Posted originally on CTH on November 20, 2025 | Sundance

As noted last week, the Senate included a provision in the government reopening bill to allow Republican Senators to sue the DOJ and data providers who comply with subpoenas for senator’s telephone and email records.

Nine senators who previously were targeted by Jack Smith and Arctic Frost subpoenas likely stand to make millions from lawsuits under the legislation.

In the latest round of DC pretending, the House voted 426-0 to repeal that specific law and terminate the Senate payday.  Is the Senate going to take up the bill, of course not.  However, the House now has another useless talking point (strong in the pearl clutching is this one) to campaign and fundraise with.

House members are great actors, very upset – very, and their level of pretense is excellent on this repeal bill. The unanimous vote really gives both wings of the uniparty, that reach across the aisle, a selling feature for the next election.

WASHINGTON DC – The House unanimously voted 426-0 Wednesday night to claw back language in last week’s government funding bill that could award some GOP senators hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages for having their phone records unknowingly obtained by former special counsel Jack Smith.

The language, which was quietly slipped into the shutdown-ending package last week by Senate Majority Leader John Thune, drove bipartisan outrage in the House. Even outspoken critics of Smith — including House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), who is leading an investigation into the Biden-era probe — supported the effort to repeal a politically toxic measure that was quickly branded as a taxpayer-funded windfall for a select few.

“That policy, in my opinion — in the opinion I think of all the members of this institution — is unacceptable,” said House Administration Committee chair Bryan Steil (R-Wis.), during floor debate. “No one should be able to enrich themselves because the federal government wronged them, no elected official should be able to.”

The provision would allow senators to sue the federal government for $500,000 or more if their electronic data was subpoenaed without proper notification. But there are concerns over the language’s retroactivity — which would extend protections to at least eight Republican senators whose records were obtained as part of Smith’s investigation into Donald Trump’s attempts to subvert the 2020 election results.

There are no guarantees the bill to repeal the language will get a vote in the Senate. (read more)