The House of Representatives voted unanimously on Wednesday to advance a bill repealing a provision of the recent federal funding bill that allows U.S. Senators to sue the government for up to half a million dollars over their phone records being seized.
The affected records were data about when senators made calls, to whom, and how long those calls lasted between January 4 and January 7, subpoenaed as part of the federal government’s investigation into the fake electors schemes that followed the 2020 election.
Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville has been an especially vocal critic of what he has described as spying on the phones of U.S. Senators. On November 13, Tuberville posted that he would consider “[suing] the living hell out of every Biden official involved in this to make sure this NEVER happens to a conservative again.”
Earlier this week, Tuberville also told the Alabama Daily News that “I’m gonna sue the heck out of them.”
National Review contributing editor Andrew McCarthy, however, wrote last month that the reaction to the release of the phone records memo has frequently been “hyperbole.” The records subpoenaed, McCarthy pointed out, aren’t covered by people’s expectations of privacy under the Fourth Amendment according to well-established case law, and “pretending” that the subpoenas were unexpected or unforeseen upon their release helps spread a revisionist account of the January 6 riots.
On Thursday afternoon, despite having already said he plans to sue involved officials, Tuberville tweeted that “not a SINGLE taxpayer dollar should go towards paying for ‘damages’ or ‘legal fees’ incurred by Senators who were spied on by the Biden administration.”
The senator added that he is “focused on getting Judge Boasberg IMPEACHED and getting Jack Smith DISBARRED and thrown in prison.” The chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, James Boasberg approved the warrants for the seizure of senators’ phone records. Jack Smith was the appointed special counsel for the “Arctic Frost” investigation of attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
Senator Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina, defended the provision on the Senate floor on Thursday, arguing that backing down would set a bad precedent. By objecting, he blocked Sen. Martin Heinrich’s attempt to pass the House’s repeal by unanimous consent.
“All of us who were wronged need a remedy to that wrong,” Graham told his fellow senators. “We’re creating a chance to go to court for what happened to us in a fashion to make sure it never happens again.”
“I’m willing to work with my colleagues about the $500,000,” he stated. “I’m going to sue Biden’s DOJ and Jack Smith. I’m going to sue Verizon. It’s going to be a hell of a lot more than $500,000.”
“Let’s be clear what the law does, is that a group of folks can get over a half a million dollars for records that were obtained as part of a legitimate criminal investigation,” Sen. Gary Peters, D-Michigan, riposted. “It’s unconscionable that at a time when families across the country are feeling the squeeze and struggling to make ends meet that such a self-serving, retroactive provision was included in legislation to fund the government.”
Peters also stressed that the “records were obtained through a legal process in a criminal investigation related to January 6th regarding those senators’ potential involvement.”
“I’ve heard this described as potential political targeting but this whole situation arose from President Trump’s own efforts to overturn a free and fair presidential election,” he said. “During the Department of Justice’s investigation into this crime, the special counsel petitioned the court for a subpoena for those records, and the court approved it.”
Senator Katie Britt’s office did not respond to a request for comment before time of publication.
