Behind the Jan. 6 panel's last-minute efforts to win 3 key Trump-world lawsuits

Since September, former President Donald Trump and his allies have launched 25 lawsuits to stymie the Jan. 6 select committee. But the panel has decided to fight aggressively in just four, a strategic gambit that's paying off.

The select committee has been able to narrow its legal focus due to an early win in one of those cases — a challenge filed by Trump himself — that delivered troves of valuable evidence to Congress. That victory allowed the panel to pick its battles carefully, choosing to deploy its resources in just three other cases with the potential to result in similarly crucial swaths of new information.

A review of hundreds of the panel’s legal filings and records shows the committee has almost exclusively dug in against lawsuits filed by former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, the Republican National Committee and John Eastman, the attorney who developed Trump’s last-ditch strategy to overturn the 2020 election.

Those lawsuits are now the forums for a last-minute blitz by the select committee to obtain new tranches of sensitive documents ahead of their public hearings in June. And each of those court challenges are reaching key inflection points this week.

“Further delay in obtaining the materials … could obscure key facts and affect Congress’ efforts to prevent January 6th from recurring in our rapidly approaching next election cycle, or in the future,” House General Counsel Douglas Letter argued Monday in a filing with the U.S. Court of Appeals for Washington D.C.

While the select committee has driven headlines with constant subpoenas, depositions and public statements, its legal strategy has arguably been at least as consequential to the findings it will unveil next month. And as panel lawyers are attempting a concentrated, final-hours effort to obtain information in those three cases, they’re at the same time filing to dismiss other lawsuits that have sat dormant for months.

Here’s a look at the key cases the committee has fought, the ones they’ve ignored and where the litigation stands as the panel prepares to launch public hearings:

Trump v. Thompson

The first and most significant attempt to stymie the select committee came from Trump himself — and it led to a string of resounding defeats for the former president.

Trump had sought to prevent the committee from obtaining his White House records from the National Archives. Instead, it resulted in a January Supreme Court ruling that unlocked hundreds of sensitive pages, which have allowed investigators to piece together significant aspects of Trump World’s conduct before Jan. 6.

Since January, the committee has received documents from the Archives on a rolling basis. Those documents have included Trump’s call records from Jan. 6 and a White House “daily diary” of Trump’s movements, which have served as a blueprint for the panel.

The committee has also obtained photographs from official White House photographer Shealah Craighead, some of which may document Trump’s movements on Jan. 6 in real-time. Select committee chair Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) has indicated that his requests to the Archives continue to this day, growing increasingly specific as the committee gathers more evidence.

Eastman v. Thompson

Eastman has emerged as the driving force behind Trump’s increasingly desperate strategy to remain in power even after his court battles failed in the waning weeks of his presidency.

A federal judge in California, David Carter, has repeatedly dismantled Eastman’s efforts to block the select committee from accessing thousands of his private emails. Then, Carter issued a landmark ruling that found Eastman and Trump likely engaged in a criminal conspiracy to overturn the election — an opinion that could be one of the most important results of the committee’s investigation.

Eastman’s fight against the panel has continued, but Carter has indicated that he believes in the “urgency” of the panel’s work and is therefore pressing to rule quickly on a final set of 700 documents.

The select committee has also used the Eastman case as an outlet for significant swaths of the evidence it has collected so far. In making its case to Carter, the panel publicly disclosed deposition excerpts from former Vice President Mike Pence’s top aides, emails Eastman sent on Jan. 6 and Trump’s private schedule.

The committee is due to file its latest salvo in the case on Thursday, another potential forum to preview the evidence it has already collected.

Meadows v. Pelosi

The select committee has also used Meadows’ lawsuit to unload some of its significant findings. In a filing last month that accompanied an effort to get Meadows’ case thrown out, the committee revealed deposition transcripts from Meadows’ former deputy Cassidy Hutchinson, who described in granular detail meetings between Meadows and Republican members of Congress strategizing to prevent Trump from leaving office.

The panel also packed the filing with text messages between Meadows and other figures eyed by congressional investigators.

The select committee is due to issue a reply to Meadows’ efforts to fend off the committee on Friday.

Republican National Committee v. Pelosi

The select committee is attempting to obtain internal RNC documents, held by third-party data vendor SalesForce, focused on certain fundraising emails that amplified Trump’s lies about the results of the election.

Investigators say that data could shed light on how widely the party’s fundraising emails were read during the post-2020 election period. The select committee wants to know whether those pitches played a role in helping radicalize people who later showed up to breach the Capitol on Jan. 6.

U.S. District Court Judge Tim Kelly, a Trump appointee, ruled in favor of the select committee earlier this month in a ruling that also defended the committee from attacks against its legitimacy.

The RNC appealed the ruling to a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals, which on Wednesday agreed to put a hold on Kelly’s ruling for at least three weeks while it considers the matter. If the three judges — all Trump appointees — agree to extend the stay on the ruling, the select committee could appeal the matter to the full 11-member bench or take it to the Supreme Court.

But the delay already threatens to deprive the committee of the RNC’s records during its public hearings, which are slated to end in late June.

Budowich v. Pelosi

The select committee’s legal battle against Trump spokesperson Taylor Budowich was not one of its three primary targets, but it has been an accidental boon for the panel.

The panel subpoenaed J.P. Morgan Chase for bank records related to Budowich’s potential involvement in the finances of the Jan. 6 “Stop the Steal” rally. Budowich sued to block the subpoena before a Dec. 24 deadline — but by the time the suit was filed, J.P. Morgan had already transmitted the documents to the select committee.

Budowich maintained his lawsuit, however, challenging the legitimacy of the committee’s subpoena and structure. U.S. District Court Judge James Boasberg subsequently upheld the panel’s validity, the first of three court rulings that have backed the panel’s composition.

The rejects

This week, the committee began filing motions to dismiss certain lawsuits it's seemed to deem less worthy of its legal resources.

That includes one filed by Ali Alexander, a founder of the “Stop the Steal” group, and Christine Torre, the mother of a man charged for entering the Capitol on Jan. 6. The panel also moved to dismiss a separate lawsuit by Eastman filed in D.C.

Among the witnesses who have filed lawsuits that the select committee has largely ignored are Phil Waldron, who pushed discredited claims to top Trump White House officials about voting machine irregularities; Amy Harris, a photographer with ties to members of the Proud Boys; Kelly Meggs, a leader of the Oath Keepers; Kelli Ward, the chair of the Arizona Republican Party; and Alex Jones, the pro-Trump broadcaster.

In nearly every one of those cases, the select committee has opted to repeatedly defer engaging on the matter, using nearly identical language. Lawmakers have emphasized that in many cases, they’ve already obtained the information and evidence they were seeking from other sources.