The Biden administration’s 2020 “Arctic Frost” spying on Republicans in Congress and hundreds of conservative citizens may be the worst political scandal in U.S. history – and we’ve only seen the tip of that iceberg.

That’s the considered opinion of Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley, who was among the dozen-plus Capitol Hill victims in the spy scandal – and who on Tuesday was able to grill the cellular phone company that he says handed his records over to the government without a second thought.

“It’s got to be right at the top” of all the nation’s political scandals of the past 250 years, Hawley told The Heartlander in an exclusive interview Wednesday.

“I mean, I don’t know what would be worse than that, just because, listen, it targeted not just sitting members of Congress – that’s no good because it violates the Constitution – but to me, what’s worse is that the Biden Justice Department went after normal, everyday citizens, working people in this country. 

“They took down Facebook posts by people in the state of Missouri who had questions about school board meetings. They went and knocked on the door, sent the FBI to the homes of working Missourians who had come to the Capital, I mean the city, on Jan. 6 to hear President Trump speak. And they get FBI agents showing up at their door – they get their bank accounts investigated, the records requested by the FBI. 

“This is the same DOJ that sent SWAT teams to the homes of pro-lifers and used the anti-terrorism division of the FBI against parents. That all together has got to be the worst abuse of power against ordinary citizens in American history. I don’t know what would be worse. I don’t know of anything more extensive than that. 

“And we’re just at the tip of the iceberg in terms of accountability. We need to find out who is involved. These people need to be appropriately disciplined, punished, and we need to make sure it never happens again.”

An enraged Hawley pelted a Verizon representative in a Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing – and found the company’s excuses wanting.

“Well, Verizon’s answers are ridiculous. And I just want to be clear about this: What Verizon did is, when they got a subpoena for my phone records, they didn’t bother to inform me to ask any questions. And it wasn’t just me. It was a dozen other members of Congress. 

“Just think about what they’re doing with your phone records, if they’ll do that to my records. They just handed them over to the government. 

“As it turns out, it was totally illegal to do so. The law requires when there’s a subpoena for a member of Congress, for a senator’s records, they have to inform the senator. And Verizon didn’t ask a single question. They didn’t inform me. 

“Now, if they will do that with a member of Congress, they’ll do it to anybody. And you know they are.  

“So basically, what I learned was, Verizon doesn’t care about your privacy. They don’t care about your security. T-Mobile, same thing, same answer. They didn’t ask any questions. They just said to these bureaucrats, ‘Here, go ahead, take all the records. Take them all.’  

“And it’s exactly what we’ve seen for the last four years, where banks handed over people’s personal statements, where various employers just gave personal data to these roving bands of bureaucrats who were trying to prove that innocent, ordinary people had done something wrong by exercising their First Amendment rights. 

“This has got to stop. We have free speech in America. We’ve got to protect it.”

“I recognize we should have had a better process” at the time of the scandal, the Verizon official acknowledged, while maintaining the company thought it had good reason to hand over the records to the Biden administration.

Besides the audacity of the Biden administration issuing secret subpoenas for Republican members of Congress’ phone records, Hawley argued it’s illegal as well – noting “statutes in place on the books in 2020 require notification to sitting members of Congress if their information is subpoenaed in any way.”

“They can find you when they want to bill you,” Hawley said of the cell phone company during the hearing. “They can find you in a heartbeat. When it comes time to protect your data, they’re nowhere to be found. It is absolutely a disgrace. …

“Frankly, I think what you’ve done here is outrageous and I think the implications for the privacy of the American people are absolutely unbelievable.”