Arizona GOP chair fights Jan. 6 committee subpoena for phone records
[ad_1]
The head of Arizona’s Republican Party and her husband, both of whom were among the signers of a document falsely declaring them the state’s presidential electors, have filed a lawsuit looking to block a congressional subpoena for their cellphone records.
The subpoena was sent to Kelli Ward, chairperson of the Republican Party of Arizona, and her husband, Michael Ward, in January by the House Select committee looking into the U.S. Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021, according to the lawsuit.
A copy of the complaint, filed in federal court in Prescott, was obtained by Politico and posted on its website Wednesday.
The subpoena asked T-Mobile for documents pertaining to a phone number used by the Ward’s business, Mole Medical, the lawsuit said. The documents requested were supposed to cover the dates from Nov. 1, 2020 to January 31, 2021, the lawsuit said.
The Wards did not immediately return a message sent through the Arizona Republican Party seeking comment.
The Wards were among 11 Republicans who met on Dec. 14, 2020, at the state Republican Party headquarters to ceremoniously sign a document falsely asserting they had the power to cast Arizona’s electoral votes for President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence.
Six other states sent similar documents to the U.S. Senate with lists of electors that could potentially be counted.
Court filings, press releases and interviews from some of the Arizona signees, suggested the document was part of a multi-part plan that would have Pence disregard the official electoral slate from the seven states and, following a procedures outlined in the U.S. Constitution, pave the way for a second Trump term.
In a press release the day the Republican electors signed the document, Kelli Ward said that she thought it was “imperative that the proper electors are counted by Congress.”
How the scheme came together was unclear.
The documents filed by the falsely-declared Republican electors in the seven states appeared to come from a template with similar fonts and formats. And a Trump advisor, Stephen Miller, said during an interview on the Fox News Network the day the documents were signed that he knew that alternate slates of electors were being prepared.
“As we speak, today, an alternate slate of electors in the contested states is going to vote and we are going to send those results up to Congress,” Miller said during the “Fox and Friends” interview.
Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers had said previously that Trump attorney and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani had asked him and other Arizona leaders in early December to overturn the certified results and install Trump electors instead.
The genesis of the documents sent by the seven states is being investigated by the Congressional committee looking into the violent incursion at the U.S. Capitol. It occurred on the day the Electoral College votes were counted by Pence, who did not go along with the plan pushed by Trump attorneys and advisors.
The…
[ad_2]
Read More: Arizona GOP chair fights Jan. 6 committee subpoena for phone records