FBI confiscates US Congressman’s phone | Abroad

Perry, Congressman on behalf of Pennsylvania since 2013, was not happy about the seizure. “My phone contains information about my legislative and political activities and personal conversations with my wife, family, voters and friends. None of this is the government’s business,” he said in a response to the conservative channel Fox News. According to Perry, the FBI did not contact his lawyer in advance. He would rather voluntarily hand over his phone than be ambushed by three officers, the angry Congressman said.

Perry, a supporter of former President Donald Trump, is under investigation as part of the parliamentary inquiry into the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol by Trump supporters. He helped distribute Trump’s statements about alleged election fraud in 2020 and was in contact with the White House in the weeks leading up to the 2021 Capitol attack. Perry also attended a meeting with the president in December 2020 to discuss options for disproving, altering, or thwarting the election results.

In June, at a hearing of the House Committee investigating the storming of the Capitol, it was revealed that Perry was one of five Republican Congressmen who had asked Trump to be pardoned for their role in the plan to change the election results. The other four pardons were Mo Brooks, Matt Gaetz, Andy Biggs and Louie Gohmert. They would have asked for a so-called preventive pardon, which the president can grant before a sentence is imposed or someone is even found guilty of a crime. Perry has so far refused to testify before the Commission of Inquiry.

The FBI raided Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s Florida home, yesterday. That raid would have been related to documents that Trump took against the rules from the White House after his presidency.