Arizona Republican Party Chairwoman Kelli Ward in July 2021. Photo by Gage Skidmore (modified) || Flickr/CC BY-SA 2.0
By Jim Small || Arizona Mirror
The congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol has the right to see phone records for Arizona Republican Party Chairwoman Kelli Ward and her husband, Michael, a federal judge ruled Thursday.
The subpoena from the House Select Committee on January 6th sought phone records from T-Mobile between Nov. 1, 2020, through Jan. 31, 2021, for four phone numbers associated with the Wards and Michael Ward’s business, Mole Medical Services. Both Wards were among the Arizona Republicans who were fake electors and signed a bogus document claiming that Donald Trump won the state in the 2020 election.
The Wards filed a lawsuit in February challenging a subpoena for the phone records, arguing that it was “overbroad,” the Wards said, because it is “unrelated to the enabling resolution of the issuing Committee” and doesn’t make a clear connection between the records and potential legislation.
They also argued that the subpoena violated the First Amendment rights of both themselves and the state GOP, and they claimed that the subpoena was illegal because the committee was in violation of House rules. And the Wards, who are both physicians, told the court that turning over the phone records would violate Arizona’s law protecting patient-physician privilege and HIPAA, the federal law governing privacy of medical information.
