[Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 196 (Thursday, November 20, 2025)]
[Senate]
[Pages S8262-S8265]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       UNANIMOUS CONSENT REQUESTS

  Mr. THUNE. I would say to the Senator from South Carolina the answer 
to that is yes.
  Mr. GRAHAM. Was this provision socialized with committees of relevant 
jurisdiction?
  Mr. THUNE. The answer is yes.
  Mr. GRAHAM. Was this issue sent to the Ethics Committee?
  Mr. THUNE. Yes.
  Mr. GRAHAM. OK. So this wasn't Republicans doing this; this was 
people in

[[Page S8263]]

the Senate believing what happened in the Senate need never happen 
again.
  What happened in the Senate? There is a statute right on point that 
governs data to be released by the Sergeant at Arms, and it says in 
that statute: Notwithstanding a judicial order, data from the Senate 
cannot be released by subpoena or even a judicial order without the 
body being notified because of the separation of powers issue.
  That statute was violated, and there is no remedy. What are we trying 
to do to make sure this doesn't happen again to me or you? The reason I 
think Senator Schumer went with Senator Thune is they are worried about 
the body here.
  We have a contract with Verizon--the Senate does--that requires us to 
be notified if any Senator's phone records are requested or any member 
working for the body.
  There were 197 subpoenas issued in Arctic Frost. There are 430 
Republican groups--Turning Point USA, the Republican National 
Committee, the Republican Attorney Generals Association, the 
Conservative Partnership Institute, Mark Meadows, Stephen Miller--400-
some groups that were targeted.
  What was going on here? What was Jack Smith up to? What was he trying 
to do? I think what he was trying to do is use lawfare against Donald 
Trump. Within 3 days of saying ``I am running again for President in 
2022 for the 2024 cycle,'' Jack Smith was appointed special counsel. 
Within 8 or 9 months, 91 charges were levied against President Trump in 
New York, Manhattan; Atlanta; Washington, DC; and the bluest of blue.
  I wound up getting subpoenaed by Fani Willis in Fulton County and 
spent $1.2 million going to that grand jury, having to testify what I 
did as Judiciary chairman.
  If you will remember, on January 6, I was actually here. I think I 
did my part to make sure we certified the election. I voted to certify 
everything.
  So what is going on here? Nobody actually knows.
  And to the two leaders of the body, thank you for making sure we are 
going to do something to protect the Senate not only from what happened 
to us but what could happen to anybody in the future.
  This is really outrageous. You want to use that word. I am really 
outraged that my private cell phone and my official phone were 
subpoenaed without cause, that a judge would suggest that I would 
destroy evidence or tamper with witnesses if I were told about what was 
going on. I am sure the other Senators--Hagerty, Hawley, Sullivan, 
Tuberville, Johnson, Scott, Lummis, Blackburn, Ted Cruz, at least one 
staff member, the Speaker of the House. Now we know Kevin McCarthy--
they asked for his phone records the day he was sworn in as Speaker, 
and AT&T apparently gave them to them.
  What is going on here? What did we do? This is why we need to go to 
court and have our day in court, and the burden will be on me that I 
was wrong. But there is no doubt, if you were the jury, I would have no 
chance. You have already judged what we are doing. You made a political 
statement.
  So you are not the person to judge. I am not the person to judge. It 
is the judge.
  All of us who were wronged need to have a remedy to that wrong, and 
we are creating a chance to go to court for what happened to us and in 
a fashion to make sure it never happens again. This was coordinated 
with people in the Senate in power. This wasn't an attempt to enrich 
anybody. It was an attempt to deter that what was wrong, in my view, 
never happens again.
  I am willing to work with my colleagues about the $500,000. I am 
going to sue. I want to let you know. I am going to sue Biden's DOJ and 
Jack Smith. I am going to sue Verizon. It will be a hell of a lot more 
than $500,000.
  This is twice that this has happened to me. I was hauled into court 
in Atlanta for no good reason. I spent a million dollars. And the crime 
is being friends of Trump, being supporters of Trump. This was an abuse 
of the law. This was weaponization of the law.
  It is just not me. I am going to open up the ability to other people 
who had their phone records subpoenaed--I think, unfairly--at least, a 
chance to make that case. There are 197 subpoenas with 400 groups. I am 
going to create a statute that anybody that was in this situation could 
make a claim. They will have to prove the claim.
  We are not going to shut this down. We are not going to act like it 
is OK when it is not. We are not going to say it is legal because you 
are a Democrat and I am a Republican. We are going to have a judge 
determine whether or not it was legal. I don't think it was legal at 
all because I know me. I have done nothing wrong here. I wasn't 
conspiring with anybody to overturn the election. I did my part to make 
sure 2020 ended the way it should have.
  So to my majority leader, thank you for working with Senator Schumer. 
And to Senator Schumer, thanks for trying to work together to protect 
the body. We will be working together to find a resolution that may be 
more accommodating. But as for the idea that I am backing off and I am 
going to let this go, you can forget that.
  It is just not me. It is not about me and what happened to me alone. 
It is about how this happened to any of us, and it should never happen 
to any of us again. You have to have a reason to do what they did that 
I can't fathom.
  This is a separate branch of government. Do you really want the 
Department of Justice coming after U.S. Senators' phone records when 
there is no warrant involved, when there is no alleged crime involved?
  You are just fishing around. This is what we are talking about. That 
scares me. It offends me. And I am going to do something about it.
  So I object. I think this provision can be changed in a way to be 
more acceptable to people, but we need to open up the courts to people 
like me and others that had our rights violated, I believe. But it will 
be up to the judge.
  What we are trying to do is remedy a wrong. I think that is why 
Senator Schumer and the committees of jurisdiction understood why we 
needed to create an avenue.
  It is me today. It could be you tomorrow. If you are at home, if they 
could do this to a U.S. Senator, what could they do to you? Maybe the 
Department of Justice doesn't like your post, doesn't like your 
political activity. They want to shut you down and find out who you 
have been talking to. This is scary stuff.
  To Senator Thune, I look forward to working with my colleagues on the 
other side to find a way to make this section more acceptable, but I am 
not backing off. I am not going to accept repeal because we need a way 
forward.
  To my friends in the House, you need to start worrying about your 
Members. The former Speaker and two Members I know of had their phone 
records spied upon. So we have our work to do to clean this mess up in 
a way to provide remedies to those who may have been harmed, but not 
just sweep it under the rug.
  Arctic Frost will not be swept under the rug. I will not go quietly. 
I will keep pushing back on behalf of myself and others in like 
situations.
  Majority leader, I think you have a proposal here.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
  Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, let me just reiterate what the Senator from 
South Carolina said, and that is that this measure that we passed does, 
indeed, give important protections to Members. I think it is an 
important defense of the separation of powers. It protects Democrats, 
and it protects Republicans, alike, from a weaponized Department of 
Justice that is pursuing political enemies.
  The measure was never meant to enrich Senators. It has always been 
true, under our rules, that Members wouldn't keep damages they recover 
under this measure.

  I would hope that we can work together to pass a resolution to 
reflect what has always been true and what I have been saying all 
along, and that is that this measure is about accountability and not 
profit.
  Mr. President, I have a unanimous consent request.
  I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the consideration 
of this resolution at desk; further, that the resolution be agreed to 
and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the 
table with no intervening action or debate.
  Mr. President, what this would simply do is it would preserve the 
important elements of this, which I think are critical to the 
protection of the article

[[Page S8264]]

I branch of the government, constitutionally, but address the question 
that has been raised about personal enrichment, which I have said, 
again, is not the case here. This would clarify that any damages 
awarded under this law would be forfeited to the U.S. Treasury. No 
individual Senator could benefit.
  That was the case before, but this would clarify that. And it seems 
to me, at least, if you want to address the concern that has been 
raised by the Senator from New Mexico about Senators trying to get 
hundreds of thousands of dollars out of the Justice Department and the 
Federal Government--taxpayers--this would address that by simply saying 
anything that is awarded--a settlement that is awarded under this 
statute--would be forfeited to the U.S. Treasury. But it would preserve 
the important protections that are in place under the statute when it 
comes to Members' personal information.
  I happen to think--and that was what animated this--that individual 
Senators, Members of the article I branch of our government, should not 
be subject to a weaponized Department of Justice or prosecutors who go 
around the law. So this strengthens the law and ensures that, in the 
future, that doesn't happen.
  It is, in my view, again, something that protects this institution, 
something that protects individual Senators. The unanimous consent 
request that I am offering here would clarify, in the form of a 
resolution, that it would apply to the Senate.
  By the way, this only applies to the Senate. Frankly, there is a good 
argument that, if I am a Member of the House of Representatives, I 
would want the same protections included here. That wasn't the case. 
When we drafted this, it was in response to a statute that covered the 
Senate only. So this specifically applies to Senators.
  And this resolution that I am offering here and asking unanimous 
consent for would clarify--make crystal clear--that any damages awarded 
as a result of claims brought under this statute would be forfeited to 
the U.S. Treasury and not be allowed for an individual Member to take 
advantage of.
  Just to be clear, no personal enrichment, accountability, and, I 
think, protection for the article I branch of our government, which, in 
my view, based on what we saw and what we are seeing as the facts 
continue to come in from the Arctic Frost investigation, there was 
clearly a violation of the law and a law that needs to be strengthened 
and clarified so protections are in place for future Members of the 
U.S. Senate.
  Again, I would argue, someday, probably, Members of the House would 
want that same protection.
  So that is my request, Mr. President; that the resolution be agreed 
to--the resolution at the desk makes that clear--and that the motion to 
reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no 
intervening objection or debate.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Mr. HEINRICH. Reserving the right to object.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Mexico.
  Mr. HEINRICH. The remedy to a statutory change that is in statute is 
not a resolution. It is to fix the statute.
  I think we should work with our colleagues in the House to address 
the underlying issue of protecting Members without the outrageous 
damage provisions that were retroactively put into this statute.
  I object.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
  Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I rise to speak in support of legislation 
to strike the provision in the Federal funding package that would give 
a windfall to a handful of Republican Senators who the Biden 
administration investigated in connection with Trump's effort to try to 
overthrow the government on January 6, 2021. This provision would give 
those Senators $500,000 for every phone call appearing on a call log, 
adding up to a corrupt giveaway of hundreds of millions or possibly 
even billions of taxpayer dollars. One of my colleagues has already 
bragged about his plans to sue the Federal Government to secure himself 
a payday.
  How did we get here? My staff unearthed this secret provision shortly 
after the government funding bill was released. The brazenness of this 
corruption kind of takes your breath away. I immediately blew the 
whistle about this awful misuse of taxpayer money and alerted the 
press. Once the public learned of the heist, they were outraged and 
Members of Congress couldn't distance themselves from it fast enough.
  Now, I am outraged over the corrupt Republican payoff, but I 
completely agree that it is important to notify Senators who have been 
surveilled by the government. Every American should have the right to 
be told, eventually, if the government spies on them, which is why I 
have authored the bipartisan Government Surveillance Transparency Act 
to do just that.
  Notifying Congress when Federal, State, or Local government Agencies 
spy on it is essential to protecting the separation of powers and our 
Constitution. The fact is that right now, the FBI, any State attorney 
general, or even a local sheriff, can obtain the phone records of every 
Member of Congress, and we would never find out. This poses a major 
threat to the separation of powers. That is why I have called for 
Senators to be notified about surveillance in response to overreach by 
Trump in the past. Once Senator Heinrich's bill passes, I am committed 
to working with colleagues on both sides of the aisle to address the 
threat of surveillance by the executive branch.
  It is deeply regrettable that my colleagues took a well-intentioned 
protection against government surveillance and wrapped it in an 
unacceptable giveaway of Americans' tax dollars to Republican Senators. 
I am committed to scrapping this provision and passing real protections 
against government overreach, not just for U.S. Senators, but for every 
single American.
  Mr. HEINRICH. I defer to my colleague from Michigan with my time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Michigan.
  Mr. PETERS. Mr. President, I am just so disappointed that the UC 
request from my colleague from New Mexico was rejected--was objected 
to--by Republicans here on the floor of the Senate.
  The fact that we are here trying to fix a terrible wrong that 
occurred last week is simply outrageous. While Senate Democrats were 
fighting to lower healthcare costs and trying to provide some financial 
relief for families who are seeing their costs skyrocket across the 
board, the Senate Republicans snuck in--and this is literally true--
they snuck in, in the dark of night, a provision, at the last minute, 
that would allow them to basically line their pockets.
  This provision would allow a very select group of Republican 
Senators--let's be clear. This is to seek at least a half million 
dollars. It could go into the millions of dollars.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. I remind Senators of rule XIX, paragraph 2, 
that provides that no Senator in debate shall directly or indirectly, 
by any form or words, impute to another Senator or other Senators any 
conduct or motive unworthy of being a Senator.
  Mr. PETERS. Very good.
  This is what happened. Let's be clear. What the law does is that a 
group of folks can get over half a million dollars for records that 
were obtained. They were obtained as part of a legitimate criminal 
investigation.
  It is unconscionable, at a time when families across the country are 
feeling the squeeze and struggling to make ends meet, that such a self-
serving, retroactive provision was included in legislation to fund the 
government.
  Let's be clear. No citizen of the United States gets this. No House 
Member gets this. This is just about Senators.
  It has all the appearances, certainly, of a cash grab. And if the 
American taxpayers who are going to have to foot this bill--let's be 
clear. No Senator should get special treatment or a special payday for 
legally obtained records. I want to stress that part. These records 
were obtained through a standard legal process as part of a legitimate 
criminal investigation related to January 6, involving authorized 
subpoenas of those Senators' potential involvement.
  I have heard this described as partisan, political targeting. But 
unlike

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the bogus investigations President Trump has ordered into his political 
enemies, this whole situation arose from President Trump's own efforts 
to overturn a free and fair Presidential election. During the 
Department of Justice's investigation into this crime, the Special 
Counsel petitioned the court for a subpoena for those records, and the 
court approved it.
  Mr. President, you know that is the law. That is the process. You go 
and get a subpoena. You have to go before a court. You have to present 
evidence, and the court looks at that evidence and then makes a 
decision. And the court approved it.
  It is completely legal because it was relevant to their investigation 
of the President's attempt to overturn election results and to stay in 
power illegally. We can't forget that. We can't whitewash that. We 
cannot let attempts to spin this into some sort of partisan targeting 
against certain individuals.
  First off, it sets a very dangerous precedent that could chill any 
effort to conduct legitimate investigations of criminal wrongdoing by 
Members of this body or anywhere else down the line. We surely should 
not put the American people in the position of being, basically, a 
slush fund for a few individuals interested in making a whole lot of 
money and having the taxpayers foot the bill.
  I want to give my colleagues the benefit of the doubt about how this 
provision was put into the bill. Today, they had a chance to do the 
right thing. They had a chance to repeal it and say: Yes, this is 
bad. That is the way we ensure that no Senator gets special treatment, 
and we can get back to doing the work to better serve our constituents.

  So I hope we can fix this wrong. Our friends across the Capitol here, 
in the House, voted unanimously--every Republican and every Member of 
the Democratic caucus. We came together.
  Do you want to see bipartisanship in Washington? Everybody says: 
Gosh, I wish this body could come together in a bipartisan way.
  We saw it in the House today. They said that this provision is 
terrible. They said it was outrageous, and they said it was a cash 
grab--and they did it unanimously. We could have done it unanimously 
here today. We could have fixed this.
  Again, I don't know how it got in there. I am sure there was nothing 
nefarious. I am not saying there was anything nefarious. But it got in 
there. It clearly is wrong. Anybody who looks at the face of it knows 
it is wrong. That is why the House voted unanimously, and that is why I 
hope at some point we can do the right thing and fix this.
  Mr. HEINRICH. Mr. President, I yield the remainder of my time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader.
  Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I would simply respond by saying again, in 
clarifying this question of personal enrichment, I am not sure exactly 
what that is predicated on. Clearly, the attempt being made here was to 
give standing to Members whose personal, private information was 
collected by a prosecutor who went around the law.
  The law requires notification when a U.S. Senator's personal 
information is acquired. What happened was that the prosecutor 
threatened legal action if the carriers that were collecting this data 
on individual Senators provided the notice that was required under the 
law. The prosecutor clearly went around the law.
  I just believe, for the future protection not only of this 
institution but of individual U.S. Senators, it is going to be critical 
that we codify some of these protections in ways that aren't currently 
covered in the law.
  As I said before, if there is some question about the monetary 
judgment that might come or of the damages that might be awarded, this 
is what we are attempting to clarify right now, and that is that no 
individual Member--and frankly, that is already true under our rules, 
but this would further clarify that.
  But if the Senator from New Mexico is interested in amending or 
modifying this in some fashion that preserves or retains the 
protections on an individual Member's data--which, frankly, again, as I 
said before, I think is a really important protection not just for this 
U.S. Senate but for U.S. Senators in the future--I think there is a 
willingness to be able to address that.
  But I think, again, the suggestion that this is a bunch of U.S. 
Senators who are trying to figure out a way to enrich themselves at 
taxpayers' expense just is completely, completely unfounded and is 
inconsistent with the facts.

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