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The House Jan. 6 Committee managed to score another legal victory on Monday as it continues an investigation into the Capitol riot that Republicans have described as highly partisan.
The U.S. Supreme Court granted the committee access to the phone records of Arizona GOP Chair Kelli Ward, a key ally of then-President Donald Trump during his legal challenges to swing state votes during the 2020 election cycle.
“The justices, with noted opposition from Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, denied Ward’s emergency motion to block the panel from enforcing a subpoena against T-Mobile to obtain Ward’s records,” Politico reported.
“The panel is seeking evidence related to Ward’s coordination with Trump and his allies to assemble a slate of fake presidential electors intended to help disrupt the transfer of power on Jan. 6, 2021. Ward, who served as one of those pro-Trump electors, pleaded the Fifth when interviewed by the panel in March,” the report added.
In September, the Democrat-run committee dropped a key demand ahead of another hearing later that month.
The UK’s DailyMail.com reported that the committee has formally withdrawn its subpoena for fundraising information from the Republican National Committee and former President Donald Trump.
The outlet added that, according to sources familiar with the situation who spoke to The Washington Post, lawyers for the RNC and software vendor Salesforce were informed last week of the committee’s withdrawal of the subpoena.
“The subpoena issued earlier this year sought records from Salesforce on the performance metrics and analytics related to email campaigns from Donald Trump, his reelection campaign and the RNC,” DailyMail.com reported. “It comes as the panel prepares for at least one more hearing this month.
“The committee announced at the conclusion of its series of primetime, televised hearings this summer that there would be more to come in the fall,” the outlet added.
Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, who is one of the panel’s two Republicans and who is retiring after his current term, claimed that fundraising done by Trump after the 2020 election was somehow concerning to the committee.
“The fact that the vast majority of this money was raised under ‘Stop the Steal’ with no intention to ‘stop the steal,” he told NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
Douglas Letter, the House’s general counsel, notified Salesforce in an email, the Post reported.
“Given the current stage of its investigation, the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol has determined that it no longer has a need to pursue the specific information requested in the February 23, 2022 subpoena that it issued to Salesforce,” the email said, according to the outlet.
In May, a federal judge ruled that the House had the authority to obtain the fundraising information from the RNC and the vendor, but Republicans pushed back.
“We said all along that this subpoena was unconstitutional,” RNC spokeswoman Emma Vaughn said after it was withdrawn. “This is a victory for freedom of speech, privacy, and Americans’ right of political association without fear of partisan reprisal.”
In October, a focus group comprised of voters in Pennsylvania shut down an MSNBC host over some of the most common claims made about the Jan. 6 riot on the left.
The focus group consisted of 10 Pittsburgh-area supporters of former President Donald Trump, and when the journalist, Elise Jordan, pushed certain Democratic talking points regarding the incident, members of the group pushed back hard. Jordan began by saying that Pennsylvania GOP gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano was at the “insurrection,” and asked if that ought to disqualify him from running and holding office.
“Which area? Because I saw a video where Capitol officers were taking away barriers and unlocking doors,” one person responded, with The Western Journal adding:
Other focus group members agreed with his statement and pointed out other inconsistencies not seen in establishment media reports about the events that day. The group unanimously agreed that given Mastriano’s actions on Jan. 6 were not violent, he should still be able to run for office with no problems.
One woman noted that the only person to be killed during the Capitol incursion was Ashli Babbitt, an unarmed female protester and U.S. military veteran who was shot to death by a Capitol Police officer.
Jordan responded by claiming that “a police officer did die” — a reference to Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, who died of natural causes after the incident, not during the riot and not due to any direct injuries received from rioters, an autopsy found.
