A Sitting Congressman Learns the FBI Recorded His Calls — Rep. Suhas Subramanyam Releases the DOJ Notice Showing a Wiretap Swept Up His Conversations With the Virginia Senate Leader Who Ran the Redistricting Referendum

September 3, 2026

On September 3, 2026 Rep. Suhas Subramanyam (D-VA-10) released a notice he said the Justice Department and FBI had sent him disclosing that a federal judge authorized a wiretap in early March 2026 that intercepted some of his own phone calls between March 6 and April 5. The tap was placed as part of the Justice Department's corruption investigation into L. Louise Lucas, the president pro tempore of the Virginia Senate, over an alleged bribery scheme connected to a marijuana dispensary business she co-owns. Lucas has not been charged and denies wrongdoing. Subramanyam did not dispute that he was incidentally captured rather than targeted, but pointed at the calendar: the interception window sat at the peak of campaigning for Virginia's redistricting referendum, which Lucas helped lead, and overlapped with the House Oversight Committee's push to make then-Attorney General Pam Bondi testify about the Epstein files. He placed the wiretap in a line that runs through the Department's investigations of Democratic state attorneys general and the former FBI director, and said the surveillance would not deter Democratic oversight of the administration. The FBI declined to comment and the Justice Department did not respond to reporters. The investigation itself predates the current administration — it was opened under President Biden — and the FBI's May 6, 2026 search of Lucas's Portsmouth office and cannabis business had already drawn a round of statements from Virginia Democrats, most of whom stopped short of asserting the probe was manufactured while insisting the political context could not be ignored.