Back in December, Republican representative Scott Perry was shot down by a federal judge
who said that, no, you cannot shield all of your records, mostly from your cell phone
from the January 6th committee.
In fact, Perry had wanted to shield over 2000 records from his phone, but the judge only
ended up letting him shield about 161 files that didn't have to be shared with the January
6th committee.
So why are we talking about something that happened in December back when we had a completely
different Congress?
Well that's because on Friday this federal judge be Howell, she finally decided, you
know what?
When I made this decision back in December, everything was put under seal.
So the public only knew that Perry lost.
They didn't know how many documents he had to turn over.
They didn't know how many documents got shielded.
And of course, they didn't know the legal justification that he used to try to shield
the documents from going to the January 6th committee.
So on Friday, the judge said, I'm gonna unseal it.
I'm gonna make it public.
So here you go, world here is what Republican representative Scott Perry tried to do.
And to be honest, we don't have a ton of information from that.
Like yes, okay.
He offered faulty legal arguments about why he shouldn't have to turn over his documents,
you know, oh no, it's totally speech or debate clause.
And the judge was like, no, that's idiotic you.
You don't have that here.
Um, she revealed some communications that he'd had.
We don't necessarily have the files that the January 6th committee got a hold of.
So we don't know what he was trying to shield.
So the justification that he had is all we we know of now.
So you could argue, right, that maybe this isn't even a story at all, but it is because
even though we don't know what Scott Perry got to shield or tried to shield from this
January 6th committee, you know who does have that information and they have the text messages,
emails, phone calls, all of that, the Department of Justice, cuz let's not forget, shortly
before Republicans took over the house and the January 6th committee was effectively
ended, they handed over every single piece of evidence that they have over to the doj.
So all of those records, more than 2000 of them from Scott Perry, that were obtained
by the January 6th committee, are now sitting in the hands of the United States Department
of Justice.
Let's also not forget that Scott Perry was one of the Republicans who sought a preemptive
pardon from Donald Trump for his involvement in all of this shenanigans trying to overturn
the election.
So yes, I would argue that Scott Perry is probably in trouble.
And I have to imagine that this judge saw what's on the horizon, realizes that the DOJ
is probably gonna be coming out with charges, maybe
Not against Donald Trump, but definitely against somebody at some point.
And she said, you know what, I'm gonna go ahead and unseal this to kind of do away with
any speculation as to why this happened.
I'm gonna let the public know the legal arguments he put forward and why there were total crap.
The DOJ can handle the rest if and when we come to the point where he needs to be charged
with something.
So this is basically a stepping stone procedure.
The judge knows that the public's not gonna be able to glean much information off of what
she released this past week, but should Perry be charged suddenly everything the judge told
us last week becomes more relevant because now we know why he was not able to shield
those documents.