Arizona Republican Party Chair Kelli Ward asked the Supreme Court on Wednesday to prevent her phone records from being disclosed to the congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6 riot.
The state GOP chair and her husband, Michael Ward, were among 14 of 84 so-called alternate electors subpoenaed earlier this year by the House Jan. 6 committee, citing their association with bogus documents claiming that then-President Donald Trump had won the 2020 election in their states.
Lower courts, including the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, rejected Ward’s arguments that the subpoena issued by the committee should be blocked.
The couple, who are both doctors, was subpoenaed and have argued among other things that disclosing their records would violate medical privacy laws. The committee is currently only pursuing Kelli Ward’s records. At the Supreme Court, Ward argued the subpoena violates her right to freedom of association under the Constitution’s First Amendment.
“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 couples’ lawyers wrote in court papers.
The subpoena focuses on a T-Mobile cellphone account linked with Ward. It seeks information including all phone numbers, IP addresses or devices that had any communication with the phone in the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election.
The Wards’ case reaches the Supreme Court as the justices are weighing a separate emergency application brought by Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., seeking to block a subpoena demanding his testimony in a Georgia prosecutor’s investigation into alleged 2020 election interference.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
