Arizona Republican Party Chairwoman Kelli Ward got a temporary reprieve after she filed an emergency application to the Supreme Court in an effort to shield her phone records temporarily from the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol.
Ward’s emergency filing comes as she has sought for months to protect her personal records from congressional investigators seeking information about her alleged involvement in the build-up to the Jan. 6 attack. The filing by Ward and her husband, Michael, was directed to Justice Elena Kagan, who manages emergency petitions stemming from Arizona. Within a couple of hours, Kagan issued a stay and asked for a response from the Jan. 6 committee by Friday, according to CNN.
APPEALS COURT PANEL REFUSES TO QUASH JAN. 6 SUBPOENA OF ARIZONA GOP CHAIRWOMAN
Last week, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals voted 2-1 to deny Ward’s request for an order preventing her cellphone carrier from complying with the subpoena issued by the committee.
“The investigation, after all, is not about Ward’s politics; it is about her involvement in the events leading up to the January 6 attack, and it seeks to uncover those with whom she communicated in connection with those events,” two judges on the panel wrote, one who was a President Bill Clinton appointee and another who was a President Donald Trump appointee.
A third member of the panel, President George W. Bush-appointee Judge Sandra Ikuta, dissented and said she would have granted Ward’s request to block the subpoena.
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Ward has maintained that the subpoena violates her First Amendment rights by peering into her activities as chairwoman of the Arizona GOP, though the appeals court wrote in an order on Saturday that her concerns did not undermine investigators’ pursuit of accessing details about her communications.
“If Dr. Ward’s telephone and text message records are disclosed, congressional investigators are going to contact every person who communicated with her during and immediately after the tumult of the 2020 election. That is not speculation, it is a certainty,” the couple’s attorneys wrote in court filings.
