Senate Republican blocks effort to repeal $500K windfall related to Jan. 6 investigation

South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, the golf buddy of Donald Trump, unilaterally blocked an effort to repeal a provision allowing a group of MAGA lawmakers to sue U.S. taxpayers for $500,000 over searches of phone records in investigations of the Trump-led scheme to overturn the 2020 election that was tucked into the legislation ending the government shutdown last week.

“I’m willing to work with my colleagues about the $500,000, but I’m going to sue. I want to let you know, I’m going to sue Biden’s DOJ and Jack Smith, I’m going to sue Verizon. It’s going to be a hell of a lot more than $500,000,” said Graham, who blocked unanimous-consent approval of the House-led repeal measure on Thursday.

The DOJ, during the Biden administration, accessed Graham’s phone records, and those of eight other MAGA Republican lawmakers, in connection with its investigation into the 2020 election, specifically pertaining to the fake-elector scheme in which Trump allies pressured GOP electors to register Electoral College votes for Trump from states that Joe Biden won.

The records obtained focused on phone metadata from four days surrounding the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

The records that were obtained do not include the content of calls.

It’s notable here that Senate Republicans felt compelled to sneak the provision entitling its caucus members to potential millions of dollars in taxpayer money into the shutdown bill thinking the attempt would escape public scrutiny.

The outcry over the obvious effort to allow a cabal of senators to enrich themselves for having been subject to a routine investigation ended up manifesting itself in a unanimous vote in the House this week to repeal the provision.

“To create a special slush fund for senators, and only a particularly few senators, seems to make no sense. It’s one of the reasons why the American people rightfully get so angry,” said U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., who has introduced companion legislation stripping the controversial provision, which Kaine called “an easy-pass lane for Republican senators to get compensated for the fact that the FBI had obtained information about their telephone records.”

‘I’m furious that Senate Republicans tucked a ridiculous provision into the legislation to give Republican senators personal windfalls of hundreds of thousands of dollars of taxpayer money. That’s unacceptable, and I’m going to work alongside my Democratic colleagues to do everything we can to block that from happening,” Kaine said.