The FBI sent a second round of letters alerting people that their calls involving Virginia state Sen. Louise Lucas had been intercepted earlier this year.
One lawmaker whose calls were captured was Rep. Suhas Subramanyam, a Democrat who is seeking reelection in Virginia’s 10th Congressional District. His office told the Daily Signal that it’s the second time this year that the congressman’s communications with Lucas, the president pro tempore of the state Senate, have been monitored.
Federal agents obtained at least two authorizations from a United States district court judge that allowed them to surveil Lucas’ phone calls.
The first announced period was from March 6 until April 5, and the second period was from April 14 until May 14. In each case, the FBI waited three months before it sent letters to inform people that their calls had been monitored. Both letters note that “all original recordings were sealed” by court order, which indicates that the calls were recorded and that the recordings are being preserved.
Subramanyam said he spoke with Lucas one time during the first covered time period, but his office isn’t certain how many calls were included in the time frame of the second letter.
“There has been a significant delay in the Congressman receiving the letters,” Subramanyam’s office told the Daily Signal. “He received the first one at the beginning of July for the period between March and April. And then he just received the second letter earlier this week for the April 14-May 14 time period. So, we aren’t sure if the monitoring is still ongoing.”
The Daily Signal asked the FBI whether it planned a third round of surveillance of Lucas’ phone, or whether it was already tapping her phone again. The bureau’s national press office said that “the FBI declines to comment.”
Earlier this year, Senate Republicans cried foul over reports that the FBI had sought telephone toll data—information about when and to whom a call is made, as well as the duration and general location data of the call—around the time of the Jan. 6, 2021, riots at the U.S. Capitol.
“It is a modern Watergate,” Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz said in March. “[A]n operation that aligned Democrats across all three branches of government: the Biden executive branch, through DOJ and the FBI, wielding investigative power against political opponents; Democrat-appointed judges in the judiciary, through warrants, secrecy orders, and deference, failing to serve as a meaningful check; and members of the legislative branch, who should be the first line of oversight, choosing instead to look the other way.”
The data collected in that operation doesn’t include the content of the calls. This year’s surveillance of Sen. Lucas goes further than that, with federal agents recording calls that included at least one federal lawmaker. Federal agents are apparently preserving those recordings.
Lucas was a leader in the effort to enact a congressional redistricting amendment this year that would have redrawn districts to benefit Democrats. Voters approved the measure, but the Virginia Supreme Court set it aside on a technicality. She also worked to hold up the state’s budget over a dispute about the tax treatment of data centers. Lucas also owns a cannabis dispensary near her political headquarters. On May 6, the FBI raided her office in Portsmouth as part of a corruption investigation that dates to the Biden administration, and agents entered the dispensary as well.
The FBI hasn’t brought any charges as a result of the raid or the wider Lucas investigation and declined to comment on whether it intends to do so.
For her part, Lucas criticized the probe. “What we saw fits a clear pattern from this administration: when challenged, they try to intimidate and silence the voices of those who stand up to them,” she said in May.
It isn’t clear whether any other federal lawmakers were taped as part of the Lucas investigation.
“We are not familiar with other members of Congress who were also surveilled related to the Senator Lucas investigation,” a member of Subramanyam’s office told the Daily Signal. “The congressman has asked the FBI what they listened to and what they used that for. And then that will inform any next steps.”
[Editor’s note: This story originally was published by The Daily Signal.]
