Roger Stone sues in bid to block Jan. 6 committee subpoena of phone records

Roger Stone, a staunch Trump ally, filed a lawsuit Thursday seeking to prevent AT&T from turning his phone records over to the congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

The House panel subpoenaed AT&T for Stone’s records from Nov. 1, 2020, to Jan. 31, 2021, according to the lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C.

Stone argued in the suit that the subpoena was unlawful, overly broad and in violation of his First and Fourth Amendment rights under the Constitution.

The suit also alleged that by collecting his phone records, Democrats on the committee would be able to build a map of contacts and associations of their political opponents.

“The billions of data points yielded can recreate not just intimate relationships, but also locations and movements, creating a virtual CAT-scan of the Select Committee’s political opposition, likely, as reported, including even their own colleagues in the House of Representatives,” Stone’s lawyer said in the lawsuit.

Stone, a political consultant, is a longtime adviser to former President Donald Trump.

In December, Stone was questioned by the committee, which is investigating matters related to the attack on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob. He invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination when he met with the House panel.

The suit filed Thursday seeks to have a judge declare the subpoena issued to AT&T invalid and to prevent the carrier from turning over any data.

The committee is seeking IP addresses, a list of contacts, call session times and “dozens to hundreds of other data points or metadata,” the suit said.

A spokesman for the House committee said it had no comment on Stone's lawsuit.

Stone is not the first person to sue over phone records sought by the Jan. 6 committee; many other have made the same arguments that Stone did.

A committee aide said this month that the panel had interviewed more than 500 witnesses and announced 80 subpoenas related to the investigation. More than 63,000 documents have been received, the aide said.

A pro-Trump mob attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, as Congress was meeting to formally count the electoral votes affirming President Joe Biden’s victory. The violence erupted after weeks of false claims of voter fraud by Trump and his allies.

In November, the House committee announced it had subpoenaed Stone and other people who it said were involved in planning and organizing the rallies and march that preceded the attack. Stone has denied he was at the Capitol on Jan. 6.

Stone was sentenced to more than three years in prison in February 2020 for making false statements, obstruction and witness tampering as part of former special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation. Trump initially commuted his sentence before later giving him a full pardon.