In the months following the 2020 presidential election, U.S. Rep. Scott Perry, R-York County, was in almost constant contact with the Trump Administration, Department of Justice officials, campaign lawyers, state representatives and others determined to overturn the results of Donald Trump’s then-failed bid for a second term in the White House.
The contacts, outlined in a heavily redacted affidavit filed by the FBI to obtain a search warrant for the central Pennsylvania Republican’s phone and email records, were part of what the FBI described as a fraudulent scheme to negate the results of the election and install Trump for a second term.
U.S. Rep. Scott Perry, a York County Republican shown here speaking at a Trump rally in Harrisburg on July 31, 2024, had been a key figure in the efforts to overturn the 2020 election election, according to a recently released affidavit supporting a search warrant for his cell phone.
Perry, according to the document, shared information that indicated that voter fraud was so widespread that drastic action was called for, including replacing the legitimate electors who certified President Joe Biden’s victory with slates of hand-picked electors who would hand the electoral votes of their state over to Trump.
He also championed the selection of Jeffrey Clark, an environmental lawyer in the Justice Department, to replace Attorney General Bill Barr, who, citing the lack of evidence of election fraud, refused to go along with the plan to overturn the election.
According to the affidavit, there was one problem with that.
“During the time period of the above-described actions,” the affidavit states, “Perry, and others connected to the effort had information indicating DOJ possessed no credible evidence of fraud sufficient to alter the outcome of the election.”
Read the full affidavit below
The affidavit also asserts that on several occasions, it was “explicitly stated” that “there was no information to support the statement that DOJ had identified significant concerns that might have affected the election outcome.”
The affidavit states that a person – whose name was redacted from the document – told Perry in December of 2020 that the Justice Department “had not identified evidence of fraud on a scale that could have altered the election outcome in Pennsylvania.”
The assertion is contained in the 83-page affidavit released this week after the York Daily Record, The York Dispatch, PennLive and others engaged in lengthy litigation to have the document made public.
Perry, who was elected to a seventh term in the House in November, had been identified as a subject of the federal investigation into the efforts to overturn the 2020 election. As part of that investigation, the FBI seized Perry’s cell phone in August 2022.
The news outlets, assisted by The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, filed suit in federal court in September 2022 to have the search warrant and its supporting documentation made public. The court ordered the release and this week, a heavily redacted version of the affidavit supporting the search warrant was made public.
It may seem moot at this point after the 2024 election reinstalling Trump in the White House. Moreover, with his election to a second term, any investigations into the effort to overturn the 2020 election have been effectively killed.
The document itself does not contain much information that was previously unknown. For instance, previous reports have detailed communications Perry had with Clark, former Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, various state legislators and others. In the affidavit, the names of people Perry had contact with were blacked out, even though enough information remained to easily identify them. Clark’s name is blacked out, but he is identified by his title at the Justice Department at the time. Meadows’ name is blacked out, but he is referred to as Trump’s chief of staff during the period in question.
Previously: Unsealed court ruling sheds light on Scott Perry’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election
The litigation: YDR, 2 other media organizations request documents in seizure of Scott Perry’s cell phone
In justifying the seizure of Perry’s cell phone, the affidavit cites the numerous texts, phone calls and email the Congressman exchanged with key players in the effort to overturn the election results and places them in context with other events. It rarely describes the content of the communications.
In November last year, Perry defeated Democrat Janelle Stelson, a former WGAL-TV news anchor, by 1.2 percent of the vote, his narrowest re-election victory. Stelson had made Perry’s involvement in the effort to overturn the election one of the issues of the campaign.
Perry could not be immediately reached for comment.
Columnist/reporter Mike Argento has been a York Daily Record staffer since 1982. Reach him at mike@ydr.com.
This article originally appeared on York Daily Record: Rep. Scott Perry cell phone search warrant released, heavily redacted
