The House voted unanimously Thursday to cancel the policy that allowed senators to sue the government for hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages if their electronic records were unknowingly seized.
Senate leaders slipped a provision into the chamber’s November continuing resolution paving the way for the payouts. This under-the-radar move came after some Republican senators raised concerns that Jack Smith, a former special counsel for the Department of Justice, obtained their phone records in 2023 as part of a Biden-era probe into the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. House members from both parties were surprised and infuriated that the Senate added the language to a must-pass bill.
Thursday’s amendment to do away with the ability to obtain damages was attached to a package of six House-passed government funding bills. The House will send the package to the Senate before leaving Washington for the rest of the month, meaning that the Senate must either accept the measure or shut down parts of the government come Jan. 30.
The provision the House killed would have benefited the eight Republican senators whose phone records were obtained without notice: –Sens. Josh Hawley, Bill Hagerty, Marsha Blackburn, Lindsey Graham, Dan Sullivan, Cynthia Lummis, Tommy Tuberville and Ron Johnson. The senators would be able to sue the federal government for up to $500,000.
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House members from both parties cried foul last fall after learning it was quietly slipped into the funding package passed by the Senate in November to end the 43-day government shutdown. House Speaker Mike Johnson admitted he was not aware it was included in the package until after the Senate passed the bill.
Many Republican senators also said they were blindsided by the provision and were frustrated with Senate leaders when they learned it was in the November funding bill.
Though the House passed the funding measure to avoid prolonging the government shutdown, the chamber quickly voted later in November to repeal the measure. Senate Majority Leader John Thune has refused to bring the House’s stand-alone bill to repeal the provision up for a vote.
House leadership knew that in order to lock in support for the final appropriations bills they would need to repeal the measure, a source familiar with the matter told NOTUS. Johnson and House Majority Leader Steve Scalise had been forecasting to the Senate for weeks that adding in language to strip the provision as part of the latest package of funding bills was part of the calculus to getting the remaining appropriations bills over the line, the source added.
Leadership promised members they would find a fix on the issue back when it was originally uncovered in the continuing resolution, the source said. The final package of bills was believed to be the appropriate time to stick the Senate with it in a must-pass funding bill, the source added.
Sen. Chuck Grassley, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee and in October released the FBI document that showed the agency obtained senators’ cell phone data, told reporters Thursday that he would only support the House vote if it condemned the initial investigation, led by Smith, into the Jan. 6 attack. The House provision makes no mention of the investigation and just repeals the language allowing senators to sue.
“If that vote will show that Arctic Frost was an abuse of power and a weaponization of the Department of Justice in the previous four years, then I’d be in favor of that,” Grassley said.
Thune’s office did not respond to NOTUS’ request for comment on the House amendment.
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