A District of Columbia federal judge has thrown out a Republican National Committee lawsuit which sought to block the House January 6 select committee from accessing records related to GOP fundraising emails sent in the days before the attack on the Capitol by Donald Trump supporters.
In March, the RNC filed suit against the nine-member panel after Chairman Bennie Thompson issued a subpoena to Salesforce, the owner of a digital tool the GOP uses to create and distribute fundraising emails, seeking documents and testimony “regarding whether and how the Trump campaign used Salesforce’s platform to disseminate false statements about the 2020 election” prior to the attack on the Capitol.
The RNC later added Salesforce to the suit as a defendant and filed papers asking District Judge Timothy Kelly to issue an injunction barring enforcement of the subpoena and a declaration that it was invalid because it was “issued in pursuit of non-legislative activities, because the select committee is illegitimate without the Republican members put forth by House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, and because it violates the First Amendment”.
But Judge Kelly, an appointee of former president Donald Trump, rejected each of those arguments and ordered the lawsuit dismissed, citing the House panel’s immunity from lawsuits under the US Constitution’s Speech and Debate clause. He explained that that provision, which gives the House and Senate protections akin to the parliamentary privilege enjoyed by MPs, bars the courts from even hearing the case.
“To begin with, the RNC’s claims against House Defendants must be dismissed. As the Framers intended, House Defendants are immune from suit under the Speech or Debate Clause. Further, the Court lacks subject matter jurisdiction to pass on the merits of the claims against them in the alternative, as they urge,” he wrote.
The judge later wrote that “none” of the arguments made by the RNC in support of their position that the Speech or Debate clause was inapplicable were persuasive.
In response to arguments that the select committee should not enjoy immunity “because the subpoena is merely an ‘open attempt by political foes to unearth a competing political party’s internal deliberations and political and digital strategy,’” Judge Kelly said the “problem” with such a claim is that courts “may not examine” Congress’s “motives” when evaluating whether the Speech or Debate clause is applicable. He added that the clause is an “absolute bar” to the RNC’s claims, which “must be dismissed”.
Judge Kelly also rejected arguments that the panel itself was not “properly authorised” because it has nine members, all of whom were chosen by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Republican attorneys had pointed to the House resolution establishing the panel, which stated that Ms Pelosi “shall” appoint Republican members “after consultation with the minority leader,” as evidence that the committee was improperly constituted.
But Judge Kelly, pointing to a prior case in which he ruled that Mr Trump had the ability to name his own choice for director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, said that use of the word “shall” did not compel Ms Pelosi to appoint the maximum number of committee members.
He also rejected claims that Ms Pelosi rendered the committee illegitimate by rejecting Mr McCarthy’s choices, writing that the only thing the Speaker had to do was solicit Mr McCarthy’s “advice or opinion”.
“There is no dispute that she did. That she did not accept all his recommendations, and that Minority Leader McCarthy then withdrew all his recommendations, does not mean that Speaker Pelosi failed to consult with him,” he wrote. He also explained that the House’s decision to hold witnesses in contempt for defying subpoenas meant that the body had deemed the panel to be legitimately constituted even without the full 13-member complement it had authorised.
The judge also shot down Republican claims that allowing the panel access to its data would give Democrats on the committee access to closely-held secrets related to the GOP’s digital strategy, calling such concerns “speculative” and finding that the committee’s need for the information outweighs any advantage Democrats might gain from viewing the data in question.
“Nothing suggests that the Select Committee is demanding, or that Salesforce is preparing to produce, internal RNC memoranda laying out its digital strategy,” he wrote. “Obviously, information that shows which email campaigns attracted more attention, and which attracted less, has some strategic value. But on the record here, 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”.
Judge Kelly added later that the limited window the panel is seeking to review communications from — the two months stretching from the 3 November election to the 6 January attack on the Capitol — was “plainly relevant” to the committee’s investigation.
