WASHINGTON — Earlier this week, a federal judge issued a 53-page, full-throated rejection of the Republican National Committee’s legal challenges to a subpoena issued by the congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack.
But if Republicans’ goal was to stymie investigators from getting the information at the heart of the subpoena — records about how the RNC and the Trump campaign used mass emails to promote false claims about the election being stolen — it wasn’t a total loss. US District Judge Timothy Kelly ordered the case dismissed, but he delayed that decision from taking effect to give the RNC a chance to appeal. That process could push out the timeline for the Jan. 6 committee to actually get the documents it wants by weeks or months.
Former president Donald Trump, former administration officials, high-profile pro-Trump figures, and other individuals with some connection to the events of Jan. 6 have filed more than 20 lawsuits challenging the committee’s demands for documents and testimony. Most of these cases are pending; in the few instances where judges have taken action, none have stepped in to block the committee’s work.
The sheer number of Jan. 6 subpoena fights and other legal action challenging the committee’s work is unusual, involving a broad array of actors in Trump’s orbit. In most cases, the challengers haven’t asked judges for immediate, emergency orders to block subpoenas, which means they’re not moving on an expedited track. Civil claims...
A popular social media conspiracy theory about a recent cluster of hantavirus cases claims that the word “hanta” means “scam,” “fraud,” or “nonsense” in “Hebrew slang.” That’s more or less where t...