DC Judge Denies Trump Request for Subpoenas of J6 Committee Materials

D.C. District Judge Tanya Chutkan has denied former President Donald Trump's motion to subpoena records from the House of Representatives' Jan. 6 committee, arguing that his requests are like a fishing expedition.

Her seven-page decision criticized the scope and alleged vagueness of President Trump's requests. It also argued that he was improperly applying Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 17 to information that could be obtained through other means.

"Defendant has not met his burdens with respect to his proposed Rule 17(c) subpoenas," Judge Chutkan said. "He has not sufficiently justified his requests for either the 'Missing Materials' themselves or the other five categories of documents related to them."

Quoting the United States v. Cuthbertson, she added that the "broad scope of the records that Defendant seeks, and his vague description of their potential relevance, resemble less 'a good faith effort to obtain identified evidence' than they do 'a general fishing expedition that attempts to use the [Rule 17(c) subpoena] as a discovery device.'"