A judge ruled that Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.) must give close to 1,700 phone records to the Department of Justice for special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into former President Donald Trump’s 2020 election interference case, Axios reports. The federal judge's Tuesday ruling in D.C. is the latest turn in a long-standing battle with the DOJ for Perry, the chair of the House Freedom Caucus who helped press Trump's baseless voter fraud claims in the run-up to the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol riot.
After FBI agents seized Perry's phone last year as part of the DOJ's Jan. 6 investigation, the Trump ally argued that more than 2,000 of the seized communications "were privileged under the Constitution's Speech or Debate Clause" — which grants sitting Congress members immunity from criminal investigation. A federal appeals court directed Chief U.S. District Judge James Boasberg to review the communications documents seized from Perry's phone. Boasberg analyzed a total of 2,055 documents and ordered Perry to disclose 1,659 of them.
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