Associates

Glen Casada served as Speaker of the Tennessee House of Representatives until a 2019 scandal forced his resignation — involving a text message scandal with his chief of staff, Cade Cothren, that included racist messages and allegations of cocaine use in the Capitol. Both men later faced federal charges. Casada was convicted of federal corruption offenses related to a ghost-payrolling scheme; Cothren was convicted alongside him.

In November 2025, Trump's clemency wave cleared both Casada and Cothren of their federal corruption convictions, sparing them prison time. The pardons were part of the same executive clemency action that covered approximately 1,500 January 6 defendants — a sweep that Blackburn declined to comment on publicly.

The Casada-Cothren pardons are a state-level illustration of the same dynamic visible in Blackburn's federal record: federal accountability mechanisms erased by executive action, with Tennessee's Republican officeholders — including Blackburn — saying nothing.

Tennessee's two U.S. Senators were on the same page going into January 6 — and the Jan. 6 Committee documented exactly how that worked. Rudy Giuliani called both Blackburn and Hagerty on the evening of January 6, in the hour before the joint session reconvened to certify the election. The committee's final report identified them as part of a list of "Trump's closest allies" targeted for calls asking senators to slow-walk the vote.

Sworn testimony before the January 6 Committee revealed that the "leading factor" in how Hagerty voted on certification was being "in sync with Blackburn." Hagerty told committee investigators that his vote was driven by staying aligned with her. That means one senator's certification vote was effectively determined by another senator — not by independent judgment.

Neither Blackburn nor Hagerty has answered public questions about what Giuliani said on those calls. After the Jan. 6 investigation, Blackburn used her Senate committee perch to grill AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile about their cooperation with Jack Smith's subpoenas of congressional phone records — records that would have covered her own calls.

The January 6 Committee's final report documented a coordinated call campaign by Trump's personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, targeting Republican senators he considered reliable allies. Blackburn was on that list alongside Josh Hawley, Ted Cruz, Lindsey Graham, Mike Lee, Jim Jordan, and Tommy Tuberville. The voicemail Giuliani left for Tuberville — played publicly during the Committee hearings — captures the ask directly: "We need you, our Republican friends, to try to just slow it down."

Blackburn was planning to vote against certification before the Capitol was attacked. She reversed that position only after the riot. She then voted against impeaching Trump for inciting it, and declined to comment publicly when Trump issued mass pardons to Jan. 6 defendants. The call from Giuliani, her planned no vote, her post-riot reversal, her impeachment vote, and her silence on pardons form a documented sequence — each piece on the public record.

The FBI obtained and analyzed phone records of multiple Republican senators as part of the Jan. 6 investigation. Blackburn responded by questioning telecom companies at a Senate hearing about their cooperation with Jack Smith's subpoenas — an inquiry critics noted was aimed at chilling cooperation with investigations into conduct that included calls to her own number.

In 2014, Blackburn co-sponsored the Ensuring Patient Access and Effective Drug Enforcement Act. A joint investigation by 60 Minutes and The Washington Post later found that the bill was written by a pharmaceutical industry lobbyist and made it "nearly impossible" for the DEA to freeze suspicious shipments of opioids from distributors to pharmacies. Then-Attorney General Eric Holder publicly warned that the bill "would severely undermine a critical component of our efforts to prevent communities and families from falling prey to dangerous drugs." The bill passed and became law in April 2016.

The money trail runs parallel to the legislative timeline. Between 2014 and 2016, two major drug distribution companies and the Healthcare Distribution Alliance spent millions lobbying Congress on this legislation. In the same period, pharmaceutical and health product manufacturers collectively became one of Blackburn's top career donor industries — a pattern that OpenSecrets data shows continued through her Senate tenure on committees with direct oversight of the industry.

Tennessee consistently ranks among the highest states for opioid overdose deaths. Sullivan, Campbell, Scott, Knox, and Hamblen counties have among the highest overdose rates in the state. The 60 Minutes/Washington Post investigation documented the legislative mechanism directly: a lobbyist drafted the bill, industry funded the campaigns, and the DEA's enforcement authority was gutted. Blackburn's co-sponsorship put her name on that mechanism.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was confirmed as Secretary of Health and Human Services in 2025. Blackburn voted to confirm him. As HHS Secretary, Kennedy oversees Medicaid — the same program whose work requirements Blackburn voted into law in the "Big Beautiful Bill" — as well as the CDC programs Tennessee's rural health system depends on for disease surveillance and opioid response funding. Blackburn cut eligibility from below; Kennedy's HHS restructuring affects the infrastructure from above. The Senate.gov confirmation roll call is the documented link.