WASHINGTON – The House of Representatives passed a bill Wednesday night to kill a new law that potentially awards Republican senators millions of dollars in damages over the Justice Department’s Jan. 6 investigation.
The vote was unanimous, with the bill passing 426 to 0. But it’s not clear if the Senate will take it up.
Before the vote, a bipartisan chorus of House lawmakers criticized the prospect of senators getting paid millions of dollars as a direct result of a law they wrote. The provision granted senators — and only senators — the right to file special lawsuits against the government if their phone records were obtained by the Justice Department in the course of an investigation, with damages amounting to $500,000 per violation.
The provision was specifically written to benefit several Senate Republicans whose phone records were obtained in the course of special counsel Jack Smith’s criminal investigation into President Donald Trump’s attempt to overthrow the 2020 election.
“This is the most self-centered, self-serving language that I have ever seen in any piece of legislation,” Rep. Austin Scott (R-Ga.) said before the vote. “There are a select few people who did the wrong thing in putting language in the bill that would make themselves individually wealthy.”
