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{"id":27351,"date":"2026-09-30T19:30:16","date_gmt":"2026-09-30T19:30:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/blackburn-sues-jack-smith-for-obtaining-her-phone-records\/"},"modified":"2026-09-30T19:30:16","modified_gmt":"2026-09-30T19:30:16","slug":"blackburn-sues-jack-smith-for-obtaining-her-phone-records","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/blackburn-sues-jack-smith-for-obtaining-her-phone-records\/","title":{"rendered":"Blackburn sues Jack Smith for obtaining her phone records"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>A close Capitol Hill ally of President Donald Trump <a href=\"https:\/\/storage.courtlistener.com\/recap\/gov.uscourts.tnmd.111971\/gov.uscourts.tnmd.111971.1.0.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">is suing the Justice Department and former special counsel Jack Smith<\/a> for obtaining her phone logs in the course of his investigation into Trump\u2019s bid to subvert the 2020 election.<\/p>\n<p>Sen. <a href=\"https:\/\/directory.politicopro.com\/member\/51279\" data-person-id=\"51279\">Marsha Blackburn<\/a> (R-Tenn.) filed suit a day after <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/2026\/09\/29\/jack-smith-hearing-senate-judiciary-01098107\" target=\"_blank\">Smith testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee<\/a> \u2014 on which Blackburn sits \u2014 and defended his office\u2019s investigation, including its <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/live-updates\/2026\/09\/29\/congress\/darline-graham-goes-after-smith-01097172\" target=\"_blank\">effort to obtain the records<\/a> of Blackburn and dozens of other GOP lawmakers who spoke with Trump and his advisers during a four-day period in January 2021.<\/p>\n<p>Blackburn argues that Smith committed a \u201cgross abuse of power\u201d and violated constitutional protections for members of Congress when he subpoenaed her phone logs from Verizon and secured a court order to prevent the company from alerting her. She\u2019s asking a federal judge to declare Smith\u2019s entire probe, as well as his effort to obtain her phone records, was illegal. She\u2019s also asking that the judge order Smith and the Justice Department destroy or return any of her materials.<\/p>\n<p>Smith contended that he sought the phone logs \u2014 which don\u2019t include the content of calls or text messages \u2014 as part of his probe into Trump\u2019s bid to overturn the election results, even as a mob of his supporters were ransacking the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Trump and his aides continued to work the phones that night and encourage lawmakers to derail the transfer of power to Joe Biden.<\/p>\n<p>Smith insisted that his effort to obtain lawmakers\u2019 phone records was cleared by the Justice Department\u2019s Public Integrity Section and complied with all department regulations.<\/p>\n<p>But senators said his effort to obtain those call records ran afoul of the Constitution\u2019s speech or debate clause, which provides blanket immunity for lawmakers from being scrutinized by prosecutors for their official business.<\/p>\n<p>Stan Brand, former counsel to the House of Representatives under former Speaker Tip O\u2019Neill (D-Mass.), said Blackburn may have a worthy case to test whether members of Congress can win legal relief for violations of the speech or debate clause. That issue is more commonly litigated during criminal cases and before investigators can access members\u2019 records. But in this case, Brand said, the purported violation had already occurred without her knowledge.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHow do you remedy that after the fact?\u201d Brand said. \u201cI think it\u2019s worthy of consideration.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Blackburn\u2019s lawsuit could put the Justice Department in a bind. Though Trump himself has attacked Smith\u2019s investigation as unconstitutional \u2014 and U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon concluded Smith\u2019s appointment was illegal \u2014 the Justice Department has never conceded that point. And DOJ has long defended its practice of obtaining secrecy orders from federal courts to prevent telecom companies from disclosing subpoenas to their subscribers.<\/p>\n<p>In 2023, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals <a href=\"https:\/\/storage.courtlistener.com\/recap\/gov.uscourts.cadc.39352\/gov.uscourts.cadc.39352.1208548932.0.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">cleared the way<\/a> for Smith\u2019s team to access a subset of records it seized from Rep. <a href=\"https:\/\/directory.politicopro.com\/member\/194221\" data-person-id=\"194221\">Scott Perry<\/a>\u2019s (R-Pa.) phone, though it ruled that courts had to conduct a \u201cfact-specific\u201d inquiry to determine whether some records were \u201clegislative\u201d in nature and therefore off-limits to investigators.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A close Capitol Hill ally of President Donald Trump is suing the Justice Department and former special counsel Jack Smith for obtaining her phone logs in the course of his investigation into Trump\u2019s bid to subvert the 2020 election. Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) filed suit a day after Smith testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27351","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-congress"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27351","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27351"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27351\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27351"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27351"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27351"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}