FIRST ON FOX: Law enforcement officials have made more than 1,000 arrests and found dozens of missing children in Memphis, Tennessee, as part of President Donald Trump's crime crackdown in the notoriously violent city, Fox News Digital learned Wednesday. 

"From arresting more than 100 gang members to locating more than 70 missing children, our brave federal agents and local authorities are doing incredible work to protect the good people of Memphis," Attorney General Pam Bondi said Wednesday in comment to Fox News Digital. "Tolerating crime is a choice: under President Trump, we refuse to accept the victimization of innocent American citizens and will continue making our cities safe again." 

A White House official told Fox Digital that there have been 1,309 total arrests since September, when the operation officially launched, including nine arrests for homicide, 52 arrests for sex offenses, 527 for warrants and 132 for firearm offenses. 

Memphis, Tennessee, has long been one of America's most dangerous cities, frequently ranking in the top spot for violent crime and recording 40.6 homicides per 100,000 people in 2024. 

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Trump signed a presidential memorandum Sept. 15 that established the Memphis Safe Task Force and authorized the National Guard to report to the city. 

Tennessee is a red state, with Republican Gov. Bill Lee supporting and encouraging the administration's efforts to snuff out crime in the city. Lee said during a press conference earlier in October that the crime crackdown could last "forever" as federal officials converge on the city. 

"We do know this is going to last for months, and we have just begun," Lee said. "In fact, I will tell you that it will last forever." 

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The White House official told Fox News Digital that the operation has located 72 missing children and seized 247 firearms from the streets of Memphis, Tennessee. All in, law enforcement officials made 109 arrests of known gang members associated with groups such as Tren de Aragua or MS-13. 

The official provided Fox News Digital with a snapshot of arrests on the night of Oct. 21, including one man who was arrested on a warrant for aggravated rape of a child, the arrest of a known Grape Street Crip gang member on a warrant for kidnapping, aggravated assault, theft, domestic assault and parole violation, and the arrest of a known Bloods gang member on a warrant for harassment.

A known member of the gang Gangster Disciples, and a known member of the Vice Lords were also arrested Tuesday evening, according to the White House official. 

National Guard troops arrived in the city in September, with Bondi, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, and White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller meeting with the task force in Memphis, Tennessee, Oct. 1 to rally the team as the operation launched. 

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Local lawmakers, such as Democrat Rep. Steve Cohen, railed against the operation when it first launched. 

"Memphians are not enemies; they are Americans," Cohen said, The Associated Press reported in October. "They are entitled to constitutional rights, not their government working to ‘intimidate, demoralize, hunt and kill’ them. We are not a training ground or target practice."

The Memphis crime crackdown is a piece of a larger puzzle the administration is working on to obliterate crime trends in cities that have been racked by violence since 2020's crime spiral and before. 

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Trump federalized the Washington, D.C., police force in August in an ongoing effort to end crime in the nation's capital, and also has ordered troops to crime-riddled cities such as Portland, Oregon, and Chicago, but those operations have been ensnared in court battles. 

"Memphis is deeply troubled," Trump said on "Fox & Friends" in September. "We're going to fix that, just like we did in Washington."

Former special counsel Jack Smith is standing by his 2023 decision to subpoena several Republican lawmakers’ phone records, calling the move "entirely proper" and consistent with Justice Department policy.

Smith said through his lawyers in a letter obtained by Fox News Digital that the subpoenaed data, known as toll records, belonging to eight senators and one House member were carefully targeted to support his investigation into President Donald Trump’s alleged subversion of the 2020 election.

"As described by various Senators, the toll data collection was narrowly tailored and limited to the four days from January 4, 2021 to January 7, 2021, with a focus on telephonic activity during the period immediately surrounding the January 6 riots at the U.S. Capitol," Smith’s lawyers wrote Tuesday to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa.

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Toll records do not reveal the contents of phone calls but instead reveal when calls were made and to whom.

Smith's lawyers said that although Grassley, who brought the subpoenas to light, has not reached out to Smith, they felt compelled to write to the chairman to address claims from Republicans that Smith improperly spied on lawmakers.

Grassley responded to the letter, saying he would continue an unbiased probe into Arctic Frost, the name of the FBI investigation that led to Smith’s election-related prosecution of Trump.

"I’m conducting an objective assessment of the facts&law like he says he wants So far we exposed an anti-Trump FBI agent started the investigation/broke FBI rules &only REPUBLICANS were targeted SMELLS LIKE POLITICS," Grassley wrote on X.

The targeted senators included Republican Sens. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, Josh Hawley of Missouri and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. 

In addition to the eight senators, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, told Fox News' Sean Hannity Tuesday that he recently discovered Smith also attempted to subpoena his toll records but that his phone company, AT&T, did not hand them over.

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The Republicans have broadly claimed they were inappropriately spied on, and compared Arctic Frost to the Watergate scandal.

Smith’s lawyers emphasized the normalcy of seeking out phone records and said that public officials are not immune from investigation.

Smith brought four criminal charges against Trump alleging he illegally attempted to overturn the results of the 2020 election, but he dismissed the charges after Trump won the 2024 election, citing a DOJ policy that discourages prosecuting sitting presidents. 

Former special counsel Robert Hur sought toll records during his investigation into former President Joe Biden’s handling of classified documents. The DOJ subpoenaed phone records of former Democratic Sen. Robert Menendez, who is serving prison time after he was convicted in 2024 of corruption charges.

The first Trump administration subpoenaed phone records of Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., and then-Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., and dozens of congressional staffers from both parties as part of a leak investigation.

Former DOJ inspector general Michael Horowitz warned in a report about the leak probe that lawmakers’ records should only be subpoenaed in narrow circumstances because it "risks chilling Congress’s ability to conduct oversight of the executive branch."

Smith's lawyers also disputed FBI Director Kash Patel’s accusations that he attempted to hide the subpoenas "in a lockbox in a vault," noting that the former special counsel mentioned subpoenaing senators’ records in a footnote of his final special counsel report.

"Moreover, the precise records at issue were produced in discovery to President Trump’s personal lawyers, some of whom now serve in senior positions within the Department of Justice," Smith's lawyers said.