U.S. Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) said on Wednesday that telecommunications giants AT&T and Verizon should explain their decision to cooperate with the Biden administration in 2021, when subpoenas were issued to grant FBI surveillance for the private communications of eight Republican senators, including Blackburn and Senator Bill Hagerty (R-TN).
Blackburn wrote in a post to X, “We need to know why [AT&T] and [Verizon] did not challenge the subpoena for the phone records of 8 United States Senators when the Biden FBI spied on us during an anti-Trump probe. There needs to be a reckoning for this.”
Underscoring the apparent compliance from AT&T and Verizon, the senator’s call for a “reckoning” follows her remarks during an appearance on The Michael Patrick Leahy Show, when she told Tennessee Star Editor-in-Chief Michael Patrick Leahy that the FBI was unable to provide probable cause for its surveillance.
We need to know why @ATT and @Verizon did not challenge the subpoena for the phone records of 8 United States Senators when the Biden FBI spied on us during an anti-Trump probe. There needs to be a reckoning for this.
— Sen. Marsha Blackburn (@MarshaBlackburn) October 8, 2025
“They cannot give us the probable cause. There was no predicate that was listed and it was just the fact that they surveilled all of our phone calls,” said Blackburn. “The commonality is it is all Republicans who support President Trump and Republicans that had questions about the 2020 election.”
Both AT&T and Verizon were notably criticized for allegedly partisan cooperation with Democrats in the government during the Biden administration, with their willingness to turn over customer records first exposed through a legal filing submitted by former Trump administration White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows in December 2021.
According to the filing, AT&T and Verizon were among the telecommunication companies asked by the January 6 subcommittee in Congress to provide “overly broad” communication records from Meadows’ phone number during the period when President Donald Trump was actively challenging the results of the 2020 election.
His filing also revealed the committee requested Verizon’s records for House Representatives Jim Jordan (R-OH-04), Lauren Boebert (R-CO-03), Andy Biggs (R-AZ-05), Paul Gosar (R-AZ-09), Louie Gohmert (R-TX-01), Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA-14), and Scott Perry (R-PA-10), as well as former U.S. Representatives Mo Brooks, Madison Cawthorn, Matt Gaetz, and Jody Hice.
AT&T drew Trump’s ire in January 2022, when he floated the possibility of a national boycott in response to the company’s decision to remove the conservative One America News Network from its DirecTV lineup. The company later backed off plans to end its carriage of Newsmax TV, another conservative cable station.
Later during the Biden administration, it was revealed that AT&T was cooperating with multiple government agencies to collect and analyze more than 1 trillion phone records each year, purportedly to provide key information about its customers when requested by law enforcement for criminal investigations.
Just months earlier, Verizon was named by Twitter Files journalist Matt Taibbi as one of the many major tech companies that extensively coordinated with the Biden administration to help advance its political goals.
Verizon was recently reported to be one of a dwindling number of sponsors that continued to participate in the annual LGBTQ festivities hosted by Pride Nashville. The organization later blamed an exodus of corporate support during the Trump administration for a $250,000 shortfall.
– – –
Tom Pappert is the lead reporter for The Tennessee Star, and also reports for The Pennsylvania Daily Star and The Arizona Sun Times. Follow Tom on X/Twitter. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “Sen. Marsha Blackburn” by Sen. Marsha Blackburn.
