Government

House Lawyer Dropkicks Another Bad Faith Claim In Seb Gorka's January 6 LOLsuit

Seb Gorka, bad faith? The devil you say!

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gavel-3575414_640Herr Doktor Sebastian Gorka, former White House advisor and current MAGA podcaster, appeared in court this morning for a status hearing in his suit to block Verizon handing his cell phone logs over to the January 6 Committee. The teleconference was mostly brief and uneventful, with US District Judge Randolph Moss simply confirming that the parties are cooperating and won’t require his supervision.

But at the end of the hearing, Verizon’s counsel Reid Figel, of Kellogg Hansen, raised a question about the subpoena for Gorka’s records, a subpoena which is identical to those served on the other defiant witnesses. Figel asked for clarity on the issue of scope, specifically whether the Committee is seeking the content of the witnesses’ calls and texts, or simply the metadata.

This matters because, although the issue hasn’t been extensively fleshed out when it comes to congressional subpoenas, the Stored Communications Act treats the content of digital communications differently from the metadata, for which there is a much lower barrier to government access. Recalcitrant January 6 witnesses have fudged this distinction in various ways to make it look like the Committee is illegally trying to obtain their text messages.

For instance, coup-fetishist John Eastman argued that “The subpoenas demand ‘data-connection detail’ records and ‘call…records,'” and Verizon might interpret that “ambiguous wording” to include cell site location information.

Former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and supplement pitchman Alex Jones bluster that the subpoenas are invalid “to the extent the Select Committee is seeking production of the contents of communications.”

Gorka himself waggled his giant head ominously and shouted that “the Stored Communications Act prevents Verizon from divulging Dr. Gorka’s call records to the Committee because the Committee has failed to obtain a warrant or the consent of Dr. Gorka, and it has failed to provide Dr. Gorka with the proper notice as required by statute.”

But the prize goes to a bunch of rally planners whose filing included this hilarious stretcher:

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Upon information and belief, the Select Committee previously asked Defendant Verizon to preserve a copy of the content of each Plaintiff’s communications until further notice. On information and belief, the Select Committee would not have made this request that content be copied and preserved if it did not intend to subpoena content.

This morning, House Counsel Doug Letter professed himself “very glad” that Figel was giving him a chance to set this issue straight. The Committee is not seeking the content of witness calls and texts, Letter insisted. In fact, he’s told every one of the witnesses’ attorneys just that, and yet this nonsense about the Committee seeking communications content continues to appear in their pleadings.

“I’m astonished at the attorneys that are putting this in their complaints,” Letter added.

Which was … charitable.

Anyway, now that this is all cleared up, Gorka and rest of the witnesses will no doubt withdraw this allegation and correct the record forthwith.

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HA HA.

Liz Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics.

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