From the NYTimes:
The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol is seeking testimony and documents from Representative Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, the first public step the panel has taken to try to get information from any of the Republican members of Congress deeply involved in President Donald J. Trump’s effort to stay in power.
The committee sent a letter on Monday to Mr. Perry, the incoming chairman of the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus, asking for him to meet with its investigators and voluntarily turn over his communications during the buildup to the riot.
To date, the panel has been reluctant to issue subpoenas for information from sitting members of Congress, citing the deference and respect lawmakers in the chamber are supposed to show one another. But Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi and the chairman of the panel, has pledged to take such a step if needed.
You can read the letter here.
From the letter:
We have received evidence from multiple witnesses that you had an important role in the efforts to install Mr. Clark as acting Attorney General. Acting Attorney General Rosen and acting Deputy Attorney General Donoghue have provided evidence regarding these issues, and we have received evidence that others who worked with Mr. Clark were aware of these plans. We are also aware that you had multiple text and other communications with President Trump’s former Chief of Staff regarding Mr. Clark—and we also have evidence indicating that in that time frame you sent communications to the former Chief of Staff using the encrypted Signal app. Mr. Clark has informed us that he plans to invoke his 5th Amendment right against self-incrimination in anticipation of a deposition to be conducted by the Committee. When Mr. Clark decided to invoke his 5th Amendment rights, he understood that we planned to pose questions addressing his interactions with you, among a host of other topics.From The Times:
In the weeks after the 2020 election, Mr. Perry, a member of Congress since 2013, compiled a dossier of voter fraud allegations and coordinated a plan to try to replace the acting attorney general, who was resisting Mr. Trump’s attempts to overturn the election, with a more compliant official.
And who was there with him?
For that, let's go back to The
Philadelphia Inquirer:
A report on its findings released Thursday urged House investigators to look more deeply into what role Perry and Mastriano may have played in fomenting the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. It named them as two of three key allies of former President Donald Trump who aided his efforts to subvert the election results and have “notable” connections to the insurrection. The third Trump ally mentioned is attorney Cleta Mitchell.
The 394-page report from Democrats on the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee showed how Perry and Mastriano directly contacted the Justice Department’s second-ranking official, Deputy Associate Attorney General Richard Donoghue, to reinforce Trump’s baseless claims about the election, and urge the department to investigate debunked accusations.
There it is. Pennsylvania State Senator Doug Mastriano.
State Senator Mastriano, now that Representative Perry's been asked to meet with (and furnish documents to) the January 6 Committee, are you at all worried that your name will come up?
Perhaps you should be.
And now that we've learned that Rep Perry communicated with Mark Meadows via an encrypted app, can I ask whether you have that app?