House Republican Scott Perry (PA 4th) believes there should be one standard of justice in America, with no special accommodations for the well-connected. At least he used to, according to his statement in response to the FBI's decision to reopen its investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email account, just day’s before the 2016 presidential election:
There’s a growing belief that America has two standards of justice: one for the well-connected and one for the rest of us. As a result, many Americans have lost faith in institutions like the FBI. The only way to change that perception is restore a pillar of American justice: no one is above the law. Given the waves of new information emerging in recent months, it’s certainly appropriate that the FBI re-open the investigation into Secretary Clinton's emails.
— Scott Perry, Oct 28 2016
Despite the enormous political impact of that investigation’s timing (it arguably lost Clinton the election), and the fact that it’s outcome found her actions to be innocuous and resulted in no charges, Perry vehemently supported the need for the FBI to aggressively pursue it. He uttered not a peep of protest about the FBI seizure of former House Representative Anthony Weiner’s laptop, which led to the reopening of the Clinton email investigation and likely flipped the 2016 election. But fair enough, we all want equal justice.
Enter the hypocrisy. Perry, a rabid MAGA type, has been a leader in promoting the Big Lie, starting election night 2016. In addition to the usual stuff like concocting conspiracy theories (his was that voting machines had been manipulated via satellite from Italy), he he upped his Big Lie cred by introducing Jeffrey Clark (the lawyer who proposed to make himself AG in order to help overturn the election) to Meadows/Trump. Ironically, Perry’s activities include exchanging texts on Big Lie strategy with Meadows using an encrypted private messaging service (wait, that sounds as bad as Hillary!) To top it all off, Perry reportedly sought a pardon from Trump for his role in attempting to overturn the election results.
That all sounds quite sketchy, so it’s not surprising that Perry was was subpoenaed by the January 6 Committee, and even less surprising that he refused to testify. The Scott Perry of 2016 would certainly have urged the FBI to aggressively investigate such “emerging information”, and that’s exactly what they did, including executing a search warrant on his cell phone. But it seems that Perry has changed his views on “one justice for all”, as his response to this seizure indicates:
"I'm outraged — though not surprised — that the FBI under the direction of Merrick Garland's DOJ, would seize the phone of a sitting Member of Congress,"
— Scott Perry, Aug 9 2022
Has the passage of time caused Scotty’s views to evolve, or does his opinion that we shouldn’t have two standards of justice shift depending on who the “well-connected” person in question is? I’ll leave that to the reader to decide...
Of course this is no surprise, as this sort of shameless hypocrisy has become par for the course in today’s Republican party. It’s so sad and distressing that ~40% of this country seems to be buying into what these fraudulent, shameless liars are spewing out. So get your asses, and the the asses of every reasonable person you know out to the polls in November, it may be the last stand!