Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) on Wednesday announced that she plans to sue former members of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) who were served during the Biden administration, including former special counsel Jack Smith, who the Senate Judiciary Committee recently revealed ordered the surveillance of Blackburn and other Republican senators in 2023, as part of his Arctic Frost investigation into the 2020 election contest by President Donald Trump.
Blackburn announced her plan to file a lawsuit during an appearance on “Just the News, No Noise,” telling host John Solomon that she was considering Smith, as well as the former FBI team that conducted the surveillance at his request, were likely defendants.
“I can assure you this, we will be suing the Biden DOJ, Jack Smith and his CR-15 team, which, of course, has already been fired by (current FBI Director) Kash Patel,” she told Just the News.
“When you look at what happened with us, it’s the 1st and the 4th Amendment that was violated with the eight senators,” said Blackburn. “Plus our Speech and Debate Clause, our separation of powers and the Stored Communications Act, all of those were violations.”
The Speech and Debate Clause of the U.S. Constitution bars Congress from facing arrest when engaging in official business, while the Stored Communication Act codifies when telecommunications companies should provide records to government agencies.
Of the surveillance itself, Blackburn told Just the News, “the common thread that runs through this is all eight were Republicans.” She stated, “We all supported President Trump, and we had valid questions about the outcome of the 2020 election.”
Blackburn recently demanded a congressional investigation into the surveillance, after first demanding a “reckoning” for the telecommunications companies that cooperated with the subpoenas, specifically naming AT&T and Verizon.
“One of the things that is so interesting on this, is we thought that the wireless carriers received a subpoena in September (2023) for our records, but we found out that Verizon actually received that subpoena in May 2023,” said Blackburn. “That was prior to the indictment of President Trump, which took place in August of 2023.”
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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.
