Justice Kagan temporarily blocks Jan. 6 committee subpoena seeking phone records of Arizona GOP Chair Kelli Ward
The House panel investigating the attack on the Capitol is seeking records from Ward over her role as a "fake elector" in an alleged scheme to overturn the 2020 election results.
WASHINGTON — Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan on Wednesday temporarily blocked enforcement of the Jan. 6 committee’s subpoena seeking the phone records of Arizona Republican Party Chair Kelli Ward.
The move by Kagan, a liberal justice who handles emergency applications that originate in Arizona, means the Supreme Court as a whole will decide how to proceed. The House committee has until Friday to respond to Ward's request to quash the subpoena, which was filed earlier Wednesday.
The committee declined to comment on the subpoena pause.
Ward’s 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 allegations of 2020 election interference. Conservative Justice Clarence Thomas issued a similar temporary stay while the court considers how to proceed.
Ward and her husband, Michael Ward, were among 14 of 84 so-called alternate electors subpoenaed this year by the Jan. 6 committee, which cited their association with bogus documents claiming 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 to block the subpoena.
The couple, who are both doctors, have argued, among other things, that disclosing their records would violate medical privacy laws. The committee is pursuing only Kelli Ward's records. At the Supreme Court, Ward argued that the subpoena violates her right to freedom of association under the Constitution's First Amendment
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/supreme-court/arizona-gop-chair-kelli-ward-asks-supreme-court-block-release-phone