On Thursday, a federal judge dealt yet another blow to the Trump circle's efforts to withhold information from the House Select Committee investigating the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol — tossing out a lawsuit by Trump spokesman Taylor Budowich.
Budowich had sued both the committee and the bank JP Morgan, over the latter transferring his banking records to the former.
But Judge James Boasberg knocked him down, using a famous Star Trek quote that is most famously associated with the Borg.
"Plaintiff may resist this conclusion, but as Star Trek's Dr. Spock intoned, 'resistance is futile,'" wrote Boasberg. He noted that Budowich's argument that Congress has no ability to determine what the law is for the purpose of enforcing a subpoena ignores legal precedent.
The defeat marks the latest of several as the former president, and several of his associates, have tried to argue in court that the committee is illegitimate, or else that the communications they are seeking are privileged.
In one of the most high-profile cases, Trump sued the committee and the National Archives to prevent the transfer of White House records, arguing that this information was shielded by executive privilege even though he was no longer president. The Supreme Court ultimately shot down this argument.
The ruling comes as the committee has revealed damning new information in its public hearings, including the extent of DOJ official Jeffrey Clark's effort to go around the law to overturn the election, and the fact that several sitting Republican members of Congress asked for a preemptive pardon while supporting the effort.
