Republican Senator Marsha Blackburn is pursuing legal action after learning the Justice Department and FBI collected her phone records and those of several GOP lawmakers during the Biden administration’s probe tied to January 6. She says the targeting violated constitutional protections and amounted to partisan spying that aimed to harm President Trump and his allies. Blackburn’s claims, the subpoena timeline, and the Justice Department’s defense are now part of a legal and political fight over accountability and prosecutorial reach.
Blackburn says she will sue Biden DOJ officials, including special counsel Jack Smith, arguing the collection of records trampled free speech, privacy and the separation of powers. The allegation is that law enforcement crossed a line by gathering lawmakers’ call histories while operating in a politically charged context. From a Republican standpoint, this looks less like routine investigation and more like targeted harassment of elected officials who backed a political opponent.
The records were seized during the probe known as Arctic Frost, which preceded and fed into Smith’s later indictment of President Trump. Blackburn says her legal team found that wireless carriers got subpoenas earlier than previously reported, a detail that escalates suspicion about motive and timing. That sequence matters because it suggests the investigative push toward Trump and his allies was underway well before public charging decisions were announced.
Blackburn has been blunt about the alleged violations and named specific constitutional guarantees she believes were breached. “When you look at what happened with us, it’s the 1st and the 4th amendment that was violated with the eight senators, plus our Speech and Debate Clause, our separation of powers and the Stored Communications Act, all of those were violations,” she said. Republicans see those claims as a serious assertion that institutional safeguards were ignored.
She also framed the targeting in plain partisan terms, saying the effort flowed from antipathy toward President Trump and his supporters. “These guys just hated Donald Trump, and they hated us because we supported Donald Trump, and we were standing with Donald Trump.” That line captures how many conservatives view the episode: not law enforcement doing neutral work but an administration weaponizing agencies against political foes.
Blackburn’s team says the subpoena timeline is revealing: carriers were served in May 2023, months before the indictment against Mr. Trump was filed in August 2023. “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. That was prior to the indictment of President Trump, which took place in August of 2023,” she said. That earlier date raises questions about the objective of the data pull.
The scope of the data taken is also a central grievance. “We know that they pulled what is called the toll data, that is every call we either made or received, the duration of the call, the individual and the number that it was to and from, And then also the physical location where we were when that call was either made or received,” she added. Toll data reveals patterns and associations, which is why lawmakers say the collection felt invasive and politically motivated.
Smith’s legal team pushed back in a letter to Senate Judiciary leadership, insisting the subpoenas were narrow and lawful under Department of Justice policy. They wrote that the temporal range of the subpoenas matched an effort to check reports that President Trump and surrogates tried to contact senators to delay certification. “The subpoena’s limited temporal range is consistent with a focused effort to confirm or refute reports by multiple news outlets that during and after the January 6 riots at the Capitol, President Trump and his surrogates attempted to call Senators to urge them to delay certification of the 2020 election results,” the lawyers said.
Republicans reject that defense as insufficient and politically tone-deaf, arguing real damage was done regardless of intent. “It just shows you how Jack Smith and Arctic frost, they were so out over their skis, and they were out to get President Donald Trump, and they wanted to convict him of conspiracy. And of course, when you look at what they were doing with us, they were probably looking for obstruction or co-conspirator charges,” Blackburn said. That comment reprises the core complaint: prosecutors exceeded their role and targeted political opponents.
Calls are growing within GOP circles for stricter consequences, including moves to challenge Smith’s fitness to practice law. Some Republicans say revoking his license is an appropriate response for what they view as a blatant abuse of prosecutorial power. For conservatives, the episode is about more than one special counsel: it is a test of whether Americans can trust law enforcement to stay above partisan fights when politics and prosecution collide.
