Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., on Friday appeared to back off his demand to include a provision that would allow senators targeted by former special counsel Jack Smith to seek millions from the Justice Department but vowed to hold up a vote to avert a looming government shutdown unless the bill includes measures to “criminalize” the targeting of lawmakers.
Graham on Thursday prevented the passage of a $1.2 trillion, six-bill package, forcing senators to reconvene Friday as the midnight deadline for a government shutdown looms over a sanctuary city crackdown and the removal of his Arctic Frost provision.
The senator said he could not “remember putting a hold on an appropriations bill ever before.”
Senate Democrats and the White House agreed late Thursday to strip funding for the Department of Homeland Security from the package, replacing it with a two-week stopgap measure.
The U.S. House of Representatives previously voted to strip Graham’s controversial Arctic Frost provision from the package, which would have allowed senators to sue the Justice Department if their phone records are seized without their knowledge.
Graham championed the provision that would provide up to $500,000 payouts to affected senators largely because his phone records were seized along with those of eight other Republican senators under the Biden Administration and then-special counsel Jack Smith in the January 6 investigation. Other Republican senators affected by the Arctic Frost probe distanced themselves from the provisions, making Graham’s battle a singular one.
“I’m all for accountability. I mean, I had my phone tapped, so I’m all for accountability, don’t get me wrong,” Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., said Wednesday after the House repealed the provision. “I think taking taxpayer money is not the way to do it. The way to do it is through tough oversight.”
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., called Graham’s persistence a “temper tantrum,” at a Friday press conference. “Clearly he’s going to have to drop his objection because of this obsessive quest to get this multi-million-dollar slush fund.”
Graham took the floor late Friday morning, calling his critics “politically dumb as a rock.”
Speaking on the House’s removal of the entire Arctic Frost provision, Graham said he would have been willing to amend the $500,000 payouts, but no one contacted him. “You jammed me,” he said on the floor of the Senate. “Speaker Johnson, I won’t forget this.”
“I will not lift my hold on this bill until I get guaranteed a vote on my legislation that would criminalize the conduct going forward. And what conduct am I talking about? State and local officials openly defying federal law that’s been on the books for decades, incentivizing more legal immigration, massive taxpayer rip off, and a breakdown of law and order,” he vowed.
