GOP Loses Bid to Block Jan. 6 Committee’s Demand for Email Data

(Bloomberg) -- A judge handed a victory to lawmakers probing the Jan. 6 insurrection by upholding a House subpoena for Salesforce.com Inc. data tied to the GOP's “inflammatory” mass-email campaign after the 2020 presidential election.

The ruling late Sunday by U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly in Washington also held that the House select committee investigating the Capitol riot is valid despite Speaker Nancy Pelosi rejecting recommendations by Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy for Republican members to sit on the committee.

The House resolution forming the committee only required Pelosi to “consult” with McCarthy, the judge wrote. “There is no dispute that she did.”

Salesforce, a vendor that helped with the Republican National Committee email campaign during and after the election, didn't take a position on whether the subpoena was valid.

The judge issued a so-called administrative injunction against the subpoena that will expire on May 5 if the RNC doesn't seek a stay pending appeal.

The email campaign at the center of the dispute sought to convince voters that the 2020 election was stolen from former President Donald Trump. A letter that accompanied the subpoena cited public reports characterizing the tenor of the GOP emails as “inflammatory, with nearly every email suggesting that the election was fraudulent, that Democrats had stolen the election, and that Congress needed to be pressured to overturn the results to keep Trump in power,” according to the ruling.

Lawyers for the RNC didn't immediately respond to a message seeking comment.

The RNC claimed House lawmakers were abusing their subpoena power to access non-public data on GOP donors, volunteers and supporters, and alleged the subpoena was “overbroad.”

The judge indicated the GOP may have had a valid argument against some aspects of the subpoena if it hadn't been tweaked during court hearings. The House earlier told the court it wasn't seeking any data that would identify specific donors, as the GOP claimed.

“The RNC identified important First Amendment interests implicated by the subpoena that would have presented a much different question for the Court had the materials at issue not been narrowed after discussions between the Select Committee and Salesforce,” the judge wrote.

The case is Republican National Committee v. Pelosi; 1:22-cv-00659; U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia (Washington).