Kelli Ward, Arizona GOP chair, refused to answer questions before Jan. 6 committee

Kelli Ward, the head of Arizona’s Republican Party, declined to answer questions during her subpoenaed testimony before the House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol, a government attorney said in court on Tuesday.

The revelation came as part of the attorney’s argument that the Select Committee needed to view a log of call activity from Ward’s cellphone in the months leading up to the Capitol riot.

An attorney for Ward said she testified before the committee, and refused to answer questions to avoid self-incrimination sometime in the spring. Ward, who was not at the hearing on Tuesday, could not immediately be reached for comment.

The committee sought a log of phone calls and text exchanges to Ward’s phone from Election Day on 2020 through January 2021. That span of time included when Ward was part of a group of Republicans who met and falsely asserted themselves as Arizona’s presidential electors.

The group of Republicans met at party headquarters and cast false Electoral College votes for former President Donald Trump, even though Joe Biden had won the state, according to the certified results.

Arizona politics: Jan. 6 committee can see phone records of Kelli Ward

The group sent the paperwork to Congress and the National Archives. Republicans in seven other states sent similar documents to Congress, part of a scheme that would have had the official counting of the Electoral College votes on Jan. 6, 2021, delayed or upended.

Trump supporters breached the U.S. Capitol during the count, sending lawmakers fleeing the chambers. The certification was delayed for hours.

The committee had subpoenaed Ward’s cell phone provider, T-Mobile, for the information Ward then fought that subpoena in court.

U.S. District Judge Diane J. Humetewa ruled in September the committee had the right to get the logs. The hearing on Tuesday was over a motion filed by Ward asking that the phone records not be turned over until after Ward’s appeal of that ruling.

Laurin Mills, an attorney for Ward, told Humetewa that the case was on “thin ice” and said the consequences for the nation were dire should she rule in the government’s favor.

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“If you do this wrong,” Mills said, “you will set a precedent that is worse than the Capitol riot.”

Mills said that the case was an example of the government using its law enforcement power to practice politics. Mills said that the subpoena was “designed to discourage political discourse.”

Eric Columbus, an attorney for the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, said there was no need for the government to wait for the appeal to play out as the questions raised in the appeal were not serious enough to merit waiting.

Columbus said that briefing schedule set out by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals extended until January, but that the Select Committee was only authorized to work until end of December and would disband if not reauthorized by Congress.

Columbus said that the logs were necessary to determine how the riot occurred.

“There are aspects of her involvement that are not fully understood,” Columbus said.

That is when he mentioned that an attempt to get information from Ward through testimony yielded nothing. Ward “declined to answer every substantive question” posed by the committee, he said, asserting her constitutional rights against giving testimony that could incriminate her.

The judge did not issue a ruling at the end of the hearing. She said one would be forthcoming.

Reach the reporter at richard.ruelas@arizonarepublic.com

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Kelli Ward refused to answer questions before Jan. 6 committee