U.S. Rep. Scott Perry, R-York County, has been linked to meetings with former White House staff as they planned a strategy to overturn the 2020 presidential election, according to a deposition transcript of Cassidy Hutchinson, an aide to former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows.
The deposition excerpts were filed by the Jan 6th Select Committee on Friday.
Perry represents Pennsylvania’s 10th Congressional District, which includes parts of York, Cumberland, Dauphin and Perry counties.
Deposition excerpts filed by the Jan 6. select committee — part of an effort to force former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows to appear for an interview — suggest that some of former President Donald Trump’s top allies in Congress were present in meetings where strategies to prevent then-President-elect Joe Biden from taking office were discussed, Politico reported. Perry was one of several members of Congress that attended those meetings either in person or by phone.
The deposition excerpts were part of a Friday evening court filing by the select panel asking a federal court to throw out Meadows’ lawsuit against the committee, the report said.
The panel released text messages between Perry and Meadows about replacing Justice Department leadership before Jan. 6 with officials thought to be more sympathetic to Trump’s claims of voter fraud, Politico reported.
Politico reported that Meadows texted with Perry often about plans to install Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark, an assistant attorney general into a deputy position at the Justice Department in order to use the Department of Justice’s power to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the election. One such text came on Dec. 26. A week later, on Jan. 3, Clark attended a meeting at the White House with Trump, where the prospect of elevating Clark to the role of acting attorney general was discussed — but adamantly resisted by Justice Department officials, who threatened to resign, and White House lawyers, and Trump ultimately backed down, according to the AP.
Perry has rejected a request from the select panel to testify.
Meadows has handed over thousands of text messages, but he has refused to sit for an interview, has argued that he is immune from having to testify by virtue of his White House position, and has sued the committee, the Associated Press reported.
The AP reported that Friday’s filing seeks a court ruling in the committee’s favor that Meadows has no valid basis to refuse to testify. It says the committee has refined the scope of its request to focus on seven specific topics, including testimony about communication with Congress before Jan. 6, 2021; White House plans to replace the leadership of Justice Department so the department could pursue Trump’s claims of election fraud; and efforts to create alternate, or fake, slates of state electors who could change the outcome of the vote of the 2020 presidential election.
The Jan. 6th Select Committee was established to investigate the January 6, 2021 attack on the United States Capitol.
