Republican lawmakers, from left, Rep. Scott Perry, R-Pa., Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, ranking member of the Committee on Oversight Reform, and Rep. Lee Zeldin R-N.Y., arrive for a closed door meeting on Capitol Hill in Washington, Monday, Oct. 14, 2019, where former White House advisor on Russia, Fiona Hill, is scheduled to testify before congressional lawmakers as part of the House impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump.
Sam Dunklau was WITF’s Capitol Bureau Chief from 2020 – 2023.
Andrew Harnik / AP Photo
Republican lawmakers, from left, Rep. Scott Perry, R-Pa., Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, ranking member of the Committee on Oversight Reform, and Rep. Lee Zeldin R-N.Y., arrive for a closed door meeting on Capitol Hill in Washington, Monday, Oct. 14, 2019, where former White House advisor on Russia, Fiona Hill, is scheduled to testify before congressional lawmakers as part of the House impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump.
(Harrisburg) – U.S. Rep Scott Perry, a midstate Republican who is under Congressional scrutiny for his role in a plot to subvert 2020 election results in some states, is set to lead the House Freedom Caucus starting in January.
Perry, a founding member of the group, said in a statement Monday night that he’s ready to continue “holding the line” for the policies and candidates the group supports. He’s replacing U.S. Rep. Andy Biggs (R, AZ-5), who had chaired the group since 2019 and has been termed out.
Perry’s office did not respond to an interview request.
The group was formed in 2015 and now counts 45 lawmakers from 21 states among its members. It worked closely with former President Donald Trump to hawk his policy goals in Congress, and has pushed establishment Republicans in Congress to more aggressively pursue conservative policy goals.
A Senate Judiciary committee report and reporting from news organizations like the New York Times shows Perry played a role in a plot to overturn 2020 election results in some states — despite no evidence calling those results into question.
At the end of last year, Perry had been talking with a low-level Justice Department lawyer, Jeffrey Clark, about strategies to elevate former President Donald Trump’s false assertions that the 2020 election had been stolen from him.
The Judiciary Committee report shows Perry directly passed Clark’s name on to acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue in a conversation on Dec. 27, encouraging the deputy attorney general to rely on Clark as “someone who could really get in there and do something about [election fraud claims].” Perry also repeated Trump’s suggestion that the department “wasn’t doing its job with respect to elections,” despite long-standing agency policy that barred it from engaging in political activity.
Clark would later go on to draft a letter pressuring Georgia election officials to decertify the state’s result, claiming “significant concerns that may have impacted the outcome.” The report shows Clark had also drafted versions of the letter to send to other swing states, including Pennsylvania.
Pa. Republican lawmakers and the U.S. Capitol attack
As part of WITF’s commitment to standing with facts, and because the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol was an attempt to overthrow representative democracy in America, we are marking elected officials’ connections to the insurrection. Read more about this commitment.
U.S. Rep. Perry (R, PA-10) is among the 136 members of Congress who voted to overturn Pennsylvania’s certified 2020 election result, despite no evidence supporting claims of widespread election fraud and malfeasance.
To see the complete list of Pa. elected officials who took actions to sustain or amplify the election-fraud lie, click here.
The Associated Press and WITF’s democracy reporter Jordan Wilkie are partnering to tell stories about how Pennsylvania elections work, and to debunk misinformation surrounding elections.