By David Shepardson
WASHINGTON, Feb 10 (Reuters) - The largest U.S. telecom companies will face 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 are testifying 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.
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.
AT&T will tell 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."
Verizon will tell the committee it fully complied with the law but could have done better and is making changes including expanding protections to personal and campaign phones.
"For law enforcement requests related to members, we will ensure that Verizon senior leadership is notified and consulted before any information is disclosed," the company said, adding it will notify lawmakers if allowed and will challenge any non-disclosure order in court.
T-Mobile general counsel Mark Nelson will defend the company's actions.
"When we received subpoenas from Special Counsel Jack Smith’s office, none of which sought records for Senate business lines, the team treated them as we would any other subpoenas: carefully, consistently, and in full compliance with the law," his testimony says.
Democrats have noted many of the Republican senators targeted by the investigation supported Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
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)
