Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan has temporarily blocked the Jan. 6 Committee’s subpoena seeking phone records belonging to Arizona Republican Party chairwoman Kelli Ward, while the high court considers her emergency appeal.
The Jan. 6 committee’s subpoena had asked Ward’s phone carrier, T-Mobile, to produce call and text message records from November 2020 to January 2021.
Kagan’s decision on Wednesday is granting an emergency application that Ward and her husband filed earlier in the day seeking to prevent their phone records from being turned over to the Jan. 6 committee, after a lower appeals court, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, voted 2-1 to deny her request.
Kagan gave the Jan. 6 committee until Friday evening to respond to Ward’s Supreme Court filing.
Ward had argued that her First Amendment rights would be challenged if the committee found out whom she spoke with following the November 2020 presidential election.
She and her husband were among 11 Republican Arizona residents on an alternate slate of electors for former President Donald Trump. The group cast alternative Electoral College votes showing that Trump had won Arizona, after the state had certified the election in favor of President Joe Biden. At the time, Ward said the electors believe they “represent the legally cast votes” in Arizona.
Another six states had also cast dueling votes for Trump following the November 2020 election—Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada, and New Mexico.
The Jan. 6 committee’s subpoena is seeking the phone records as part of its probe into Ward’s role as an alternate elector.
The Wards in court papers on Wednesday characterized the Jan. 6 probe as a politically motivated one that carried “profound precedential implications” for a person’s constitutional right to free political association.
