The Congressional Coup Plotter

House Freedom Caucus Chair Scott Perry’s communications around January 6 just inadvertently went public, and he’s got to be quite unhappy about it

House Freedom Caucus Chair and Apparent Coup Plotter, Scott Perry (R-PA). Photo: Bill Clark, Getty Images

In August 2022, the Justice Department seized the phone of House Freedom Caucus Chair, Scott Perry (R-PA). They then demanded he turn over all texts and emails between him and several people now charged in the RICO conspiracy to overturn the Georgia election, including Jeffrey Clark, John Eastman, Jenna Ellis, Rudy Giuliani, Mark Meadows, Sidney Powell and Donald Trump himself. 

The Department had good reason to believe that Perry was deep in the January 6 conspiracy and had relevant evidence that could, among other things, help show Donald Trump’s corrupt intent to hold on to power.

But the battle to obtain those records has not been easy. The Department has been stymied for a year as Perry stonewalled by asserting the “Speech and Debate” privilege, the same barrier Lindsey Graham threw up to try and block his own testimony in the  Georgia case. Perry claimed his communications are protected from discovery from investigators because they were part of his official duties as a Congressmember. It’s one of the reasons it’s so difficult for law enforcement to pry open a conspiracy that happens to include a number of members of Congress.

But an inadvertent docket posting of a judge’s opinion, which went up on the site but then came down just hours later, gave eagle-eyed legal observers a rare glimpse into those communications. 

And hoo boy. Perry, along with the defendants still in the Georgia case, has got to be worried.

Perry was in regular communication with Clark, who wanted to become acting Attorney General so he could cause the Justice Department to disrupt the election. Texts and emails also show Perry bought into the Big Lie without exception and spread numerous unfounded conspiracies about Italian satellites and seizures of voting machines in Germany, none of which was true. He was the equivalent of “Team Crazy”—but a sitting Congressmember with enormous political clout behind him.

Let’s unpack some of the most damning revelations about Perry. And let’s fit these new pieces into the larger puzzle to help complete the picture.

Perry and Clark: Quite the coup-le

Perry was the one who introduced Clark to Trump in the weeks following the election. Trump had set about to promulgate the Big Lie and remain in power despite being voted out, but to achieve this he needed allies within the Justice Department. Perry knew Clark to be someone deeply steeped in the false narrative of a stolen election. 

Based upon the few hours folks had to read and download Judge Beryl Howell’s earlier sealed opinion, Perry appears to have been in the know, and seems to have been pressing for, the coup within the Justice Department, that would elevate Clark as the replacement for acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen.

Per reporting by the Washington Post, there was this moment and exchange between the two:

On Dec. 30, 2020, Jeffrey Clark was nervous. He had just been told that Donald Trump was “very happy” with him.

“I’m praying,” the Justice Department official told Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.), who less than two weeks earlier had arranged for Clark to meet the president. “And wonder if I’m worthy or ready.”

“You are the man. I have confirmed it,” Perry replied. “God does what he does for a reason.”

Howell’s opinion further notes that the night before Trump actually proposed Clark as a replacement for Rosen, Clark and Perry also communicated about whether Trump would “pull the trigger on something new” and make an “absolute decision.”

As a refresher, Trump wanted Clark to be acting AG as part of an broader attempt to put pressure on state officials to reconvene in special session and switch their state’s electoral votes to Trump from Biden. Clark had even drafted a letter to this effect to send to Georgia state officials, but Rosen had blocked him from doing so. 

Before this moment, Clark was an unknown attorney in the Environmental Division. The only thing that prevented him from becoming AG was a threat of mass resignations by top Department officials. This would have undone the “imprimatur of approval” that Clark wanted to place upon otherwise unfounded election claims. After all, what good would that letter do, if the rest of the Justice Department refused to endorse it?

Now, Clark is a co-conspirator defendant in the Georgia RICO criminal case. And if these communications confirm that Perry was with him, urging and participating in the same behavior that got Clark and others indicted, that places Perry in hot legal water. No wonder he fought so hard to keep these communications from ever becoming public.

The Kraken was strong with this one

On top of the attempted Justice Department coup, Perry was himself a big purveyor of unfounded election conspiracies. As Josh Kovensky of Talking Points Memo excellently summarized, Perry gives kraken lawyer Sidney Powell a real run for the crazy crown. 

It’s important to consider, and admittedly difficult to process and accept, that all of the following nonsense was and may still be rattling around in the head of the powerful chair of the most obstructionist group in Congress, the House Freedom Caucus. So, deep breath, here it is.

Per Kovensky, law enforcement was still clearing the smoke, debris and MAGA insurrectionists from the Capitol on the night of January 6 when Perry texted his legislative director another election conspiracy, asking, “Is it true?” 

This time, the wild allegation emerged from a press release claiming that an Italian defense contractor had “switched votes throughout America” to help steal the 2020 election. This was the infamous and roundly debunked “ItalyGate” which claimed Italian satellites somehow caused votes to switch from Trump to Biden. Between the Italian satellites and the Jewish space lasers, the far-right has a lock on upper-atmospheric conspiracies.

Perry actually pressed the ItalyGate theory with acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen, who messaged another official, “Can you believe this?”

In another conspiracy theory pushed by Perry, American soldiers in Germany had somehow seized voting machine servers. He told disgraced former National Security Council staffer, Rich Higgins, about an “incredibly spooky story” in which the army had confiscated election servers used by Dominion Voting Systems in that country.

In yet another wild tale, pushed by far-right wingnut and retired Air Force general Thomas McInerney, Perry and other election denialists claimed that foreign nations such as Pakistan had hacked into voting machines, and that a top-secret program called “Hammer and Scorecard” had been used by the CIA to switch votes.

Perry even agreed to help get McInerney on the Fox Network to spew his election conspiracies after the general asked Perry to “see if TUCKER would put me on” before adding Sidney Powell would be better. (Note: If Sidney Powell is ever offered as the better choice over you, then you are officially lost in Looneyville.) 

“I will engage the targets,” Perry answered McInerney, apparently believing he was in some kind of Tom Clancy spy novel.

Perry importantly also acted as a go-between for Clark and Trump, requesting that Perry help obtain “security clearance” through then CIA Director Gina Haspel in order to “access certain compartments of information otherwise sealed off.” Clark wanted to investigate yet another wild claim that the Chinese government was using home thermostats to interfere with voting machines. (Perhaps they said “made in China” on them. Deeply suspicious.)

“Roger,” Perry replied, later texting Clark that “POTUS is giving you a presidential security clearance.”

That last communication particularly intrigues me. How did Perry know what security clearances POTUS was handing out? Did he talk directly with Trump about it?

Recall that in a pivotal meeting with top Justice Department officials, Trump told them to “just say the election is corrupt” and to “leave the rest to me and the Republican congressmen.” That remark was memorialized in Richard Donoghue’s notes and is a key piece of evidence showing Trump’s corrupt intent. 

Was Perry one of the Congressmen Trump had in mind? Was there already a plan in place involving Congressmembers loyal to Trump? Trump’s communications around Clark, as memorialized by Perry, and the push to “just say the election was corrupt” indicate that he must have been.

Perry as a snitch

Former House investigator for the January 6 Committee Tim Heaphy spoke about the Perry texts and communications on MSNBC. Heaphy must have felt a certain bit of vindication; after all, Perry had refused to appear before the Committee or to turn over any documents or communications, and so the Committee had hit a brick wall while the Department of Justice had far more tools at its disposal and had actually obtained quite incriminating evidence.

Heaphy pointed out that there is now direct evidence of what the Committee had only discovered circumstantially: “that Scott Perry was right in the middle of the effort to install an acting attorney general who was prepared to take action without basis in fact or law.”

Based on this, Heaphy believes Jack Smith will try to get Perry to cooperate as a witness to show Trump had direct knowledge of the plot to overthrow the Justice Department.

Trump’s intent has always been the hardest part of Smith’s three-pronged conspiracy case in D.C., but Perry’s communications about Trump help complete the picture. If it proves to be the case that Trump was in direct communication with Perry, as the texts suggest, and that Perry was orchestrating the coup within the Justice Department with Clark, that will go toward proving Trump’s own corrupt intent. Moreover, such actions (e.g., meetings with Perry, security clearances for Clark) will count as overt steps taken by Trump in furtherance of the conspiracy.

Jack Smith hasn’t brought charges against other co-conspirators yet and may not do so until after Trump’s trial is over. But if I were Scott Perry’s lawyer, I would start thinking about a proffer in exchange for non-prosecution now.

Perry himself appears to have understood the legal peril he was in—enough to seek a pardon from Trump for his involvement in efforts to overturn the election, according to the January 6 Committee. And with his texts and emails to Clark and others now out there and under intense scrutiny, Perry may need to decide sooner rather than later whether to cooperate, assuming he hasn’t already done so.