U.S. Rep. Scott Perry, no stranger to tough times, faces a different kind of adversity

Scott Perry

Rep. Scott Perry, R-Pa., is followed by reporters on Capitol Hill in Washington, Friday, Aug. 12, 2022. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)AP

A broken home, not really knowing his dad and bouts of poverty never stopped Scott Perry’s unlikely rise to U.S. Congress.

But the fallout from the so-called “Stop the Steal” movement Perry vigorously championed as then-President Donald Trump baselessly challenged the 2020 election results continues to haunt the conservative Republican from York County as he seeks his sixth term in Pa.’s 10th Congressional District.

On Tuesday evening, in a post on his campaign Facebook page, Perry, age 60, reported that FBI agents had seized his cellphone while he was traveling with his family.

In the post, Perry, a House Freedom Caucus member, called the action a “banana republic tactic,” and added, “I’m outraged — though not surprised — that the FBI under the direction of Merrick Garland’s DOJ, would seize the phone of a sitting member of Congress.”

Later, Perry said in a separate statement that he is a witness, and not a target, of any current criminal probe.

Perry’s reference there is to a provision in the Constitution that is meant to shield members of Congress from prosecution for their political views.

In a real-world example, the clause would appear to offer Perry protection for his objections on the House floor to the final certification of Pennsylvania’s 20 electoral college votes for President Joe Biden on the night of Jan. 6, 2021, when the House resumed its session in the aftermath of hours of rioting at the Capitol by about 2,000 Trump supporters.

THE INVESTIGATION

Perry has come under as much scrutiny as any Pennsylvania office-holder over his involvement in Trump’s efforts to stay in power after his election loss to Biden. The Washington Post reports that Perry is the first member of Congress known to have his phone seized as part of the Justice Department’s investigation into last year’s attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. The New York Times, citing one of Perry’s lawyers, said the congressman has since received the phone back.

Reporting from The Times suggests that the seizure of Perry’s phone came as the result of a warrant issued by the Justice Department’s Office of Inspector General, whose primary responsibility is investigating potential misconduct by department employees.

That office is investigating the actions of former Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey Clark, one of the few Justice Department officials who in late 2020 appeared to be sympathetic to Trump’s false claims that the vote in several swing states had been rigged against him.

Democratic staff on the U.S. Senate Judiciary committee reported in October that it was Perry who had introduced Clark to Trump. Clark quickly captured Trump’s fancy as a potential replacement for Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen.

Clark is, accused of pushing a plan to send letters to legislatures in six states — including Pennsylvania — urging them to call special sessions to review election fraud allegations and consider appointing alternate slates of electors that would award votes to Trump instead of Biden, as the state-certified vote counts dictated.

Trump, however, ultimately backed off a plan to install Clark as his attorney general.

Sources said FBI agents seeking information on the alternate-elector scheme served subpoenas on some Pennsylvania state lawmakers earlier this week.

Perry’s name has surfaced in several other ways regarding Trump’s efforts to stay in power. They include:

* Perry was present during a Dec. 21 meeting between members of the House’s arch-conservative Freedom Caucus and Trump to strategize about what Congress could do to block final certification of Biden’s election.

* Acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue told Senate Judiciary Committee staff Perry called him at Trump’s behest on Dec. 27 to discuss what turned out to be an errant analysis circulating among Trump backers at the time that Pennsylvania’s certified vote count was higher than the number of voters who had actually cast ballots.

* Hutchinson, in her House Select Committee testimony, also listed Perry among a number of congressmen who inquired about the possibility of receiving a presidential pardon from Trump before he left office. Perry angrily denounced that assertion - first voiced by U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyoming — as a “soulless lie.” To date, the House Select Committee has not provided any documentation of Hutchinson’s claim.

PERRY’S RISE TO CONGRESS

The ongoing federal investigation presents the Congressman who’s no stranger to overcoming obstacles with a different kind of adversity.

Born in California in 1962, Perry once told PennLive he had no memory of ever living in the same house with his father, Jim.

Perry’s mother Cecile, an airline flight attendant, left the marriage shortly after Scott’s birth, departing for South Central Pennsylvania on a job transfer. The Perry family, a single mom and her two kids, landed first in Harrisburg, on Berryhill Street.

Shortly thereafter, they moved to Chestnut Grove Road in Carroll Township, the home where Scott Perry grew up – and where he encountered bouts of poverty.

For a period of several years, the family was forced to use a generator for power, drew water from a pump and went to the bathroom in an outhouse. When his mother lost her airline job, she worked for a wholesale food company and brought home expired foods for her kids to eat.

Perry graduated from Northern High School and Cumberland-Perry Vocational/Technical School in 1980 with an auto mechanics certification. He also entered the Pennsylvania National Guard.

He attended HACC and later Penn State Harrisburg, eventually earning a bachelor’s degree in 1991. Perry started his own mechanical contracting business, Hydrotech Mechanical Services, in 1993. He also went to Officer Candidate School and became an officer in the Guard, deploying to Iraq in 2009 and rising to the rank of brigadier general.

Perry, a married father of two, also started dabbling in local politics. He fought through a crowded GOP primary to win his state House seat in 2006, and then a seven-candidate primary to get to the U.S. Congress in 2012. ]

The fifth-term congressman is on the U.S. House Committees on Transportation and Infrastructure, and Foreign Affairs.

He also is the chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, a group of conservative Republican lawmakers that became Trump loyalists in recent years.

There have been stumbles. In a well-documented case from 2002, Perry pleaded guilty to making false reports to the state Department of Environmental Protection stemming from his firm’s work monitoring a small private sewage treatment plant. Perry said his only mistake was taking on a customer who was cheating and being slow to realize it. He had his record expunged and moved on.

It’s the same thing Perry is now looking to do with regard to the ongoing federal investigations surrounding the 2020 election. He’s concentrating on winning his own re-election and seeking to move on.

Perry, whose 10th District seat covers all of Dauphin and large parts of Cumberland and York counties, is running for a sixth term in the House. His Democratic opponent is Harrisburg city councilwoman Shamaine Daniels, an immigration lawyer and Venezuela native.

Daniels say the events of the past week bode negatively for Perry regardless of the details.

“Whether his cellphone was confiscated for the purposes of being a witness or a suspect, it doesn’t really matter,” she said. “I think at the end of the day it doesn’t matter why the warrant was issued. What matters is how many times he’s been involved in activities that threaten our national security and democratic processes.”

Daniels believes Perry’s ardent supporters will not be swayed, but that is not the voting bloc she is focused on.

“There’s a lot of people in his base who are struggling,” she said. “I’ve spoken with a few voters. Those who support him are not going to be persuadable. Who is persuadable are the independents and Republicans who don’t agree with what he is doing.”

This story was written by PennLive staff writer John Luciew and based on reporting bystaff writers Ivey DeJesus and Charles Thompson, as well as the New York Times, Washington Post and Philadelphia Inquirer.

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