Justice Kagan temporarily blocks Jan. 6 committee subpoena seeking phone records of Arizona GOP Chair Kelli Ward - NBC News

WASHINGTON — Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan connected Wednesday temporarily blocked enforcement of the Jan. 6 committee’s subpoena seeking the telephone records of Arizona Republican Party Chair Kelli Ward.

The determination by Kagan, a wide justness who handles exigency applications that originate successful Arizona, means the Supreme Court arsenic a full volition determine however to proceed. The House committee has until Friday to respond to Ward's petition to quash the subpoena, which was filed earlier Wednesday.

The committee declined to remark connected the subpoena pause.

Ward’s lawsuit reaches the Supreme Court arsenic the justices are weighing a abstracted exigency exertion brought by Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., seeking to artifact a subpoena demanding his grounds successful a Georgia prosecutor’s probe into allegations of 2020 predetermination interference. Conservative Justice Clarence Thomas issued a akin impermanent enactment portion the tribunal considers however to proceed.

Ward and her husband, Michael Ward, were among 14 of 84 alleged alternate electors subpoenaed this twelvemonth by the Jan. 6 committee, which cited their relation with bogus documents claiming President Donald Trump had won the 2020 predetermination successful their states.

Lower courts, including the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, rejected Ward's arguments to artifact the subpoena.

The couple, who are some doctors, person argued, among different things, that disclosing their records would interruption aesculapian privateness laws. The committee is pursuing lone Kelli Ward's records. At the Supreme Court, Ward argued that the subpoena violates her close to state of relation nether the Constitution's First Amendment.

Kelli Ward, past a campaigner for the Senate from Arizona, astatine the Conservative Political Action Conference successful Oxon Hill, Md., connected Feb. 22, 2018.Tom Williams / CQ-Roll Call via Getty Images

"If Dr. Ward’s telephone and substance connection records are disclosed, legislature investigators are going to interaction each idiosyncratic who communicated with her during and instantly aft the tumult of the 2020 election. That is not speculation, it is simply a certainty," the couple's lawyers wrote successful tribunal papers.

The subpoena focuses connected a T-Mobile cellphone relationship linked with Ward. Among the accusation it seeks are each telephone numbers, IP addresses oregon devices that had immoderate connection with the telephone successful the aftermath of the 2020 statesmanlike election.

Ward and chap Republicans had created a competing slate of electors for Arizona declaring that Trump won, contempt predetermination results showing Joe Biden got much votes successful the state. Those actions person travel nether scrutiny by the Justice Department, arsenic good arsenic the Jan. 6 committee.

Under the mean process, which Arizona authorities officials followed, certification of the state’s ballot by a radical of appointed electors is simply a formality aft a victor is determined by the fashionable vote. Trump and his allies successful 2020 pursued a far-fetched mentation that if the states submitted competing predetermination results to Congress, lawmakers gathering successful the Capitol to certify the results connected Jan. 6, 2021, could person prevented Biden from becoming president.

In summation to different faults successful the plan, Vice President Mike Pence, who had a ceremonial relation successful the certification process, refused to spell on with it. The onslaught connected the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob was intrinsically linked with efforts to overturn Biden’s victory.