Supreme Court clears way for Jan. 6 panel to access records of Arizona GOP chair

The Supreme Court on Monday cleared the way for the House panel investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection to access phone records belonging to the Arizona Republican Party’s chairwoman.

The brief order was unsigned, but conservative Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito indicated they would have granted the request for relief filed by Kelli Ward, the GOP chairwoman, and her husband.

The Jan. 6 panel — which has subpoenaed T-Mobile, Ward’s phone carrier — has expressed interest in her role as a phony pro-Trump elector following his loss in Arizona during the 2020 election.

Ward and her husband, Michael Ward, were among a group of 11 Arizonans who signed a fake election certificate purporting to show that former President Trump won the state.

The couple sought emergency relief in the Supreme Court after lower courts denied their bid to shield the records that congressional investigators are pursuing as part of their probe of last year’s pro-Trump riot at the Capitol.

The Jan. 6 House committee has described the multistate attempt to put forth fake Trump electors as central to the effort to overturn Trump’s defeat, which eventually led to the riot.

The Wards, for their part, have portrayed the Jan. 6 investigation as politically motivated, and told the justices in court papers that their case carried “profound precedential implications” for the constitutional right to free political association.

Last month, a divided panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit voted 2-1 to deny the Wards’ request for an order barring T-Mobile from complying with the Jan. 6 panel’s subpoena for records spanning the run-up to the November 2020 election through January 2021.

Earlier in the case, a federal judge in Arizona rejected the Wards’ request to quash the subpoena, prompting their unsuccessful appeal.

–Updated at 11:45 a.m.