We don’t imagine many average Americans have been kept up at night worrying about the provision in the recent federal funding bill that allowed senators to sue the Department of Justice if they aren’t informed they are under investigation or if their personal information is subpoenaed.
But it’s caused quite a story in the D.C. environs because several senators who have suggested they might do just that — sue — are now equivocating.
One of those is Tennessee’s Marsha Blackburn, one of nine lawmakers whose phone records were checked with grand jury subpoenas without their knowledge during the “Arctic Frost” investigation into President Trump’s first-term attempts to pressure electors in the Electoral College vote in January 2021, following the 2020 election.
“What we want to do is see full transparency, full accountability of individuals and to see them held to the full extent of the law in this charge against us,” the Tennessee senator told Fox News last month, before the provision in the funding bill was revealed. “Are we going to sue these people? You better believe we are, and everybody that was involved in this illegal activity, this weaponization. Everyone needs to face prosecution.”
When the provision was revealed this month, though, pushback came from several Republican House members, including Blackburn’s 2026 Tennessee Republican gubernatorial primary opponent U.S. Rep. John Rose, R-Cookeville, who called it a “poison pill” in the bill already passed and signed by President Donald Trump.