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House Republicans Move To Block Jan. 6 Payout For Republican Senators

WASHINGTON — Congress is set to repeal a controversial new law allowing certain U.S. senators to claim millions of dollars in damages from the Justice Department.

It’s revenge for House Republicans, who were furious when their Senate counterparts slipped what’s essentially a personal payday into a government funding bill that ended the longest government shutdown in U.S. history last fall.

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“Several weeks ago now, the Senate sent us legislation at the last minute that had we rejected it and sent it back, the government would have [stayed] shut down,” Rep. Austin Scott (R-Ga.) told HuffPost. “We’re in a similar position, only it’s reversed now.”

The law at issue allows senators — and only senators — to file claims for at least $500,000 in damages if the Justice Department used a subpoena to obtain their phone records without notifying their offices. Senators wrote the provision after learning last year that former special counsel Jack Smith had obtained several of their phone records during his investigation of President Donald Trump’s attempt to overthrow the 2020 election.

The repeal was attached to a must-pass appropriations package on Thursday. The Senate must approve the bill when it returns from its recess next week, or reject it, an unlikely scenario that will almost certainly cause another government shutdown, albeit a partial one affecting only certain agencies, on Jan. 30.

Republicans have accused Smith of overstepping constitutional boundaries and “spying” on them, though the records only reflected the timing of calls, not the contents of conversations. Coincidentally, during testimony on Thursday, Smith explained why he did it.

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“We had evidence that the president had directed Rudy Giuliani, one of his co-conspirators, to contact members of Congress to try to further delay the proceedings and exploit the violence that happened in the Capitol,” Smith told the House Judiciary Committee. “We had evidence that those calls had happened. We wanted to get more evidence of that, to corroborate it for trial.”

Most senators disavowed the payout provision, which was added to the government funding bill by Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) with the consent of Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.). Only Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) has said he would file a claim and hopefully get millions of dollars from the Justice Department.

Scott and other House Republicans were disgusted when they learned about the provision, saying it looked like an obvious self-enrichment scheme. Even though they mostly subscribe to Trump’s lies about Jan. 6, they unanimously added the repeal to a must-pass funding bill on Thursday.

“There were no public hearings on it. It should be reversed,” Scott said Thursday. “If they think that what they did is good policy and should be the law, then they should have an open debate and an open hearing on it and a vote on it.”

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Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), a leading critic of the senators-only damage awards, cheered the House action.

“This is a wrong-headed cash grab, and the Senate needs to end it next week,” Heinrich said.

Rep. Greg Steube (R-Fla.), who was so furious about the provision he voted against the government funding bill last fall, sounded pessimistic about senators voting to repeal it when they return to Washington next week.

“I don’t know if the Senate is going to take it up,” Steube told HuffPost. “They could strip it off and send it back. The Senate can do all sorts of different stuff.”