The House Select Committee charged with investigating the Jan. 6th Capitol riot is backing off its immediate push to obtain records from the Republican National Committee (RNC). The panel admitted that the schedule recently set by a three-judge appeals court panel would prohibit the committee from obtaining the records in time for the public hearings set to begin next month.
Politico reports:
“The grant of an injunction pending appeal and the schedule set by this Court for this case makes clear that the information at the core of this case … cannot be obtained, analyzed, and utilized by the Select Committee in the public hearings scheduled during the next several weeks,” House counsel Douglas Letter wrote in a Sunday evening filing.
Now, the House panel is asking for the case to be resolved by late August.
“The Select Committee is considering the information it now has and might receive regarding efforts by multiple entities to spread knowingly false statements alleging that the 2020 election was stolen,” Letter wrote in Sunday’s filing.
The legal fight is over a set of RNC records held by Salesforce, a third-party vendor that handled the party’s data and digital operations.
The RNC quickly sued to block the select committee subpoena, claiming the effort was a guide to access to internal records and data of a rival political party. But a District Court judge, Tim Kelly, rejected the RNC’s claims. The Trump-appointed judge ruled that the select committee had sought a narrow set of records that fit their mission to unearth the truth behind the attack on the Capitol. Earlier this month, the RNC appealed Kelly’s decision and sought an injunction from the appeals court. A three-judge panel — made up of Trump’s only three appointees to the 11-member court of appeals — granted the injunction last week and set a schedule for arguments that extended to mid-June.
“But the Select Committee recognizes that the Salesforce documentation will not be available on the timeline required for use in its hearings. The Select Committee no longer seeks the Salesforce documentation on a highly expedited schedule, and the Select Committee will continue to evaluate its needs for information on these and other related issues as additional material potentially becomes available from other sources.”
The committee is now asking the panel to set a briefing schedule that begins June 24 and extends to late August.
