Last night, a federal judge rejected the RNC’s bid to block its email marketing vendor from releasing records to the House Jan. 6th panel as it examines whether Trump’s campaign used false election fraud claims in fundraising appeals that also encouraged the violence. Via the Washington Post:

U.S. District Judge Timothy J. Kelly of Washington delivered a thorough victory to the House select committee, tossing out the RNC’s claims that its and the Trump campaign’s information was protected on grounds including the First Amendment and ruling that under the Constitution’s grant of legislative powers to Congress and the speech-or-debate clause, judges cannot interfere with how lawmakers obtain and use information.

Kelly also dismissed the RNC’s claims against Salesforce — the business software giant used by the RNC and Trump’s reelection campaign — after the company and committee significantly narrowed the list of disputed records at issue, for example, dropping demands for any information that would reveal the identities of individual political donors. Kelly temporarily barred Salesforce from releasing any records to the House before Wednesday to give the national GOP committee time to appeal.

“It is hard to imagine a more important interest for Congress than to preserve its own ability to carry out specific duties assigned to it under the Constitution,” Kelly wrote in a 53-page opinion issued shortly before midnight. “To repeat: according to the Select Committee, its investigation and public reporting suggest that claims that the 2020 presidential election was fraudulent or stolen motivated some who participated in the attack, and emails sent by the RNC and the Trump campaign using Salesforce’s platform spread those claims.”