Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) is not pulling any punches. Following bombshell revelations that the FBI, under Special Counsel Jack Smith’s direction, allegedly surveilled the private phone records of multiple Republican senators during the January 6 investigation, Hawley is sounding the alarm—and demanding consequences.
“This is worse than Watergate,” Hawley declared in a blistering interview with Fox News Digital, following reports that metadata—including call logs and timestamps, though not content—were collected from nearly a dozen sitting GOP senators, including Hawley himself. Among the names reportedly swept up in the probe are Sens. Lindsey Graham, Marsha Blackburn, Ron Johnson, and Tommy Tuberville, all of whom were outspoken critics of the Biden administration and the 2020 election certification process.
“This is spying on the president’s political opponents,” Hawley charged. “A profound violation of the separation of powers.”
At the core of the senator’s criticism is what he views as an unprecedented abuse of federal authority—executive overreach weaponized not against foreign adversaries, but against domestic dissent. Hawley, a constitutional attorney by background, called the reported surveillance a direct attack on core constitutional protections, including the First Amendment and the foundational principle of checks and balances.
“This is Biden’s Stasi,” he wrote bluntly on X, drawing parallels between the administration’s actions and the tactics of totalitarian secret police. “They spied on Catholic churches. They prosecuted pro-lifers. They labeled concerned parents as threats. Now we find out they tapped the phones of their political enemies. Including mine.”
For Hawley, this isn’t an isolated scandal—it’s part of a broader pattern he believes has defined the Biden presidency: a systematic targeting of ideological opponents using the full force of the federal bureaucracy. He cited the DOJ’s involvement in investigating school board protests, surveillance of religious communities, and the controversial censorship partnerships between tech companies and government agencies.
But it’s the surveillance of fellow lawmakers that, to Hawley, crosses a red line with historical echoes.
“Watergate was a bungled break-in to spy on political opponents. This is the full weight of the U.S. intelligence community activated to monitor and track sitting senators,” he said. “This is worse than Watergate.”
The Missouri senator is calling for nothing short of a sweeping, independent investigation into every layer of decision-making involved. He wants a new special counsel—not appointed from within the current DOJ—and a full accounting of who ordered the surveillance, who approved it, and who knew about it.
“This can’t just be swept under the rug,” he warned. “We need transparency. We need accountability. And we need prosecutions if the law was broken.”
The questions now are immense. What legal justification did the FBI and Smith’s team claim for monitoring lawmakers? Did the White House or senior Biden officials have knowledge or involvement? And perhaps most urgent: if sitting U.S. Senators can be tracked in the name of “investigation,” what limits remain for the surveillance state?
