U.S. Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) condemned the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) surveillance of her and seven other Republican senators, calling it illegal and unprecedented.
On Monday, Fox News first reported that former Special Counsel Jack Smith was allegedly tracking the private communications and phone calls of Blackburn and seven other Republican U.S. senators as part of his “Arctic Frost” investigation into the January 6, 2021, Capitol protest.
On Tuesday’s edition of The Michael Patrick Leahy Show, Blackburn stated the FBI could not provide probable cause or any predicate for monitoring their phone records, which included call details, locations, and contacts during January 4–8, 2021.
According to Blackburn, the only apparent commonality among those targeted was that they were Republicans who supported President Donald Trump and had raised questions about aspects of the 2020 election.
“They cannot give us the probable cause. There was no predicate that was listed and it was just the fact that they surveilled all of our phone calls. The commonality is it is all Republicans who support President Trump and Republicans that had questions about the 2020 election,” she explained.
Blackburn linked the surveillance to a broader pattern of what she views as politically motivated actions by the Biden administration, citing the Mar-a-Lago raid in 2022 and Trump’s indictment in 2023.
“We have to look at the fact that in August of 2022, they raided Mar-a-Lago. Then, in August 2023, they indicted President Trump. A few weeks later, the surveillance of us began and the surveillance of our records from January 4-8 of 2021,” she said.
Blackburn said that this is not the first time she believes she has been surveilled by federal authorities, referencing the Trump transition period in 2016, when she served as the transition team’s vice chair.
“When I was vice chair of President Trump’s transition in 2016, we found out at that point through James Comey’s work that they were surveilling the Trump transition, and they never would answer the question to what extent I was caught in that net as the transition vice chair…I Since I support President Trump and because I’ve stood with him since day one, this is the second time this has come up,” she said.
Blackburn further pledged to push for full transparency and accountability, promising that those responsible would face prosecution “to the full extent of the law” and signaling possible civil lawsuits, suggesting that the FBI’s actions may have violated constitutional and privacy rights.
“We are going to be certain that everybody that participated in this is prosecuted to the full extent of the law, that there is some transparency brought to bear on this. This should never happen to anyone,” the senator said.
“There are civil actions that can be brought,” she added. “A civil rights violation, a privacy rights violation, all of that is included in this.”
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Kaitlin on X / Twitter.
Photo “Sen. Marsha Blackburn” by Sen. Marsha Blackburn.
