Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.) on Tuesday said he will not cooperate with the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.
On Monday, the committee's chair, Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), sent Perry a letter asking him to sit for an interview and share documents with the panel. Thompson wrote that multiple witnesses, including former acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen and former acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue, have provided the committee with evidence showing Perry played "an important role" in the efforts to install Jeffrey Clark as acting attorney general during the final days of the Trump administration.
A senior official in the Department of Justice under former President Donald Trump, Clark was reportedly open to launching investigations into Trump's baseless claims of voter fraud. Perry, a staunch Trump supporter who disputed the election results in Pennsylvania after Trump lost the state, said in a statement on Tuesday that he won't comply with the committee's request, claiming the panel is "illegitimate, and not duly constituted under the rules of the U.S. House of Representatives."
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Perry is the first sitting lawmaker to receive a request from the committee for an interview and information; the panel asked for documents and correspondence between Perry and Trump, members of his legal team, and anyone involved in planning the events of Jan. 6, The Associated Press reports. In his letter to Perry, Thompson said the committee has both "tremendous respect for the prerogatives of Congress and the privacy of its members" and "a solemn responsibility to investigate fully all of these facts and circumstances."
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