US Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan, on October 26, temporarily stopped the subpoena from January 6 committee that sought the phone records of Kelli Ward, the chair of the Arizona Republican Party. 

Kelli Ward and her husband Michael Ward’s attorneys on October 26 filed an emergency motion with the Supreme Court asking the justices to reject a request from the House select committee looking into January 6, 2021, for phone and text records. The administrative stay may not accurately reflect the court’s ultimate decision because it was likely issued to give the justices more time to think about the case. Kagan also asked the House committee to respond by October 28.

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Jan. 6 panel ordered T-Mobile USA to turn over Kelli Ward’s call logs

Notably, Kagan is a liberal justice who handles emergency applications that come from Arizona. Further, the Wards acted as fictitious electors for  ex-US President Donald Trump in Arizona, one of the states he lost but where Republicans came together to handpick electors who supported him. The House Select Committee’s subpoena ordered T-Mobile USA, Inc. to turn over Kelli Ward’s call logs for the time period of November 1, 2020, to January 31, 2021, and only requested the times and lengths of calls made while Ward was a Trump elector.

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The January 6 committee served subpoenas on 14 of the 84 so-called alternate electors this year, citing Ward and her husband, Michael Ward, as being connected to phony documents asserting President Donald Trump had won the 2020 election in their states. Lower courts, including the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, rejected Ward’s justifications for the subpoena.

The couple, who are both doctors, have made various arguments, including that revealing their records would be against medical privacy laws. The records of Kelli Ward alone are the focus of the committee. Ward argued before the Supreme Court that the subpoena infringes on her First Amendment right to freedom of association.