GOP Fundraising Emails May Have Helped Fuel Jan. 6 Capitol Riot, House Says

(Bloomberg) -- Republican National Committee fundraising emails to voters may have helped set the stage for the Capitol riot, the House Jan. 6 select committee said.

In a Wednesday court filing backing up its subpoena of Republican voter outreach data from Salesforce.com Inc., the committee cited a Dec. 22, 2020, GOP fundraising email saying “the fight isn’t over.”

“The Democrats are trying to get away with STEALING this election, and only YOU can stop them,” the blast email said, according to the filing.

The filing was in response to an RNC suit seeking to block the subpoena. The Jan. 6 committee said the information on GOP voter outreach was important to understand why so many voters falsely believed the election had been stolen from former President Donald Trump despite all evidence to the contrary.

The RNC claims that handing over the Salesforce data will give Democrats, who currently control the House, a political advantage in future elections. But the House committee denied that it was seeking such an edge. 

“The public’s interest in a thorough investigation of the January 6th attack strongly outweighs the RNC’s speculative concern that the Select Committee ‘could’ use Salesforce’s information to discern the RNC’s digital political strategy,” the House said in the filing.

In a March 15 motion to block the subpoena, the RNC referred to the rioters as a “mob” and said many of them “intended to interfere with Congress’s counting and certification of electoral votes for president and vice president.” The filing also repeated the RNC’s public language from the day of the siege, calling it “an attack on our country and its founding principles.”

The Jan. 6 committee suggested on Wednesday that such sentiments were incompatible with the RNC’s efforts to block the subpoena.

Salesforce said it isn’t taking a position on the subpoena in a separate filing on Wednesday.

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