https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Perry_(politician)
On January 6, 2021, Perry joined Missouri senator Josh Hawley in objecting to counting Pennsylvania's electoral votes in the 2020 presidential election.[72] During the storming of the U.S. Capitol that day, Perry and his congressional colleagues were ushered to a secure location.[73]
Perry reportedly played a key role in a December 2020 crisis at the Justice Department, in which Trump considered firing acting attorney general Jeffrey Rosen and replacing him with Jeffrey Clark, the acting chief of the civil division of the DOJ.[69] The New York Times reported that Perry introduced Clark to Trump because Clark's "openness to conspiracy theories about election fraud presented Mr. Trump with a welcome change from the acting attorney general, Jeffrey A. Rosen, who stood by the results of the election and had repeatedly resisted the president's efforts to undo them."[69] Before the certification of the electoral college vote on January 6, Perry and Clark reportedly discussed a plan in which the Justice Department would send Georgia legislators a letter suggesting the DOJ had evidence of voter fraud and suggesting the legislators invalidate Georgia's electoral votes, even though the DOJ had investigated reports of fraud but found nothing significant, as attorney general Bill Barr had publicly announced weeks earlier.[69][74] Clark drafted a letter to Georgia officials and presented it to Rosen and his deputy Richard Donoghue. It claimed the DOJ had "identified significant concerns that may have impacted the outcome of the election in multiple States" and urged the Georgia legislature to convene a special session for the "purpose of considering issues pertaining to the appointment of Presidential Electors." Rosen and Donoghue rejected the proposal.[75] In August 2021, CNN reported that Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe had briefed top Justice Department officials that no evidence had been found of any foreign powers' interference with voting machines. Clark was reportedly concerned that intelligence community analysts were withholding information and believed Perry and others knew more about possible foreign interference. Clark requested authorization from Rosen and Donoghue for another briefing from Ratcliffe, asserting hackers had found that "a Dominion machine accessed the Internet through a smart thermostat with a net connection trail leading back to China."[76]
In text messages to White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows days after the election, Perry suggested Ratcliffe should direct the National Security Agency to investigate alleged Chinese hacking. Perry also asserted "the Brits" were behind a conspiracy to manipulate voting machines and that CIA director Gina Haspel was covering it up. The next month, Perry sent Meadows a link to a YouTube video that asserted voting machines had been manipulated via satellite from Italy; Meadows later sent the video to the acting attorney general, seeking an investigation.[77][78]
On December 20, 2021, House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack chairman Bennie Thompson wrote to Perry asking him to provide information about his involvement in the effort to install Clark as acting attorney general. Thompson believed Perry had been involved in the effort to install Clark, given previous testimony from former acting attorney general Rosen and his deputy Donoghue, as well as communications between Perry and Meadows.[79][80][81] Perry declined the request the next day, asserting the committee was illegitimate.[82] Among several text messages to Meadows the committee released on December 14 was one attributed to a "member of Congress" dated January 5 that read "Please check your signal", a reference to the encrypted messaging system Signal. In his letter to Perry, Thompson mentioned evidence that Perry had communicated with Meadows using Signal, though Perry denied sending that particular text message.[83][84][80] CNN acquired and published additional Meadows text messages in April 2022 that confirmed Perry had sent that message.[85]
On June 9, 2022, Select Committee member Liz Cheney said that Perry requested a presidential pardon from Trump in the weeks after the January 6 attack.[86]
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