Lawmakers Blast Revised CR Allowing Senators to Sue Feds Over Jan. 6 Phone Surveillance
House lawmakers from both parties continued Wednesday to criticize new Senate language in the package to end the government shutdown (HR-5371) that would allow senators to sue federal agencies in response to reports of DOJ spying on some Republican lawmakers' phone records during the Biden administration. The Senate-approved provision targeted claims that the FBI and former Special Counsel Jack Smith accessed the phone records of several Republican lawmakers as part of the Biden administration’s probe of the Jan. 6 Capitol siege (see 2510170039). The House was set to vote Wednesday night on HR-5371, which could lead the FCC to restart most of its operations Thursday. The FCC suspended most of its functions when the government shutdown began Oct. 1. and furloughed 81% of its staff (see 2510010065). The Senate passed HR-5371 Monday night 60-40.
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The HR-5371 language that drew House lawmakers' ire would allow any senator “whose Senate data, or the Senate data of whose Senate office, has been acquired, subpoenaed, searched, accessed, or disclosed [without notice] may bring a civil action against the [U.S.] if the violation was committed by” a federal agency or officer. All but one of the nine Republicans whose records the FBI and Smith’s Arctic Frost Jan. 6 task force probed during the Biden administration was a senator, including Communications Subcommittee member Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee. The language would allow the senators to sue for $500,000 for federal spying retroactive to 2022.
The House Rules Committee on Tuesday night rejected an amendment from Rep. Teresa Leger Fernandez, D-N.M., to strike the senators-only lawsuit language from HR-5371, but several panel Republicans criticized the Senate for including it in the revised measure. Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, said during the meeting that many people will view the provision “as self-serving, self-dealing kind of stuff.” He was pressing Wednesday for the House to vote on a separate measure that would remove the provision after President Donald Trump signs HR-5371. Rep. Austin Scott, R-Ga., opposed the language but noted that removing it from HR-5371 would further prolong the shutdown.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., told reporters that enactment of the lawsuit language could lead to payments to "insurrectionist sympathizers.” Democrats are “going to tattoo that provision … on the forehead of every single House Republican who dares vote for” HR-5371, he said. House Judiciary Committee ranking member Jamie Raskin, D-Md., called the language “one of the most blatantly corrupt provisions for political self-dealing and the plunder of public resources ever proposed in Congress.”
Meanwhile, House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, said Wednesday that he has begun investigating what role the DOJ Office of Inspector General played in spying on GOP lawmakers. The panel launched a probe earlier this month into the participation of AT&T and Verizon in the surveillance (see 2511040070).
“One agent” of OIG was involved in the Aug. 9, 2022, seizure of the cellphone of Rep. Scott Perry, R-Pa., in relation to the Arctic Frost probe, Jordan said in a letter to acting Inspector General Don Berthiaume. Jordan also raised “concerns about the OIG’s potential involvement in obtaining [GOP lawmakers’] phone records given its prior involvement in obtaining [Perry’s] cell phone.” He said OIG used its resources to create a “forensic copy” of the contents of Perry’s phone, “including communications protected by common-law privileges as well as the Constitution’s Speech or Debate Clause.” OIG’s “assistance in imaging [Perry’s] phone raises serious concerns about why the OIG would be willing to sacrifice its independence to assist the FBI in advancing such a partisan investigation,” Jordan said.