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)
Sue Jack Smith and the DemocRat party
Maybe Speaker Johnson will attach the Houses’ “ Reverse Surveillance Payments to Senators” to the next CR on Jan 30th, as an after early Christmas ‘return’. Johnson is a MAGA man politician, right?
This is Hegelian – they’re setting precedent by vetoing this bill bc they shouldn’t be able to capitalize on fed illegal surveillance. Once the congressmen have it on record, it will then apply to us as well.
Senators will all be asking the government to illegally surveil them.
You mean like the Cadillac healthcare plan and retirement plan that Congress has will apply to us We The MAGA People?
“No one should be able to enrich themselves because the federal government wronged them, no elected official should be able to.”
It’s almost as if the committee chair slipped that last part in just in time, to stop any outcry from those of us who can see right through them.
Too late. We know.
No one should be able to enrich themselves if the government wronged them ?
Does that mean you could not sue the government?
Did I read that correctly?
I look at it as market power. If the Executive branch can direct its employees to Surveil certain Legislators of the same Party then expose that they did it, it becomes a fast track to grifting the system. They can create payouts for certain people. If that payout happened to be donated back to a SuperPAC, I have a problem with that.
“Hey, I’m falling behind on my 4th mortgage, can you start an investigation on me?”
Read Dial 911 and Die.
Not sure if you’re serious or sarcastic but…
Your comment would make sense if they didn’t carve out a very specific exception for themselves. LOTS of Americans have seen their 4A rights trampled by the Courts and by the FBI. In a just society, the people responsible would be hanged in public.
Do you see them taking care of actual Americans instead of their fat bloated corrupt selves?
Damn right you don’t.
Why wasn’t it stripped out before they passed it???
Everyone wanted the government to reopen as soon as possible; President Trump was poised to sign the legislation that night–and DID! Air travel was getting worse by the minute and travelers were FURIOUS with elected officials; it was front page news, everywhere, and the Thanksgiving holiday was quickly approaching. Full SNAP benefits weren’t being distributed, multiple courts were involved, and the economy was taking a significant hit. Our troops, air traffic controllers and additional staff involved in air travel and safety, as well as countless other Federal workers weren’t being paid. Programs for small businesses were on hold and many owners were really hurting. And the list goes on and on . . . .
And the “crises” keep happening….its an old trick….unfortunately many never catch on to it.
because actually it was a payoff to get the bill passed.
Apparently, we STILL have to pass the bill, to find out what’s in it.
Because it then would have had to go back to Senate for a re-vote, and the shutdown would have been extended for several more days.
What 9 senators? Names of uniparty members.
Those that were discovered to have been illegally surveilled, like some of their constituents that were also terrorized, arrested, jailed, abused and financially destroyed.
Per “Perplexity”: Lindsey Graham, Bill Hagerty, Josh Hawley, Dan Sullivan, Tommy Tuberville, Ron Johnson, Cynthia Lummis, and Marsha Blackburn.
Also from Perplexity
“Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina is the only senator who has publicly stated that he plans to file a lawsuit over the subpoenas related to his phone records as permitted by the now-repealed $500,000 provision. Other senators eligible for the payout, such as Marsha Blackburn, have indicated their interest is more on a legal or institutional remedy rather than seeking monetary damages, and most have not announced intentions to sue. No other named senators have confirmed plans to file lawsuits at this time.”
There is a difference from reimbursing legitimate costs arising from unlawful surveillance, and receiving punitive damages.
Has anyone sorted that from the morass of incomplete info and rampaging polemic surrounding this? What kind of bubble do these people live in to do something so unwise in the present political climate.
I wonder if they were played; if this was done TO them rather than FOR them. Something dangled in a weak moment, proffered in an innocent way, then otherwise written into the legislation to ravage their personal credibility and sabotage their re-electability and legislative temperament?
It is the Beltway you know. Sh*t Happens like that. Setting this up might even have been part of the initial motive of the surveillance. They tend to play the long game when in comes to setting up and destroying whom they want to replace with improved puppets.
Rand Paul and Lindsay Graham were the top senators wanting the provision into the bill to pay them thousands at the last minute. Rand Paul is now another useless thug like all the rest of them
Nobody reads the garbage they force us to live by.
That’s why Elon left so quick, he was a threat. They convinced Trump that cutting all this waste he found is just too much trouble and they must spend more money.
“And I’m a-thinkin that nobody what said a great big reimburse sounded like a good i’dee actually did take a sit down to see the final what actu’l be a-writtin by them beady-eyed-back-stabbin’ weasels they run with. They’d-a never got that’n past an old boy like me.
200 years from now it’ll still be a-goin on. Just you see. Rats and weasels. Ain’t no b’ar coming to clean it out cause there ain’t no honey to be had. It’s all been stole.”
Davy Crockett (c) 1831
what about the thc provision in the bill for you vapers? thats a plus in my opinion. big plus.😀
Typical DC Bravo Sierra! They collude and create problems….then offer “solutions” to the “problems” (they created) and then pass legislation based on those (created) problems and we, the taxpayers, get effed.
Funny, I didn’t see anything like that in the Constitution.
The only other thing they need is help from the Fed by printing more money for their pockets.
It occurred to me. I thought spending bills originated in the House. This amendment started in the Senate.
What hoop/verbiage did Senate use to get around that or do they just don’t care anymore since the Constitution is violated on a daily basis anyway?
“What are you going to do about it?”
It was attached to the clean CR that originated in the House.
Exactly. Grifters and cowards, all.
The practice that spending bills originate in the House is by custom, not the Constitution.
You mean to tell me the House has the ability to exercise the Legislature equivalent of a line item veto.
A veto implies unilateral action (as in the President, or a Governor). This House umbrage bill requires Senate concurrence: this will be interesting to see how it develops.
I think you mistook that my utter contemp flew out the window a long time ago.
As if I was being anymore serious than the clowns sent DC.
That is zero expectations.
Think of it this way, “It is sorta like that moment when you realize Santa Claus is a fib.”
Your still like I wanna believe, but to stop believing does that mean the goodies won’t be under the tree. So what does it really cost not to pretend. The BS is wrapped up into what is required at the moment in the name of pretense.
Sorry I missed the sarc. My bad… hard to grasp everyone’s wit here by handle alone. 🙂
Wait! What you mean…Santa Claus isn…(breaks down sobbing)
I think this is how we should operate in the future. Pass any scrappy CR with all the crooked log rolling involved, then pick the stuff nobody can defend to vote on, straight up/down for each item. Line item reverse log-rolling.
Simplerto pass legislation for only single item bills. Let’s burn all the fat out of these bills!
Yes. It was very odd to me that Jeffries, Schumer, etc were not out going crazy over this. More Uniparty shit. So as Sundance said, big shiny moment for publicity but will it ever get taken up in the Senate. I think we all know that answer. F’ers….
The House just admits that either they dont read the bills or they were complicit.
Given the length of the Bill; clearly not written by nothing more than the self-interest of ego-envy. Meaning, What? We House members don’t rate TDS hazard pay.
The House passes a YEA/Nay DOA Bill; 426-0.
435-426+6 not present in one form or another.
But, what the heck why not?
Truth? is/was possible blind vote on something else?
Don’t think for a moment, that’s not possible.
That folks is the outcome of lie rot.
Draw your own conclusions.
When you don’t believe a single word coming out of the echo box called the District of Columbia.
There is a ton of software products that will compare two different documents and show you where every word added is highlighted in green, every word modified is in red and deleted words are struck out. There is no excuse for “hidden” text to slip past anyone including an aid. This was slipped in on purpose. They always have a hidden agenda for their “mistakes”.
Exactly. I think we should abolish Congress. All they do is enrich themselves at the trough. Worse than useless.
They read it.
And they were NOT complicit.
But the pressure to reopen the government was intense.
That they came back to delete this is admirable.
Now let’s see what the Senate does 🙂
They care enough to muster up some real pretense.
I will pretend I’m impressed.
Unfortunately, for the US, the Senate is nothing but a self serving shitshow.
Were snap beneficiaries and others, aided by Dem lawfare, getting ready to sue the govt. over damages incurred during the shutdown—like a class action suit—for millions or billions of dollars? That mostly makes no sense, BUT! After POTUS Trump leaves office, will all kinds of suits be brought against the Govt over failure to honor USAID or other cancelled payments even though they were fraudulent? Is there more to the issue of cancelling the payments to injured Senators than meets the eye? Otherwise I have nothing. Some things boggle the mind!
Expand that to include any citizen who has been improperly surveilled without proper warrants. Restrict it to not include members of congress because they should be under constant surveillance.
❤️
Since that includes every single American citizen, we’d probably get a buck or two out of that lawsuit.
The uniparty has shown us their colors again. I hope y’all understand what this really means. It means forget the First Amendment.
If the government screws us peasants, then, in Steil’s opinion, we
probably deserve it andshouldn’t complain or demand to be compensated for the damage they caused us.What Thune did is reprehensible and he should be censured for it, and Steil should shut his totalitarian mouth.
Put them all in stocks naked, between the Reflecting Pool and the Washington Monument, in mid-winter .. and allow passing citizens to throw rubbish in their faces!
Think like a Founder..
27A: “No law varying the compensation for the services of the Senators and Representatives shall take effect, until an election of Representatives shall have intervened.”
Though not in the original draft, I suspect the Founders would have frowned upon voting yourself a windfall from the Treasury for a transgression of the Executive Branch. They couldn’t anticipate every situation – and repeatedly stated that our form of government can only stand if represented by honorable persons.
The Senate is twisting the Constitution into a pretzel… as usual. Their remedies of course, are to change the laws to increase punishments for such specific activity, defund or remove the transgressors from office with an impeachment trial, or refer a criminal matter to the DOJ (without the expectation of compensation). Those would be the honorable methods.
The “honorable persons” part is what we are missing…
These are nothing more than payoffs for allowing Jack Smith the global extortionist to knowingly place them in surveillance and when the rest of Congress and Senators lay in silence it’s positive proof.
When Speaker Johnson rose up on his hind legs to excoriate Senate RINOs for inserting this obscene provision into a previously clean CR, my Scarlet eyebrow went up…
I said to myself, “Methinks you protest too much, Johnson.”
Were we being treating to Act whatever in the continuing, crafted pantomime put on to assure us of Republican/Democrat rectitude?
And then I waited…
It didn’t take long.
Amazing what constitutes a “Clean CR” these days, eh?
It’s exhausting watching this Theater Of The Absurd.
What’s worse is we already know the plot of every episode, past present and future.
Yes indeed, sis…no new content, just repeats.
Not sure I’d call it a pretense by the house. It was a ridiculous show of greed and supercity by the senators and its refreshing to see the house stick it to them. While its a slim reach, at least it shows some little touch with the people who are living by paychecks and not the ability to make their beds rich by decree.
I’m having a Charlton Heston on the beach in Planet of the Apes moment.
Sue Jackie smith and all the radical Democrat party’s,
Maybe the last minute abortion bill won’t be needed this election. GOP payoffs is a good stay at home issue too. Not possible this is accidental.
Uniparty requires that leadership ebb and flow: POTUS is making too much good progress, so Uniparty RINO’s must step in and sabotage the 2026 mid-term in order to hand power to the democrats.
As mentioned by others: look for the House incumbant retirement wave to hit early next year, eliminating 12 encumbant seat advantages.
Spot on. The right side of the uniparty is scared to support PDJT47, so they squandered the first year of his administration on nonsensical squabbling after passing the BBB as cover. Now that election season is upon us again, they will continue to do nothing to leverage their majority status and threaten the cash flowing into their pockets until they can safely return to their cozy spot as the principled opposition.
They honestly think they can go back to the old ways. The bad news is they are probably right.
Why not fine those who authorized the illegal spying and turn those funds over to the victims? Why use our hard earned tax dollars? Two things the Feds excel at is incompetence and lack of accountability!!! JMO
❤️
They could “slip” in a Balanced Budget Amendment if they ever really wanted to.
Lawsuit for thee, but not for me?
They put their pants on one leg at a time, so, what makes the different or better than me?
None are royalty but most are dolts…
That “reach across the aisle” feel? The Senate won’t reach back….
Same as it ever was…
The pundit class loves to tell us that Russia and/or China are our worst enemies. They are wrong.
The UniParty is our mortal enemy-the most dangerous enemy we have.
We cannot defeat them at the ballot box because they own the ballot boxes. There is no political path to victory.
We must unite in prayer, asking our Heavenly Father to deliver us from the evil UniParty. We must put our faith in Jesus Christ and pray for victory.
This is the ONLY path to victory.
It’s a circus and we’re the monkeys being trained to go from one trapeze to another.
See, Congress can do rescission bills when it makes them look good. How long did that take? Two weeks? Now do rescission bills for other unpopular spending like NGOs spending taxpayer dollars overseas on unpopular programs. Twenty of these bills each targeting a $50B program comes to a trillion dollars.
Maybe this is how we should budget in the future: pass a CR, any CR, then force single up/down votes on individual programs that voters don’t want until there is a balance between expenditures and receipts.
The modern-day role of being a United States Senator has become nothing but a self-enrichment scheme. Every single thing they do and say, and every waking moment of their life as a Senator, is directed towards enriching themselves.
And now it’s all just thrown in the faces of the American people. I could not be more disgusted with these charlatans. They are despicable. Every single one of them.
Two wings of the same bird. I noticed the cynicism SD.
We never seem to get the answer to the question; “who inserted the language” into the Bill?
Who had the pen? Who writes the bill? Names are never named, only sponsoring legislators, Why is that?
Why not add some stronger jail time and civil fines to those that illegally spy? If they went to jail and lost their pension that might be a deterrent, you think?
I propose that Melania receive a $billion dollars, taken out of the FBI’s operating budget, for each pair of her unmentionables seized by these guys.
That image looks like something out of a cheaply made horror movie.
They look awfully familiar…
Those guys have such shovel ready faces. Errr I mean they have shi—y government jobs that they are shi–y at.
John Thune and the parable of the snake. Surprise, anyone?
Ladies & Gentlemen,
Please remain seated for the entire performance.
Signed,
The UniParty
Et tu, Massie?
Pretending to agree on something, shameful and very misleading. Personally the Senators should file civil lawsuits against Jack and the former bad actors, but they want another Government payday thanks to US. We the people can’t sue the Government but the Senate put a law in so they could. Time for them to go.
Nice own-goal play to ensure the R’s lose the Senate in 2026. The D campaign ads practically write themselves:
“Did you know these Republican Senators deviously slipped language into the bill to open the government that will give each of them millions of dollars? Help me get these crooks out the Senate by sending lots of money to me at http://www.Campaign4Commies.”
The obvious solution here is for Congress to pass a bill that strips immunity from judges and doj officials, all hands that touched surveillance of Congress or exec officials, and make it retroactive to 2015
Why stop there? Those same judicial and DOJ AND IC hands are the ones who SOUGHT as well as approved the surveillance on all of us, too. I certainly could use 500 grand, and so could every other ordinary citizen.
And of course Graham looking to garner re-election votes by calling for legislation to include a citizen’s right to sue the Jack Smith surveillance team: https://justthenews.com/government/congress/monlindsey-graham-introduce-legislation-letting-americans-impacted-jack-smith
F these Crap Weasels
Thune offered to revise the provision of the law, proposing the settlement instead go to the Treasury Department rather than enriching individual senators.
https://justthenews.com/government/congress/thune-offers-tweak-senate-phone-provision-send-money-lawsuits-treasury
So basically they would sue the government, get paid by the US Treasury, then give all the money right back to the US Treasury. Circle jerk.
The smoke and mirror magic show is for the clueless morass of American voters. Behind closed doors, one hand washes the other in the dirty game of politics.
John Thune, the Parable of the Snake. What did you expect?
I have an idea. Pass the House bill in the Senate, then pass a new bill allowing all of those affected senators to sue Judge Boasburg. Open and shut case that one.
The Senators that supported this addition to the bill should be revealed and primaried and/or recalled. This was simply grand theft of American tax dollars made legal by insertion in the bill.