Decide says Jan. 6 committee can get Arizona GOP Chair Kelli Ward’s telephone information

WASHINGTON — A federal decide in Arizona dominated Thursday that the Home choose committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol can see the telephone information of Arizona Republican Celebration Chairwoman Kelli Ward and her husband.

U.S. District Court docket Decide Diane J. Humetewa rejected the Wards’ arguments in a February lawsuit that the congressional panel ought to be prevented from getting the telephone information of the couple, who’re medical doctors, as a result of it will violate medical privateness legal guidelines.

In January, the state GOP chair and her husband, Michael Ward, had been amongst 14 of 84 so-called alternate electors subpoenaed by the committee as a result of that they had claimed in bogus paperwork that then-President Donald Trump had received the 2020 election of their states.

The decide wrote in her 18-page submitting Thursday that the Home committee’s info request “pertains to telephone calls information from November 1, 2020, to January 31, 2021, from an account related to a Republican nominee to function elector for former President Trump.”

“That three-month interval is plainly related to its investigation into the causes of the January sixth assault,” she wrote. “The court docket subsequently has little doubt concluding these information could assist the choose committee’s legitimate legislative function.”

Humetewa additionally dismissed the Wards’ arguments that the subpoena in search of their telephone information violate their First and 14th Modification rights and that releasing the information would threat that these the couple had contacted through the interval could possibly be “implicated within the largest legal investigation in U.S. historical past.”

The decide additionally rejected the plaintiffs’ assertion that the subpoena would lead to harassment, just like the demise threats that they had beforehand obtained, as a result of these “incidents have already occurred.”

The Division of Justice, in the meantime, has additionally been investigating the “pretend electors.” The Jan. 6 committee, which is anticipated to carry what could possibly be its closing listening to Sept. 28, has compelled lots of them to testify, alleging they had been a part of the broader scheme by Trump and his allies to overturn the outcomes of the 2020 election.

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