‘Fishing Expedition’: Federal Judge Tanya Chutkan Shoots Down Trump Request To Subpoena January 6 Committee Records

The federal judge overseeing former President Donald Trump’s 2020 election case rejected his request Monday to subpoena records relating to the Jan. 6 House Select Committee.

Trump asked in October to issue subpoenas to retrieve “certain missing records and uncover information about their disposition.” District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan, an Obama appointee, wrote in a seven-page order that Trump “fails to meet his burden” in justifying his need for the records, likening his request to a “fishing expedition.”

“Defendant does not state with any specificity the information that he seeks in those records, repeating only that it is important and related to the events and people associated with the Select Committee’s work and therefore the January 6, 2021 attack,” Chutkan wrote. “The broad scope of the records that Defendant seeks, and his vague description of their potential relevance, resemble less ‘a good faith effort to obtain identified evidence’ than they do ‘a general ‘fishing expedition.”

Trump sought to subpoena the Archivist of the United States, the Clerk of the House of Representatives, the Committee on House Administration, Special Counsel to the President Richard Sauber, Department of Homeland Security general counsel Jonathan Meyer, Republican Georgia Rep. Barry Loudermilk and Democratic Mississippi Rep. Bernie Thompson.

Loudermilk claimed that some records from the Committee “were not archived” as required in a June 26 letter. Thompson, the former Jan. 6 Select Committee chair, later disputed that claim.

The trial in Trump’s 2020 election case is scheduled for March 4, 2024.