Scott Perry (R-PA) isn’t the most heinous member of Congress. He’s certainly in the top 5, but Marjorie Traitor Greene, Gym Jordan, Matt Gaetz, the handjob lady from Colorado, Bob Good… They’re probably all more or less worse. Still, if there’s one Member of Congress who should be the first to go to prison for the J-6 attempted coup/insurrection, it would, in all likelihood, be Perry. He was integral to the plot to keep Trump in the White House after he decisively lost the election by 7 million votes (almost 5 percentage points) and nearly 70 electoral college votes.
Yesterday a local activist Gene Stilp, filed a suit calling for Pennsylvania Secretary of State Al Schmidt to remove Perry from the primary ballot based on this clause from the 14th Amendment, commonly referred to as the insurrection clause:
“No person shall be a Senator, or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any state legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any state, to support the Constitution of the Untied States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of Each House, remove such disability.”
Stilp’s suit, which calls for Perry to be criminally prosecuted, alleges that he propagated conspiracy theories that the election was stolen. “Scott Perry was a leading proponent of using the January 6, 2021 Congressional presidential election certification process to disrupt the transfer of presidential administration from Trump to Biden,” wrote Stilip, sighting the FBI’s seizure of Perry’s cellphone records and other accusations made against Perry following the January 6 attack.
You may recall, in her testimony before the J-6 Committee, former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson asserted that Perry was “central to the planning of January 6.” Yesterday, Julia Terruso reported that Stilip’s suit makes the case that Perry’s participation in Trump’s fake elector scheme amounts to insurrection. Stilip: “It is not necessary for an insurrection to be violent and have people taking over buildings. Attempts at insurrection can be nonviolent and quietly orchestrated as in the attempt to overturn the certification process using false certification certificates from false sets of electors. Actions of insurrection and support of insurrections bring down the full force of the Fourteenth Amendment, Section Three.” Perry asked Trump for a pardon and Trump refused to grant him one.
