Government officials responsible for spying on the private communications of lawmakers must be prosecuted, Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., said.

She pointed to newly declassified records that she said expose one of the most serious abuses of federal law enforcement power in U.S. history.

In a New York Post opinion column, Stefanik accused former special counsel Jack Smith's investigative team of illegally obtaining and reviewing her private text messages, along with those of dozens of other members of Congress, during the Biden administration's investigation of President Donald Trump.

"Government officials responsible for spying on the private communications of lawmakers must be prosecuted," Stefanik wrote, saying the actions represented an assault on the Constitution's separation of powers.

Stefanik said she first suspected she had been targeted after whistleblowers disclosed last year that Smith's investigation, known as "Arctic Frost," had secretly gathered communications involving Republican senators.

Stefanik said records released this week by Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., confirmed her suspicions.

The records indicate Smith's team accessed text messages involving 44 current and former members of Congress without first allowing a Justice Department filter team to review potentially privileged communications, Grassley's office said in a July 14 release.

Those lawmakers included Republicans and Democrats from both chambers.

Grassley said the investigative team bypassed standard procedures designed to protect privileged material, including communications covered by the Constitution's Speech or Debate Clause.

"Jack Smith's criminal investigation of President Trump was a runaway train that had no brakes," Grassley said in a statement.

He said investigators "ignored their own routine investigative protocols" while reviewing work-related congressional communications and vowed to bring Smith before the Senate Judiciary Committee for questioning.

Johnson called the disclosures "yet another grotesque example of the Biden administration's weaponization of the Justice Department," accusing Smith's investigators of disregarding established safeguards.

Stefanik argued that the disclosures reinforce longtime Republican claims that the investigations into Trump extended far beyond the former president himself.

"As President Trump has always said, the illegal weaponization of judicial power that has plagued him for the last decade was never just about him," she wrote. "It was directed against all his supporters, and anyone who spoke out against these abuses."

Stefanik also accused Smith of misleading Congress about the scope of the surveillance and said anyone responsible for unlawfully accessing lawmakers' communications should face criminal accountability.

"The American people sent us to Washington to defend the Constitution," she wrote, "not to let it be shredded by politically motivated investigators."