Conservative pundit Sebastian Gorka, who previously served as a Deputy Assistant to the President in the administration of Donald Trump, has sued the House Select Committee tasked with investigating the January 6 insurrection in an effort to block lawmakers from obtaining his phone records from Verizon.
“The Select Committee’s aimless rifling through the communications records of an adverse political journalist whom it knows had no role in the events it claims to be investigating epitomizes an investigation run amok,” Gorka’s lawyer wrote in the complaint, which was filed in D.C. federal district court.
“The toxic forces rending this country apart will only be strengthened, and the goal of more tranquil times will be more elusive, if any party holding a majority of seats in the House of Representatives can hunt down and persecute citizens, including journalists, because of their political sympathies and speech in an effort to silence that speech,” the complaint adds.
Gorka’s lawsuit seeks to invalidate the subpoena by claiming that the committee is not a proper legislative body.
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Multiple people who are being investigated by the committee have refused to cooperate, perhaps most notably Mark Meadows, the former White House Chief of Staff who refused to sit for a deposition, a reversal from a prior announcement that he would comply with the committee’s subpoena ordering him to appear.
“We agreed to provide thousands of pages of responsive documents and Mr. Meadows was willing to appear voluntarily, not under compulsion of the Select Committee’s subpoena to him, for a deposition to answer questions about non-privileged matters. Now actions by the Select Committee have made such an appearance untenable,” George J. Terwilliger III, an attorney for Meadows, wrote in a letter obtained by CNN.
Alan is a writer, editor, and news junkie based in New York.
