In a blow to the Republican National Committee, a federal judge ruled Sunday that the RNC must supply the House January 6 Committee with marketing data on its fundraising emails from November 2020 through Jan 6, 2021.

“[T]he Select Committee seeks reasonably relevant information from a narrow window during which the RNC sent emails promoting claims that the presidential election was fraudulent or stolen,” Trump-appointee Judge Timothy Kelly wrote in the 53-page ruling. American Greatness senior writer Julie Kelly was quick to point out the ramifications:

Thanks to Judge Tim Kelly, this political data will soon be in the hands of House Democrats, Liz Cheney, and Adam Kinzinger: pic.twitter.com/jCdzxKAoWB

— Julie Kelly 🇺🇸 (@julie_kelly2) May 2, 2022

Judge Kelly explained his decision, citing the “exceedingly rare spectacle of a congressional committee subpoenaing the records of one of our country’s two major political parties.”

You’re the one who said it, judge. This is a spectacle. According to Politico:

The decision overall is a major victory for the select committee and could open the doors to reams of internal RNC data held by Salesforce, a third-party vendor that the RNC used to run email fundraising campaigns and analyses. The select committee subpoenaed Salesforce for the records in February and the RNC filed suit soon after, seeking to block Salesforce from complying.

What this means is that Republicans Illinois Representative Adam Kinzinger and Wyoming’s Liz Cheney can, along with the rest of the committee, go on a long fishing expedition, gleaning inside information on Republican fundraising efforts and strategies. The committee believes that fundraising emails were a direct factor in fomenting protesters to attack the capitol, in what CNN calls an “insurrection.” Certainly, there were bad actors that day, but if it were an insurrection, it would go down as one of the weakest overthrow attempts in recorded history.

The ruling came after the RNC sued the committee over the records request. The RNC has already announced its intention to appeal, and claimed partial victory because their efforts had forced the committee to limit the subpoena:

“While the RNC strongly disagrees with this ruling, our lawsuit compelled Nancy Pelosi’s January 6th committee to dramatically narrow the subpoena’s scope,” chief RNC counsel Matt Raymer said.

In his ruling, the judge brushed off claims that the records subpoena basically demanded that the committee’s political opponents hand over their strategies and game plans:

Nothing suggests that the Select Committee is demanding, or that Salesforce is preparing to produce, internal RNC memoranda laying out its digital strategy. Obviously, information that shows which email campaigns attracted more attention, and which attracted less, has some strategic value. But on the record here, whatever competitive harm may come to the RNC from disclosure of the actual material at issue is too ‘logically attenuated’ and ‘speculative’ to defeat the Select Committee’s weighty interest.

He also claimed that donors’ names and other sensitive information would not be released:

House Defendants are not seeking, and Salesforce is not producing, any disaggregated information about any of the RNC’s donors, volunteers, or email recipients, including any person’s personally identifiable information. Moreover, even the RNC’s own confidential information that is undeniably at issue is relatively narrow in scope.

Are we really to believe that partisan Democrats are going to get a hold of all this information and not weaponize it? Of course they will. Remember, the committee was set up by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who famously ripped up former President Donald Trump’s State of the Union speech on the floor of the house in front of a live TV audience. Hardly someone whose fingers you want flipping through your personal information. A Twitter user also points out how much hidden data is available from your email records:

Most people don't realize how much confidential data is included with email records. This is basically a search warrant for every single person in the RNC's database.

Email data includes:

-geolocation when email was opened
-IP address
-device type
-browser https://t.co/GweZfCnJLX

— Adrienne (@AdrienneRoyer) May 2, 2022

As Julie Kelly notes, the ruling is expected to have a chilling effect on donors and presumably scare them into not giving a dime, worried that their names will be exposed on the floor of the House.

This has one purpose: To scare GOP donors during this midterm election cycle. Straight-up unapologetic election interference with the legal imprimatur of a Trump-appointed judge. pic.twitter.com/xuttCZ0pNF

— Julie Kelly 🇺🇸 (@julie_kelly2) May 2, 2022

While inflation soars, Ukraine burns, and the Dow plummets, the committee seeks to investigate marketing emails. It would seem that it’s only a matter of time before the Board of Disinformation gets involved.