GOP Revolt Rumbles Over Senate Clause Allowing Prosecutions Related to Jack Smith Investigation

The House is expected to vote next week to repeal a controversial measure in the bill that ended the government shutdown.

That caused heartburn for House Republicans in the closing days of the shutdown and provided fresh ammunition to Democrats who hoped to delay their federal funding legislation in its final hours.

The provision, inserted in the Legislature’s appropriations bill and dubbed “Requiring Senate Notification of Senate Data,” would allow senators directly targeted by former special counsel Jack Smith’s Arctic Frost investigation to sue the U.S. government for up to $500,000.

House Appropriations Committee Chairman Tom Cole, R-Okla., who helped craft part of the successful funding deal, told Fox News Digital he even feared it could derail the final vote to end the shutdown.

PROGRESSIVE DEMOCRATS SEE FOR PARTY LEADERSHIP AFTER GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN ENDS WITHOUT HEALTH GUARANTEES

Rep. Chip Roy is among the House Republicans who object to taxpayer money being used for senators’ lawsuits over the investigation of former special counsel Jack Smith. (Tom Brenner/Getty Images; Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images; Tracy Glantz/The State/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)

“This was done without our knowledge. I mean, it was added to the Senate without our knowledge,” Cole said. “It was a real confidence builder…I mean, all of a sudden this appears in the bill, and we’re faced with either leaving this here or taking it out, we have to go to a conference and the government isn’t opening up.”

It was included in the bill by Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., and received the green light from Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., sources confirmed to Fox News Digital.

Thune included the provision in the bill at the request of Republican Senate members, a source familiar with the negotiations, which included Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, told Fox News Digital.

It was a big point of contention when the House Rules Committee met to prepare the bill for a final vote Tuesday night. Reps. Chip Roy, R-Texas, Austin Scott, R-Ga., and Morgan Griffith, R-Va., all shared House Democrats’ frustration with the measure, but they made clear it would not stand in the way of ending what had become the longest shutdown in history.

These Republicans agreed with the motivations that led their Senate counterparts to want to take legal action, but bristled at the idea that it would come at the expense of American taxpayers.

SENATOR RON JOHNSON WARNS GOP WILL BE IN ‘BIG PROBLEM’ IF PARTY IGNORES DEMOCRATS’ PLAN TO ‘NUKE’ FILIBUSTER

Roy told Fox News Digital that he himself brought his concerns to the Republican Senate.

“Well, they heard them,” Roy said when asked how those concerns were received. “I mean, you know, lords don’t like simple commoners telling them what to do. But we’re going to have to take a pretty firm stance on this.”

The measure’s inclusion was enough for Rep. Greg Steube, R-Fla., to vote against the final bill, telling reporters, “I’m not voting to send a half-million dollars to Lindsey Graham.”

Rep. John Rose, R-Tenn., among GOP lawmakers outside the Rules Committee who made their concerns public, introduced a bill to repeal the provision.

Rep. Greg Steube, R-Fla., walks to a House Republican Conference meeting with President Donald Trump on the budget reconciliation bill at the U.S. Capitol on May 20, 2025. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

“The American people should not be asked to compensate the American senators, the ultimate insiders, if you will – who were wronged, no doubt in my mind… this provision does not allow other Americans to have recourse. It does not even allow the President of the United States, who was also wrongly monitored and prosecuted by the Department of Justice – to have not even included President Trump in this,” Rose told Fox News Digital. “They kept this special gift for themselves. And, you know, frankly, the right answer is that they should all disown it immediately.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., seemed equally, if not more, annoyed when reporters asked him about the measure. He said the vote on repeal would be expedited next week and hoped his Senate counterparts would do the same.

“I was as surprised as anyone by the inclusion of this language. I had no prior notification of it,” Johnson said. “I was frustrated, as were my colleagues here, and thought it was untimely and inappropriate. So we will ask, and strongly urge, our colleagues in the Senate to repeal this.”

But Senate Republicans were willing to respond to Smith’s investigation, in which senators were not informed that their records would be requested without notification. And the provision is narrowly tailored to include only senators and would require them to be notified if their information is requested by the Department of Justice (DOJ). The idea is to prevent DOJ abuses to go after sitting senators, now and in the future.

Asked if he would take legal action, Graham told reporters in South Carolina: “Oh, definitely.”

“What if you think I’m going to settle this case for a million dollars? No. I want it to be so painful that no one will ever do it again,” he said.

When asked for comment on the matter, Cruz’s office referred Fox News Digital to comments he made in a recent Politico report.

Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, speaks to reporters as he attends the weekly Senate policy lunches at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, December 6, 2022. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

“Leader Thune inserted this into the bill to add teeth to the Justice Department’s ban on targeting senators,” Cruz told Politico.

Several senators were unaware of the provision’s inclusion, including Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., the top Democrat on the Legislature’s Appropriations subcommittee.

“I am furious that Senate Minority and Majority leaders chose to insert this provision into this bill at the last minute – without any consultation or negotiation with the subcommittee that actually oversees this work,” Heinrich said in a statement to Fox News Digital. “This is precisely what is wrong with the Senate.”

Trump signs bill ending longest government shutdown in US history

Most of the eight senators whose phone records were subpoenaed as part of Smith’s investigation were also unaware of the provision until the legislation was unveiled this weekend and do not intend to take legal action.

Sen. Dan Sullivan, Republican of Alaska, “first became aware of this provision when he and his team were reading the bill to open the government,” Amanda Coyne, a senior adviser to the lawmaker, told Fox News Digital. “The senator has no intention of pursuing legal action.”

Senator Dan Sullivan, Republican of Alaska, goes to the U.S. Capitol for votes on January 9, 2025. (Allison Robbert/AFP via Getty Images)

And Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., who pushed for full disclosure of the investigation alongside Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, told Fox News Digital in a statement, “I have no plans at this time” to pursue it.

“If I sued, it would be solely for the purpose of using the courts to expose the corrupt militarization of federal law enforcement by the Biden and Obama administrations,” he said. “With the full cooperation of Trump’s DOJ and FBI in our congressional investigations, this should not be necessary.”

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

But he stressed that he supported the provision, “as a deterrent to prevent future abuses by federal agencies.”

Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., plans to seek a declaratory, rather than monetary, judgment on her phone records requested by Smith before the provision is added to the bill. She said she would support plans to repeal the provision.

“If the Senate votes on the bill to rescind the Arctic Frost provision in the government funding bill, I will support efforts to rescind it,” she said in a statement to Fox News Digital. “This fight is not about money; it’s about holding the left accountable for the worst militarization of government in our country’s history.”