Jan. 6 select committee subpoenas phone records of Arizona GOP chair
February 2, 2022
The Jan. 6 select committee has subpoenaed the phone records of Arizona GOP Chair Kelli Ward and her husband, Michael Ward, who both signed documents falsely claiming to be among their state’s presidential electors in 2020.
The Wards filed suit Tuesday against the House panel in federal court in Arizona seeking to block the couple’s phone provider, T-Mobile, from sharing their records with the committee. The lawsuit was initially assigned to U.S. District Court Judge Susan Brnovich — the wife of Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich, who is running for Senate and is an ally of former President Donald Trump — but she quickly recused herself from the matter.
The select committee subpoenaed the phone records of the Wards — as well as their company Mole Medical Services P.C. — last month from their provider, T-Mobile, according to court records. T-Mobile indicated it would turn over the records by Feb. 4 unless the Wards filed suit.
The subpoena seeks phone records from Nov. 1, 2020, through Jan. 31, 2021. Kelli Ward was among the most prominent GOP officials working with Trump to stoke claims of fraud in the 2020 election and later to transmit an unofficial slate of GOP electors to Congress as part of a bid to reverse the outcome on Jan. 6, 2021. The Wards, who were both designated to be pro-Trump electors had he won the state, also joined a lawsuit against then-Vice President Mike Pence in late December 2020, seeking to force his hand ahead of the Jan. 6 session of Congress that Pence was required to lead.
A source familiar with the planning of the lawsuit said a lawyer for the Wards indicated the Arizona state GOP was likely to pay the legal costs for the litigants.
The couple argues that the subpoenas violate patient-physician privilege because the Wards are osteopathic doctors who use their phones to talk with their patients.
“Disclosing the phone records and metadata from the Phone Number would provide the [personal health information] of an unknown but quantifiable number of individuals seeking medical treatment from the Plaintiffs to the Committee and potentially to the public at large,” the Wards’ attorneys wrote.
Kelli Ward said in an affidavit accompanying the lawsuit that she worked five shifts from Nov. 3, 2020, to Jan. 31, 2021 — the date range subpoenaed by the committee — and saw 30 to 40 patients per shift. Michael Ward said he was “actively” practicing medicine during that time.
T-Mobile did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Alexander Kolodin, an attorney for the Wards, declined to comment through a spokesperson.
The lawsuit also rehashes similar arguments lodged by others suing to block their phone and banking records from the Jan. 6 select committee. The Wards say the committee was not properly constituted and that the subpoena violates their First and Fourth Amendment rights.
They also noted a recent CNN interview in which Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco indicated that questions about fraudulent slates of electors are under review by federal prosecutors.
Although the Wards were among the pro-Trump electors who signed certificates claiming to have been the elected winners of Arizona — despite Joe Biden’s victory in the state — they were not among those subpoenaed last week by the select committee, which is investigating the illegitimate elector gambit.
Two of the other Arizona electors, Nancy Cottle and Loraine Pellegrino, were subpoenaed as the panel homed in on those chosen to lead the elector delegations. The two, who are also being represented by Kolodin, said in a statement through their attorney they were targeted for “exercising their fundamental rights as Americans.”
Other states’ attorneys general have voiced concerns about the alternate slates of electoral, but Arizona Democrats have complained that Mark Brnovich has taken no public action to investigate the effort by Kelli Ward and other GOP activists to certify themselves as Arizona’s official electors for the 2020 election.
Source: https://www.politico.com/
