Sen. Lindsey Graham is vowing to take the Biden administration — and a major telecom provider — to court, escalating a simmering feud over how federal investigators accessed lawmakers’ phone records during the Trump-era election probes.
Speaking on the Senate floor, Graham denounced efforts to roll back a little-noticed provision in a recent government funding bill that allows members of Congress to sue the Justice Department if their phone records were obtained without their knowledge. Under that language, lawmakers could recover up to $500,000 in taxpayer money per violation.
Graham, one of several Republican senators whose records were reportedly swept up as part of special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into attempts to overturn the 2020 election, said he intends to use that new legal pathway himself.
“I’m going to sue Biden’s DOJ and Jack Smith, I’m going to sue Verizon,” Graham declared, promising to seek far more than the $500,000 figure mentioned in the statute.
The controversy centers on a clause buried in a broader spending package passed earlier this year. After both parties faced backlash over the perception that Congress was quietly authorizing retroactive payouts for its own members, the House recently voted to repeal the provision. Graham responded by blocking that repeal in the Senate, effectively keeping the lawsuit option alive — at least for now.
Critics, including some Republicans in the House, have blasted the measure as self-serving, arguing that lawmakers should not be first in line for compensation when ordinary citizens have little recourse against similar government overreach. One GOP representative described the retroactive design of the payout language as crossing a line from “good governance” into clear self-dealing.
Graham and his allies frame the fight very differently. They say the phone-records subpoenas were an abuse of power by federal prosecutors and that allowing lawsuits is a necessary check on the Justice Department — particularly in politically sensitive investigations.
The standoff now leaves Congress in an awkward position: a sitting senator is threatening to personally sue the current president’s Justice Department, the special counsel probing Donald Trump, and a major private company, all while the legislative branch wrangles over whether it should have given itself that legal weapon in the first place.
Whether Graham ultimately files his promised lawsuits, and whether the controversial payout provision survives repeal efforts, could shape not only his own legal battle but also how aggressively future investigators treat the communications of lawmakers under scrutiny.
