House votes to stop Senators from suing government for having their call records subpoenaedpublished at 16:51 GMT
16:51 GMT
Anthony Zurcher
North America correspondent
On a day when the special counsel inquiry into Donald Trump’s efforts to challenge the 2020 presidential election has taken centre stage on Capitol Hill, the House of Representatives just took a swipe at some of the Republican senators who were caught up in that investigation.
The chamber voted unanimously to reverse a Senate-backed measure Congress passed last year that would have allowed nine Republican senators who had their phone calling records subpoenaed by Jack Smith’s team – including Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin – to sue the federal government for hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Smith is being questioned about those subpoenas today. He has explained they were to document contacts those senators had with Trump and other White House officials as part of their efforts to block congressional certification of Joe Biden’s election victory.
Members of the House at the time had objected to the provision, calling it a sweetheart deal at taxpayers’ expense, but they were unable to stop it from becoming law because it had been attached to the spending legislation that ended last year’s record government shutdown.
An earlier House repeal effort was discarded by the Senate. Today, however, the chamber unanimously appended it to government funding legislation that the Senate is likely to vote on – and approve – next week.
Turnabout, it appears, is fair play.