T-Mobile Poised to Release Phone Records Wednesday of Ariz. GOP Chief
T-Mobile told Arizona GOP Chair Kelli Ward that it plans to produce her phone records Wednesday under subpoena for the House Jan. 6 select committee investigating her efforts to thwart certification of the 2020 presidential election, the carrier told the 9th Circuit U.S. Appeals Court Friday (docket 22-16473) in a response Friday to Ward’s emergency motion, pending appeal, to block the records’ disclosure. T-Mobile again asserted it takes no position in the legal fight between Ward and the committee to procure the phone records.
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Ward, a practicing osteopathic physician, is fighting the January subpoena on grounds that it would infringe her First Amendment “associational rights” to converse with other Arizona Republican activists and that it would breach the confidentiality she maintains with her patients. A 9th Circuit decision on her emergency motion is unlikely before Tuesday because the court gave Ward the option of filing a reply by the close of business Monday.
Ward continues “to try to impede the important work” of the committee by asking the 9th Circuit “to enter an injunction to block the timely investigation of her efforts to undermine” the 2020 election, “after the district court rejected her request for just such relief,” the committee told the court in a Friday filing. But Ward can’t meet “any of the requirements to obtain such an extraordinary remedy -- much less all of them,” it said.
Ward can’t demonstrate “any serious questions warranting appellate review,” and she fails “to establish that any harm, much less irreparable injury, would flow from T-Mobile’s compliance with the subpoena,” said the committee. The “balance of the equities and the public interest overwhelmingly favor” the committee, “which is investigating an unprecedented assault on American democracy,” it said. Ward doesn’t “merit an injunction pending appeal,” and the 9th Circuit should deny her emergency motion, it said.
Ward “participated in multiple aspects” of the efforts to “interfere” with the Jan. 6 electoral count, said the committee. Though Arizona had certified Joe Biden the winner, Ward convened with other GOP activists and sent “a set of unauthorized and illegitimate” Electoral College votes to Congress, it said. “This fake elector scheme was a key part of President Trump’s effort to overturn the election.”
The Ward call records the committee seeks under subpoena “include, for a specified telephone number, limited information such as when a call was made or message was sent, its duration (if a call), and which phone numbers were involved,” said the filing. “Significantly for this case, these records do not include the names or addresses of people with whom a specified phone number communicated and do not include any communications content or location information.” The committee “has subpoenaed and received such records for hundreds of other individuals’ phone numbers as part of its investigation,” it said.