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Rep. Scott Perry, a Republican from Pennsylvania, is due to testify in a federal appeals court on Thursday against an attempt by the Justice Department to access the contents of his phone.
The FBI seized Perry’s phone last year as part of the department’s January 6 investigation. Perry, an ally of former President Donald Trump who backed his efforts to reverse the results of the 2020 presidential election, sued the Justice Department last year for the return of all mobile phone data seized by the FBI. Perry’s lawyers dropped the case in October without explanation.
Perry argued that the government did not have the authority to search the data because his phone contained sensitive information protected by the speech or debate clause of the Constitution, which gives legislators the legal protection of legislation.
Perry, who leads the conservative House Freedom Caucus, said in an emergency petition filed in federal court in Washington, D.C. in August that his phone was confiscated by federal agents who approached him while he was on vacation with his family. in New Jersey.
The agents had a warrant to search the device, and Perry returned his phone the same day after the agents created an image of his data. Following the confiscation, Perry’s attorney, John Irving, said in a statement that he was told by the Justice Department that Perry was “not the subject of his investigation.”
The warrant indicated that the phone’s data would be turned over to the Northern Virginia Department of Justice’s forensic laboratory, but because the original warrant only authorized the seizure of the phone, investigators would need a second warrant from a judge before they could review the data.
It is unclear why Perry’s phone was seized. The congressman came under scrutiny from a January 6 House committee in the last Congress, which sent him and three other House Republicans, including then-House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, D-Cal., to the House Ethics Committee for ignoring subpoenas. committee. .
The committee said it had evidence from “numerous witnesses” alleging that Perry was involved in an attempt to appoint former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark as acting attorney general during the final months of the Trump administration. Clark promoted Trump’s baseless claims about a stolen 2020 presidential election and wanted the Justice Department to step in and challenge the results.
Perry’s phone was confiscated after agents executed a search warrant at Clark’s home in June and also seized the phone of John Eastman, a Trump lawyer who wrote memos during the 2020 election urging then-Vice President Mike Pence to overturn the results.
After his election as Speaker of the House, McCarthy indicated that the Republicans intended to investigate the work of the now defunct House committee that investigated the January 6 riots. Last November, McCarthy sent a letter to then-committee chairman Benny Thompson, Md., asking him to keep all records and transcripts and promised to hold hearings in the new Congress on the security breaches that led to the 2021 attack.
Perry last month declined to say he would recuse himself from any GOP investigation into federal investigations into the events surrounding the Capitol attack, despite the fact that he was the subject of those investigations.
“Why should I be limited just because someone made a charge? Everyone in America is innocent until proven guilty,” Perry told ABC This Week.
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