Trump spokesman says Reuters has partnered with U.S. House panel on Jan. 6

By Jan Wolfe

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A spokesman for former US President Donald Trump said on Friday that he had a close collaboration in a court file with a congressional committee investigating the deadly January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Spokeswoman Taylor Budowich said in a lawsuit filed in federal court in the District of Columbia that she had filed more than 1,700 pages of documents and had given a four-hour affidavit to the House of Representatives panel.

In a recent appearance, Budowich answered questions about the financing and planning of a speech by Trump to his followers near the White House ahead of the January 6 Capitol violence.

Budowich’s lawsuit was filed by the House Committee on JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE 🙂 for a court order barring access to its financial records.

“The subpoena seeks personal financial material that has nothing to do with any conceivable legislation and is not appropriate for the alleged purposes of the Select Committee,” Budowich said in the lawsuit.

A spokesman for the Jan. 6 election committee did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Budowich’s case is the latest in a series of lawsuits aimed at preventing the commission from enforcing information subpoenas, but it is the first to focus on a subpoena for financial records.

This week, former Trump adviser Michael Flynn and right-wing radio presenter Alex Jones filed separate lawsuits alleging that the Select Committee was not legally constituted and that subpoenas for their testimony were therefore illegal.

An appellate court dismissed that argument, ruling on Dec. 9 that the commission was valid and entitled to view White House records that Trump has tried to protect from the public. Trump appealed the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday.

The commission issued more than 50 subpoenas and heard more than 300 witnesses in the investigation into the attack.