US telecom firms face harsh senators’ questions over phone records

By David Shepardson

WASHINGTON, Feb 10 (Reuters) – The largest U.S. telecom companies faced harsh Senate questions Tuesday after a Justice Department prosecutor obtained phone data from eight senators related to a probe of the January 6, 2021 Capitol attack.

Lawyers for AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile testified at a two-hour hearing before a U.S. Senate Judiciary subcommittee after a disclosure in October of a 2023 document that showed the FBI obtained phone data known as “toll records” from senators’ phones and all said they had new processes in place designed to protect lawmakers’ privacy.

All three companies got subpoenas for phone records as part of special prosecutor Jack Smith’s investigation into Trump’s effort to overturn his loss of the 2020 election to his Democratic opponent, Joe Biden, and the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters. All denied acting improperly and note they get hundreds of thousands of requests for information from law enforcement yearly.

“You turned over pieces of information from every senator… who got an illegal subpoena. You turned it over with no process at all,” Senator Josh Hawley, one of the senators whose information was obtained, told Verizon, questioning why the company had not done more to review the issue before turning over records.

Verizon lawyer Chris Miller told the committee the company is making changes including expanding protections to personal and campaign phones for lawmakers.

“We should have had a better process,” Miller said, adding going forward Verizon will notify lawmakers of requests for records or fight secret requests, but added: “We followed the law.”

AT&T told the committee that it is working on procedures to identify all phone numbers associated with members of Congress “not just official phone numbers, so that, going forward, AT&T can meet members’ reasonable expectations of privacy to the full extent permitted by law.”

T-Mobile general counsel Mark Nelson defended the company’s actions and said it had adjusted its processes to add new protections.

Democrats have noted many of the Republican senators targeted by the investigation supported Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

Democratic Senator Dick Durbin said Republicans were seeking to downplay Trump’s actions tied to the 2020 election. Durbin said previously Smith said Trump and his associates tried to call some lawmakers urging them to further delay certification.

“I did not choose those members, President Trump did,'” Smith said.

Trump was charged in the Capitol assault but the case did not go to trial, having been delayed by a series of legal challenges.

Smith dropped the case after Trump won the 2024 election against Biden’s Vice President Kamala Harris. Smith cited a longstanding Justice Department policy against prosecuting a sitting president, but issued a report saying the evidence he gathered would have been enough to convict Trump at trial.

(Reporting by David Shepardson, Editing by Franklin Paul and Chizu Nomiyama )