Roger Stone sues to block January 6 committee from getting his personal cell phone records
By Katelyn Polantz, CNN Reporter, Crime and Justice
Longtime Donald Trump ally Roger Stone sued Thursday to keep his AT&T phone records from the House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol.
The records would include information related to his personal cell phone number, contacts, call session times and other metadata, but not the communications themselves.
Under AT&T’s approach to the House panel’s subpoenas, Stone’s action appears to keep his records secret for now. AT&T owns CNN’s parent company, WarnerMedia.
Upward of 20 potential witnesses have sought to block the bipartisan committee’s pursuits of phone records, by challenging the House’s subpoena power in court. The major phone companies have taken the approach — including with Stone — of alerting their customers when they receive the House’s demands, allowing them to at least temporarily block the subpoenas by filing challenges in court.
Still, the committee has swept in information about hundreds of witnesses on January 6 so far.
In Stone’s case, he argues that information about communications he’s had with his lawyers and spiritual leaders should stay private and that the committee’s pursuits are invalid — which no court has found at this time.
Stone says the subpoena would bring in data on his friends, political associates and “everyone who has had any connection with the belief in election integrity, government skepticism, other political associations or vendors who worked with” him.
His suit says “the data sought is not pertinent to the investigation and sweeps up privileged communications between Stone and clergy and Stone and his respective attorneys.”
“He remains a private citizen who has never served in government,” the suit says. “He has reasonable expectations of privacy and is under no required record keeping regulations like government officials or government employees.”
Stone appeared for testimony in December following a subpoena from the committee but declined to answer questions, asserting his Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination.
The House sought phone logs relating to Stone from three crucial months of his longtime friend Trump’s political career: November 1, 2020, to January 31, 2021, according to Stone’s court documents. It made the request in early February.
Stone’s lawsuit Thursday disclosed that the committee sought phone records from AT&T through a company he and his wife have called Drake Ventures LLC.
The-CNN-Wire
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