FBI Seizes PA Rep Scott Perry's Phone. Sheesh, Those Guys Are So Touchy About Plots To Overturn Democracy!

Cry more.

Yesterday, Rep. Scott Perry announced that the FBI had just seized his cell phone pursuant to a warrant.

"This morning, while traveling with my family, 3 FBI agents visited me and seized my cell phone. They made no attempt to contact my lawyer, who would have made arrangements for them to have my phone if that was their wish. I’m outraged — though not surprised — that the FBI under the direction of Merrick Garland’s DOJ, would seize the phone of a sitting Member of Congress," he huffed indignantly to his pals at Fox , who were appropriately shocked and chagrined on his behalf.

But if you've been paying attention to the investigations into the events surrounding January 6, 2021, you're probably not surprised to see Perry getting some attention from law enforcement. Because every time you reach up the ass end of the plot to overturn the 2020 presidential election, you find yourself pressing up on the Pennsylvania Republican polyp.

He's the one who introduced Donald Trump to Jeffrey Clark, the Justice Department lawyer who wanted to send out letters announcing non-existent vote fraud investigations as a pretext to allow swing state legislators to "recast" electoral votes for Trump. Perry was on the December 21, 2020, White House phone call with Mark Meadows and the entire treason caucus where they discussed sending the mob to the Capitol after the January 6 rally. Perry, the chair of the House Freedom Caucus, texted furiously with Meadows throughout December, including a December 26 message reading “11 days to 1/6 and 25 days to inauguration. We gotta get going!” He also communicated with Meadows via the messaging app Signal, at least five times requesting to switch to encrypted communications from iMessage.

What are the odds that a guy who had the sense to ask for a pardon after the Capitol Riot — although he denies it — didn't delete his Signal messages long ago?

Naturally, Perry refused to speak to the House January 6 Select Committee , much less hand over his communications. But the feds have apparently made him an offer he can't refuse in the form of a warrant to seize the phone and image its contents.

 CNN reports that the warrant specified that Perry's device would be processed by the DOJ Inspector General's forensic lab in Northern Virginia, the same lab searching the phones of Jeffrey Clark and Trump's coup lawyer John Eastman, whose phone was seized in June. And like Eastman's warrant, Perry's specified that agents could only seize and image his device — they were specifically blocked from accessing the contents without obtaining another warrant.

Also like Eastman, Perry appears to have lied about this precaution in his attempt to paint the Justice Department as a pack of jackbooted thugs in service of a rapacious, partisan attorney general.

"My phone contains info about my legislative and political activities, and personal/private discussions with my wife, family, constituents, and friends. None of this is the government’s business," he complained to Fox, knowing full well that the FBI was getting access to exactly none of that without judicial sign-off.

It seems pretty likely that Perry's warrant looked a lot like Eastman's, since they appear to have arisen from the same DOJ Inspector General's investigation. Here's the relevant language from Eastman's document :

 The investigative team will not review the contents of the device(s) until further order of a court of competent jurisdiction. If a forensic extraction or manual screen capture of the contents of the device(s) occurs during the execution of the search warrant, the contents will not be reviewed by the investigative team until further order of a court of competent jurisdiction. 

We've only seen this warrant because Eastman challenged it in New Mexico federal court, alleging among other things that the agents should have allowed him to deliver an extemporaneous lecture on constitutional law to explain the defects in the warrant itself. This action was even less successful than his lawsuit to prevent his former employer from disclosing his communications to the January 6 committee, although both had the hilarious effect of putting his shit on the federal docket for all to see.

Even Jeff Clark wasn't dumb enough to sue the DOJ, and presumably Perry won't give the Department's lawyers a venue to explain publicly why they thought his phone might contain evidence of crimes. Although if he did, we sure as hell wouldn't be mad about it!

In the event, CNN says Perry got his phone back a few hours later after the DOJ imaged it. Which didn't stop his pal Marge from showing her whole ass on Twitter.

“I just tried calling the FBI to ask them why they confiscated a sitting Member of Congress’s personal cellphone. It rang twice and went to voicemail.”

— Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene🇺🇸 (@Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene🇺🇸) 1660100501 

LOL, whatever. Oh, and PS, CNN says that there are prosecutors working with the DOJ's IG on the case involving Eastman, Clark, and perhaps Perry, too. Good luck storming the castle, boys!

[ Fox / CNN ]

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