Monday, the Supreme Court denied a request from Kelli Ward, chairwoman of the Arizona Republican Party, to suppress a subpoena for her phone records issued by a House committee investigating the incident on January 6, 2021 at the U.S. Capitol.
The Supreme Court’s denial of Ward’s plea for immediate intervention clears the way for T-Mobile to comply with the subpoena and provide over the call logs requested by House investigators. The justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito said they would have approved Ward’s motion to block the subpoena from the select committee.
Ward petitioned the Supreme Court after a divided three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit declined to stop the subpoena demanding telephone metadata, including phone numbers, text messages, and call duration, from November 2020 to January 2021.
In a submission to the court last month, Ward’s attorneys referred to the panel’s demand as a “first-of-its-kind circumstance” involving the records of a state party chair, issued by a congressional committee made mostly of members of the opposing party. They contended that the subpoena violated her First Amendment rights to freedom of association.
“If Dr. Ward’s phone and text message records are made public, congressional investigators will contact everyone with whom she communicated during and immediately after the tumultuous 2020 election. This is not a matter of conjecture; it is a fact. There is no other justification for the committee’s request for this information “Attorneys representing Ward asserted. Federal investigators’ phone calls, visits, and subpoenas have the greatest chilling effect on public engagement in partisan politics.
However, House attorneys requested the Supreme Court to open the way for investigators to get Ward’s call logs, which they argued would aid in the investigation of the events preceding and on January 6.
“The false narrative of a stolen election motivated violence on January 6th, and publicly available evidence shows that Dr. Ward played a significant role in many of these actions,” they said, citing her propagation of false claims about the integrity of the 2020 election and participation in a scheme to send a slate of “alternate” electors to Congress who cast their Electoral College votes for Trump.
President Biden defeated Mr. Trump in Arizona, and the results were verified by the governor and validated by recounts and audits.
Ward came before the House committee in mid-March, but asserted her Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination.
“These records will shed light on how Dr. Ward contributed to the multifaceted effort to interfere with the peaceful handover of power and the attack on the U.S. Capitol,” said the lawyers for the select committee to the Supreme Court.
Ward, they said, “supported a coup attempt” through her activities in the days and weeks after the 2020 election, culminating in her involvement in the fake-elector plan.
The nine-member select committee, which includes two Republicans, has conducted over one thousand interviews and held nine public hearings this year as part of its inquiry into the events of January 6th.
During the course of their investigation, House investigators sent subpoenas to Trump’s top White House staffers, including his former chief of staff Mark Meadows, campaign officials, and Trump himself.
In January, the committee sent a subpoena to T-Mobile for records related to Ward’s phone number, notwithstanding her request to the federal court to reject the demand. The U.S. district court and the 9th Circuit ruled, however, that the House committee could receive the records.
After Ward petitioned the Supreme Court to intervene, Justice Elena Kagan temporarily halted T-Mobile from releasing the phone records, maintaining the status quo while the Supreme Court evaluated Ward’s petition. This temporary injunction is lifted by the Supreme Court’s fresh order.
The House committee’s probe is one of several exploring Trump’s efforts to block the transition of power and the violent attack on the U.S. Capitol, which has prompted lawsuits from associates of the previous president when investigators have requested their testimony or records.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, a Republican from South Carolina, requested the Supreme Court to prevent him from having to answer questions in front of a grand jury in Fulton County, Georgia, but his request was denied.
Trump petitioned the Supreme Court to prevent the National Archives and Papers Administration from releasing his White House records to a House committee last year, but the justices denied his request.