PHOENIX β If a federal judge lets the Jan. 6 Committee access Kelli Wardβs phone records it will endanger not only her rights, but those of the entire Arizona Republican Party, her lawyer says.
Attorney Alexander Kolodin said the subpoena issued by the committee against the leader of Arizonaβs Republican Party seeks to discover with whom Ward communicated about her βconcernsβ about the 2020 presidential election.
βThat will inevitably lead to the questioning of, and further subpoenas issued to, the thousands of Republicans in contact with plaintiffs,β Kolodin wrote. That includes not just Ward but her husband, Michael, both of whom were part of a slate of fake electors submitted to Congress saying, incorrectly, that Donald Trump had won the stateβs 11 electors.
βIf the subpoena is not quashed, members of the AZGOP will be made to feel that every time they communicate with party leadership, they risk those communications disclosed to law enforcement followed by a knock on the door (or worse) from federal investigators,β Kolodin told U.S. District Judge Diane Humetewa. βA stronger risk of associational chilling can scarcely be imagined.β
Those claims are getting an argument by Douglas Letter, the general counsel for the U.S. House of Representatives. He told the judge in his own legal filing that assertions of a chilling effect are βpurely speculative.β Anyway, Letter said, the committee wants only call data, things like the numbers of calls and texts sent and received, not actual content.
βThe Select Committee is not seeking sensitive donor information,β he said.
But the real key, Letter said, is that this is not some wide-ranging request. He pointed out what the committee wants covers only from Nov. 1, 2020, just prior to Election Day, through Jan. 31, 2021.
βThat date range was specifically designed to obtain information referring or relating to activities surrounding the 2020 presidential election, including false assertions that the election had been stolen and actions related to the appointment of an alternative slate of electors from Arizona,β he said. And Letter told Humetewa those are βactivities that directly concerned the Jan. 6 attack.β
It is Wardβs role in all of that the committee seeks to discover.
Central to the legal fight, Letter said, is the legitimate power and role of the committee in finding out the causes of the attack.
βThere can be no greater interest than investigating the first attempt to obstruct the peaceful transfer of power of its kind in our nationβs history,β he said. And Letter said the committee needs that information to recommend changes in law to prevent future attacks like the one that occurred when rioters entered the Capitol to stop the electoral vote count.
Kolodin, however, told the judge thereβs nothing that getting Wardβs phone records will tell committee members that isnβt already known. That includes sending the alternate slate of electors should legal challenges to the results here succeed.
In fact, he said, Ward even published a book earlier this year about the election and her activities.
But Kolodin said thereβs a bigger problem with the committee seeking information about Wardβs activities involving the alternate slate of electors.
βThe connection between that action, which took place on Dec. 14, 2020, and the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6, is far from obvious,β he said. But Kolodin said it is only the riot that is within the committeeβs purview.
βNevertheless, the committee has swept any actor who had concerns about the 2020 presidential election into its causative narrative about Jan. 6,β he said.
Letter, however, said the committee does not view the her actions in Arizona and the riot as unrelated.
βDr. Kelli Ward participated in multiple aspects of these attempts to interfere with the electoral count in Jan. 6,β he said. βShe told officials in Maricopa County to stop counting ballots and promoted inaccurate allegations of election interference by Dominion Voting Systems.β
In sending the set of unauthorized set of electoral votes to Congress, Letter said Wake βmischaracterized (them) as representing the legal votes of Arizona.ββ
And thatβs not all.
βWhile Congress was recessed due to the mobβs violence and attack on the Capitol, Dr. Ward continued to advocate for overturning the results of the election,β Letter said, citing a Jan. 6 Twitter post. And even after the riot and congressional certification of Bidenβs win, he said, Ward continued to maintain that the slate of fake electors contained βthe rightful and true presidential electors for 2020.β
Humetewa has set no date for a hearing.