-2144 states the facts in the court’s own words. The FBI seized Rep. Scott Perry’s personal cell phone on a Middle District of Pennsylvania warrant and made a forensic copy. “Former Chief Judge Beryl Howell issued the warrant” from D.D.C. to review that extraction, “with the proviso that Representative Perry would have an opportunity to assert any claims of privilege under the Speech or Debate Clause.” Date of the D.D.C. warrant, as stated in Howell’s December 28, 2022, opinion and in docket reconstructions: August 18, 2022.
On December 28, 2022, Howell, after in-camera review, ordered Perry to disclose the vast majority of the 2,219 records he had withheld and denied a stay. The D.C. Circuit later stayed that order, then remanded in In re Sealed Case, 80 F.4th 355 (D.C. Cir. 2023), holding that the district court had not applied the fact-specific Gravel inquiry to many communications. A successor judge then re-reviewed the set. The Grassley-released January 13, 2023, briefing notes separately record: “Chief Judge Howell issued a favorable opinion granting us access to all but a small set of documents that Perry tried to withhold,” denied a stay, and had “warrant applications for Perry’s iCloud and email pending.” Those sentences are in a released Justice Department document. They are the government’s description of her orders. They are not a finding that she plotted the seizure.