Congressional investigators obtained an estimated 30 million lines of telephone metadata during the Democrat-led January 6 Select Committee’s probe into the 2021 Capitol riot, according to documents and testimony recently disclosed to federal investigators.
The large-scale data collection effort—revealed in an FBI memo from December 2023—has prompted new scrutiny over Congress’s ability to collect private communications records without judicial oversight.
Former Illinois Congressman Adam Kinzinger, one of two Republicans appointed by Democrats to serve on the committee, told the FBI that the data had been collected by former Rep. Denver Riggleman, a one-time Republican and senior technical adviser to the panel.
The memo, reviewed by Just the News, indicates that Kinzinger offered the full cache to the FBI without a warrant shortly before the 2024 presidential election.
“Kinzinger noted that he did not conduct the analysis himself but that Riggleman had identified certain telephone connections between numbers identified as being associated with the White House and certain individuals,” FBI agents wrote in their summary of the conversation.
The memo also stated that Riggleman “had a contact and was able to obtain toll information including for White House root or switchboard numbers via congressional subpoena.”
The offer to the FBI was made after the Jan. 6 committee had formally disbanded and months after Kinzinger had left Congress.
The scale of the data collection—described as roughly 30 million lines—was significantly larger than the 18 million lines previously disclosed by investigators in public statements and publications.
In a statement posted to his Substack on Wednesday, Kinzinger confirmed that he discussed the records with FBI agents in December 2023 but insisted that the data had been lawfully obtained in 2021 through congressional subpoenas.
“Congress used lawful subpoenas to obtain phone metadata in 2021. It was routine. It was reported. It was discussed openly,” Kinzinger wrote.
“In 2023, I had a brief discussion with members of the FBI reminding them of this data if they needed it in their investigation. Regardless, they didn’t seem interested and that was that.”
Although the committee’s subpoenas were public, they did not disclose the total amount of data collected or the decision to share the material with the FBI.
It remains unclear whether the bureau accepted or reviewed the information offered by Kinzinger.
The new revelations follow earlier reports that Special Counsel Jack Smith and the FBI obtained private phone records from multiple Republican lawmakers during investigations tied to the January 6 events.
According to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, those records included call metadata for eight Republican senators and one House member, collected between January 4 and January 7, 2021.
🚨 BREAKING: In a BOMBSHELL discovery, senators have uncovered that the Biden FBI SPIED on eight GOP senators during Jack Smith's "Arctic Frost" investigation that was eventually weaponized against President Trump.
— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) October 6, 2025
This is grounds for ARREST.pic.twitter.com/w8ToR403Lk
Grassley’s office also revealed that the FBI’s “Arctic Frost” investigation targeted dozens of GOP officials and organizations, including campaign groups linked to President Donald Trump.
Grassley said the FBI data collection included the phone records of Sens. Ron Johnson, Lindsey Graham, Josh Hawley, Tommy Tuberville, and others.
Grassley Et Al to Verizon – Toll Records by Red Voice News
“This document shows the Biden FBI spied on eight of my Republican Senate colleagues during its Arctic Frost investigation,” Grassley said in a statement.
“BIDEN FBI WEAPONIZATION = WORSE THAN WATERGATE.”
Kash Patel, the current FBI Director, confirmed that the memo documenting Kinzinger’s offer to the bureau was uncovered as part of an internal review.
Patel described the Jan. 6 committee’s massive collection as “baseless monitoring of members of Congress.”
He added that the bureau has since “terminated employees, abolished the weaponized CR-15 squad, and initiated an ongoing investigation with more accountability measures ahead.”
Former Senate Judiciary Committee lawyer Mike Davis, who now leads the Article 3 Project, said the scale of the congressional data collection could trigger a legal challenge over congressional immunity under the Constitution’s Speech and Debate Clause.
“This episode will test the limits of congressional immunity and whether it affords protection to activity that constitutes a criminal conspiracy to violate Americans’ civil rights,” Davis said.
Mike Howell, president of the Oversight Project, described the January 6 Committee’s actions as “an absolute violation of civil rights that far exceeded anything it ever purported to be investigating.”
Riggleman, who left Congress in 2021, has previously described the committee’s data analysis in his 2022 book The Breach: The Untold Story of the Investigation into January 6th.
In the book, he wrote that his team “analyzed phone numbers that belonged to those in the Trump family, rallygoers, rally planners, influencers like Flynn, Stone, and Bannon; and many others,” and used subpoenaed call records to identify White House-linked numbers and other communications.
After leaving the committee, Riggleman became a data consultant for Hunter Biden’s legal team in 2023, helping analyze materials related to the Biden laptop controversy.
The newly surfaced FBI memo documenting Kinzinger’s contact adds to concerns about the extent of congressional surveillance powers and their use in politically charged investigations.
Grassley has requested information from telecommunications companies and multiple federal agencies to determine the full scope of data shared with federal investigators during the January 6 probe.
