Report: Pa. Rep. Scott Perry ‘played key role’ in Trump plot to oust acting attorney general

U.S. Rep. Scott Perry, R-10th District, “played a significant role” as former President Donald Trump considered firing the acting attorney general and backed down only after top department officials threatened to resign, according to a published report.

The New York Times reported late Saturday that Perry, a member of the ultra-conservative Freedom Caucus, made Trump aware of Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark. Perry was one of eight Republican members of Pennsylvania’s Capitol Hill delegation who objected to the results of last November’s general election.

According to the Times, Perry introduced Trump to Clark, “whose 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,” the Times reported.

Perry, of York County, won re-election last fall under the same mail-in ballot ground rules that Trump and other Republicans falsely claimed had made the election susceptible to widespread fraud. He defeated former state Auditor General Eugene DePasquale, also of York County.

According to the Times, “it is unclear” when Perry met Clark, who hails from Philadelphia, “or how well they knew each another before the introduction to Mr. Trump. Former Trump administration officials said that it was only in late December that Mr. Clark told Mr. Rosen about the introduction brokered by Mr. Perry, who was among the scores of people feeding Mr. Trump false hope that he had won the election.”

But, Perry’s involvement is “also likely to heighten scrutiny of House Republicans who continue to advance Mr. Trump’s false and thoroughly debunked claims of election fraud, even after President Biden’s inauguration this week and as Congress prepares for an impeachment trial that will examine whether such talk incited the Capitol riot,” the Times reported.