House Votes To Nix Controversial Provision That Could Enrich Senators

The House of Representatives voted unanimously Wednesday evening to repeal a new law allowing senators to sue the federal government for massive sums over secretly subpoenaed phone records.

House lawmakers voted 426 to 0 to overturn the provision tucked inside a recent government funding bill, which permitted senators — and no House members — to sue the Department of Justice for $500,000 or more for each violation if their electronic records are requested without their knowledge. The measure, however, is likely dead on arrival in the upper chamber due to Senate Majority Leader John Thune’s defense of the new law.

“We’ll see what the House does, but I will tell you that that was designed — that was a Senate-specific solution,” Thune told reporters Wednesday. “We strengthened that provision when it comes to allowing a federal government agency, the Justice Department, in this case, to collect information, private information, on individual senators. We think that is a violation of powers under the Constitution.”

“I believe that you need to have some sort of accountability and consequence for that kind of weaponization,” Thune also said Wednesday.

The controversial provision, quietly inserted into a bipartisan Senate deal to end the record-breaking government shutdown, came in response to recently unearthed documents subpoenaed by Judiciary chairman Sen. Chuck Grassley. The records showed that former special counsel Jack Smith tapped 10 Republican senators’ telephone metadata in 2022 as part of the FBI’s “Arctic Frost” investigation into President Donald Trump over alleged election interference.

Republicans have cried foul due to Smith seizing their phone records without notification. Smith notably sought gag orders for the subpoenas, permitted