GOP unity shattered by controversial measure in government shutdown bill

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

It caused heartburn for House Republicans in the final days of the shutdown and provided fresh ammo for Democrats hoping to delay their federal funding legislation in its final hours.

The provision, tucked into the Legislative Branch appropriations bill and dubbed “Requiring Senate Notification for Senate Data,” would allow senators directly targeted in 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 was involved in crafting part of the successful funding deal, told Fox News Digital he had even been afraid it could derail the final vote to end the shutdown.

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“It had been done without our knowledge. I mean, it had been added in the Senate without our knowledge,” Cole said. “It was a real trust factor … I mean, all of a sudden, this pops up in the bill, and we’re confronted with either leave this in here, or we pull it out, we have to go to conference, and the government doesn’t get reopened.”

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

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

It was a big point of contention when the House Rules Committee met to prepare the legislation for a final vote on 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.

Those Republicans agreed with the motivations behind their Senate counterparts wanting to sue but bristled over the notion that it would come at the expense of U.S. taxpayers.

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

“Well, they heard them,” Roy said when asked how those concerns were received. “I mean, you know, the lords don’t like to be told by mere commoners what to do. But we’re going to have to take a pretty strong stand on this one.”

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 Lindsey Graham half a million dollars.”

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

“The American people should not be asked to make compensation to United States senators, the ultimate insiders, if you will — who have been wronged, no doubt in my mind … this provision does not allow other Americans to pursue a remedy. It does not even allow the President of the United States, who was equally wrongfully surveilled and pursued by the Justice Department — they didn’t even include President Trump in this,” Rose told Fox News Digital. “They saved this special treat for themselves. And, you know, frankly, the right answer is that they should all disavow that immediately.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., appeared equally, if not more, annoyed when asked by reporters about the measure. He said a vote on repealing it would be fast-tracked next week and hoped his Senate counterparts would do the same.

“I was just as surprised by the inclusion of that language as anyone. I had no prior notice of it at all,” Johnson said. “I was frustrated, as my colleagues are over here, and I thought it was untimely and inappropriate. So we’ll be requesting, strongly urging, our Senate colleagues to repeal that.”

But there was an appetite among Senate Republicans to respond to Smith’s investigation, where senators were not notified that their records would be requested without notification. And the provision is narrowly tailored to just include senators and would require that they be notified if their information is requested by the Department of Justice (DOJ). The idea is to prevent the abuse of the DOJ to go after sitting senators now and in the future. 

Graham, when asked if he would be filing a lawsuit, told reporters in South Carolina, “Oh, definitely.” 

“And if you think I’m going to settle this thing for a million dollars? No. I want to make it so painful no one ever does this again,” he said. 

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

“Leader Thune inserted that in the bill to provide real teeth to the prohibition on the Department of Justice 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 Legislative Branch appropriations subcommittee. 

“I am furious that the Senate Minority and Majority Leaders chose to airdrop this provision into this bill at the eleventh hour — with zero consultation or negotiation with the subcommittee that actually oversees this work,” Heinrich said in a statement to Fox News Digital. “This is precisely what’s wrong with the Senate.”

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Most of the eight senators who did have their phone records subpoenaed as part of Smith’s investigation were also unaware of the provision until the legislation was unveiled over the weekend and have no intent to file a lawsuit. 

Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, “first learned about this provision when he and his staff were reading the bill to open the government,” Amanda Coyne, a senior advisor for the lawmaker, told Fox News Digital. “The senator has no plans to sue.” 

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

“If I did sue, it would only be for the purpose of using the courts to expose the corrupt weaponization of federal law enforcement by the Biden and Obama administrations,” he said. “With the full cooperation in our congressional investigations from the Trump DOJ and FBI, that shouldn’t be necessary.”

But he noted that he supports the provision, “As a deterrent to prevent future misuse of federal agencies.”

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

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