On Monday, a judge has rejected Donald Trump’s request to review congressional investigation into the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol, which the former president says may be relevant to his defence against allegations of election meddling.
US District Judge Tanya Chutkan in Washington, D.C., found that Trump had “insufficiently justified his requests” for information related to the Democratic-led House investigation that ended in 2022.
Donald Trump sought to subpoena materials that his lawyers said were “missing” from the House investigation, including transcripts and videos of conversations with law enforcement officials.
The judge found that Trump’s lawyers had not shown how videos of the same conversations could be relevant to his defence and that prosecutors had already provided Trump with written transcripts of those conversations.
Trump has refused to plead guilty to charges that he illegally tried to undo his defeat in the 2020 election. The case, brought by special counsel Jack Smith, is one of four criminal cases filed against Trump, who is seeking the Republican Party’s nomination in 2024.
On Monday, following a separate court order, Smith’s team released new information about a search warrant issued in January to Twitter, now known as X, to obtain information about Trump’s account. The warrant sought information about all electronic devices used to access Trump’s account between October 2020 and January 2021, as well as the content of direct messages sent and received from the account.
Trump’s Twitter account was suspended after riots at the Capitol by his supporters in 2021. The sanctions were lifted in November 2022 after CEO Elon Musk took over the platform.
Prosecutors convinced a judge to block Twitter from informing Trump of the warrant, which the company opposed. Trump also intends to testify a second time in the New York fraud case on 11 December, his lawyers said on Monday.
