GOP senators grill telecom giants over phone record subpoenas

Source: The Hill

02/10/26 4:00 PM ET


Republican senators grilled top executives from AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon on Tuesday for handing over the phone records of several members of Congress that were subpoenaed by former special counsel Jack Smith. The Senate Judiciary Committee called officials from the three telecommunications giants to testify before the panel over their decision to comply with Smith’s records requests, which the GOP members argued were “illegal.”

“This is a major breakdown of constitutional checks and balances, a major breakdown of protecting people you have a contractual obligation to protect,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said at Tuesday’s hearing. Graham was one of 10 Republican senators whose phone records were subpoenaed as part of Smith’s “Arctic Frost” investigation into efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Smith also requested records for at least one House member, Rep. Mike Kelly (R-Pa.).

Verizon, in particular, faced tough questioning over its response to the subpoenas. Chris Miller, Verizon’s senior vice president and general counsel, noted that the subpoenas it received did not include identifying information about the numbers and that the company “did not have a process in place to identify and escalate numbers belonging to members.”

“No matter who is the subject of a subpoena, Verizon cannot ignore a valid legal demand or a court order,” Miller said. “But our processes could have been better suited to meet what was a new and unique set of circumstances for us and for other companies.”

Read more: https://thehill.com/policy/technology/5732034-senate-judiciary-phone-records/

---

The past year, the GOP-majority GAVE UP their role of carrying out ANY "checks and balances", and instead engaged in bowing down and coming to heel like dogs to the Executive. Allowing illegal withdrawals, reprogramming, and recessions of Congressionally-funded programs without notice or justification, and general refusal to do ANY type of oversight whatsoever except against their Democratic colleagues in the Legislative Branch.