Democrats' bill would strip provision from funding bill that allowed senators to sue over phone records

Source: ABC News

Democratic Sens. Martin Heinrich and Mark Kelly will introduce legislation in the Senate on Tuesday that would strip out a provision in the just-passed government funding bill that allows senators to sue the government if their phone records are investigated without notifying them.

The bill comes after Senate Republicans included within the massive government funding bill that ended the 43-day government shutdown a provision that would allow senators whose phone records were subpoenaed by Special Counsel Jack Smith as part of his investigation into the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol to sue for $500,000 per accessed device.

News of the Senate's inclusion of this provision caused bipartisan outrage in the House of Representatives.

House Speaker Mike Johnson last week said the House would hold a standalone vote on a provision to strip the language out of the funding bill this week. Due to the bipartisan objection to these provisions, the House bill has a high likelihood of being successfully passed out of the lower chamber.

Read more: https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/democrats-bill-strip-provision-funding-bill-allowed-senators/story?id=127611868