Sen. Lindsey Graham blocked a move by Democrats Thursday to repeal a provision included in last week’s deal to end the government shutdown that permits senators to sue federal investigators for $500,000 if their phone records are accessed without their knowledge.
After the House of Representatives unanimously passed a bill to repeal the law on Wednesday, New Mexico Democratic Sen. Martin Heinrich sought unanimous consent to send it through the Senate – the same means by which the chamber was able to pass the Epstein Transparency Act so swiftly this week – only to be thwarted by Graham.
Heinrich argued that the law, which requires service providers to inform senators if their data is subpoenaed or face a sizable penalty, was indicative of a Congress that “is not serving the people.”
“Last week Republicans in Congress passed a government funding bill that denies affordable healthcare to millions of Americans,” he said.
“But what most people don’t know is that they also voted to provide millions of dollars to a few Republican senators in a blatant, tax-funded cash grab.”
The new law applies retroactively to 2022, meaning that any senators whose records were subpoenaed by then-Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith as part of his investigation into the plot to overturn the 2020 presidential election could be entitled to compensation.
Graham was one of those senators who objected to stopping the repeal’s unanimous passage.
“What did I do wrong?” he asked in justifying his position, rejecting the suggestion that Smith had acted on a lawful subpoena.
“What did I do to allow the government to seize my personal phone and my official phone when I was Senate Judiciary chairman?”
He then asked Senate Majority Leader John Thune whether the provision had been agreed upon with his Democratic counterpart, Chuck Schumer, the Ethics Committee, and other relevant panels, to which Thune answered in the affirmative.
“So this wasn’t Republicans doing this,” Graham said. “This was people in the Senate believing what happened to the Senate need never happen again.”
Thune proposed adjusting the law to “address the question that has been raised about personal enrichment” by suggesting that any damages won as a result of it should be “forfeited to the United States Treasury.”
“This measure is about accountability and not profit,” he said.
But Heinrich in turn objected to that proposal, responding: “I think we should work with our colleagues in the House to address the underlying issue of protecting members without the outrageous damage provisions that were retroactively put into this statute.”
Senate Republicans complained last month that their phones had been “tapped” by the FBI during Joe Biden’s administration as part of Smith’s investigation into the 2020 election plot.
They pointed to a single-page document released publicly by Senate Judiciary chair Chuck Grassley a day before Attorney General Pam Bondi appeared before his committee, which showed that an agent performed “preliminary toll analysis” of nine senators’ phone records, to claim that more was going on and that it had been a politically-motivated task, rather than a routine investigative duty.
Toll records reveal only which numbers were dialled, when, and for how long any calls took place. They do not include the contents of messages or conversations, which would require a court-approved wiretap to access.
Graham was one of those demanding answers about the alleged “spying” from Bondi, who said she could not speak about the details of the call data for “very good reasons.”
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