WASHINGTON — In a decision that could reverberate across other Jan. 6 legal cases, a federal judge has rejected a Republican National Committee lawsuit seeking to block a campaign vendor from providing records to the House committee investigating the 2021 Capitol riot.
The House Select committee is seeking internal data from the email marketing vendor about whether the national party’s fundraising messaging after the 2020 election helped stoke violence at the Capitol, and how successful the messaging emails were for fundraising.
U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia Judge Tim Kelly —a Trump appointee— ruled that the committee’s subpoena for the information was reasonable and narrowly tailored in light of the evidence that the party joined former President Trump in spreading claims to supporters that the election was stolen. Kelly said the committee has demonstrated its need for the party’s data on hundreds of fundraising emails sent between Nov. 3, 2020, and Jan. 6, 2021.
In a first, Kelly also swept aside a series of legal arguments about the committee’s creation and makeup that appear in several other lawsuits from Trump allies and former campaign and White House officials trying to block the committee from accessing their private communications and phone records through third-party companies. Though Kelly stayed his decision until May 5 so the RNC can appeal — delaying the committee from receiving the requested materials — the ruling that the committee’s creation and makeup are valid and that it has a legitimate legislative purpose could be used as precedent in the more than dozen other ongoing lawsuits based on similar claims.
The committee in February subpoenaed Salesforce, the third-party vendor the RNC uses to email fundraising requests. The RNC sued the company to keep it from complying. Salesforce told Vice News in the days after the riot that it had “taken action” against the RNC to “prevent its use of our services in any way that could lead to violence,” and the House Select committee also asked for information used as the basis for that decision.
An RNC spokesman did not immediately return a request for comment.
The RNC and others have tried to argue in court that because the committee does not have 13 members, as specified when it was created, and because House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy did not name committee members, the committee was not properly created. McCarthy withdrew all of his picks for the committee when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi rejected two of his five choices because of their close ties to Trump.
Pelosi instead named Republican Reps. Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois to the committee. Cheney is vice chairwoman of the committee. Both have been punished by their party for participating.
Kelly also found that the committee’s legislative need for the GOP data outweighed the party’s concerns that sensitive, politically competitive data might be given to the committee or become public.
“Nothing suggests that the Select Committee is demanding, or that Salesforce is preparing to produce, internal RNC memoranda laying out its digital strategy,” Kelly wrote in his 53-page ruling. While information about whether an email campaign was successful may have some strategic value, he wrote, “whatever competitive harm may come to the RNC from disclosure of the actual material at issue is too ‘logically attenuated’ and ‘speculative’ to defeat the Select Committee’s weighty interest.”
