Rep. Scott Perry, whose cellphone was seized by federal agents last week as he vacationed with his family, said Monday on Newsmax that the incident, as well as the raid on former President Donald Trump's home, was all "politics" as the midterm elections near this fall.
"We're 90 days away from a midterm election, and they're going to do absolutely everything they can, including using the power of the federal government to smear their opponents," the Pennsylvania Republican said on Newsmax's "Wake Up America." "And that's what this is all about."
Perry said that when agents showed up to seize his phone and images, they did not have any answers about why they had not contacted his attorney.
"I guess they want this spectacle," he added. "They gave it back toward the end of the day, and that's what I know right now."
Meanwhile, Perry said he was able to contact his attorneys, who told him they talked with the Department of Justice and were told he's not the target of an investigation.
"So I'm not sure, quite honestly, what this is all about," said Perry.
Meanwhile, he said it's hard to trust the FBI, considering its history with people like Gen. Michael Flynn, as the agency was "involved in a frame-up and just about threw him in jail."
"It's hard to trust these folks when they were part of the Trump-Russia collusion narrative that plagued the country for three to four years, admitting knowing that they that there was nothing to it," said Perry. "It's hard to trust the same people that changed [Rep.] Jim Jordan's text and then use the pretext as a way of pursuing him and punishing him politically. I mean, the list goes on and on about the lack of accountability."
The congressman said he asked the agents how they found him, "and they just said, you know, with a smirk, 'It's what we do.'"
He said that he also asked the agents to let his chief of staff know when the cellphone would be returned, and they claimed they could not find her.
"It's interesting that the most powerful investigative agency on the planet can't get ahold of a sitting congressman's chief of staff," said Perry. "You know, we just passed the bill last week that will pay for the hiring of up to 87,000 IRS employees.
"Every American needs to be looking at this point, unfortunately, over their shoulder because the federal government is coming for them … it was said in the past, you show me the man, I'll show you the crime. That seems to be the America we live in right now."
Meanwhile, Trump, while in office, was able to declassify the information from documents seized at his home last week, said Perry.
"He's the ultimate classifier of all information as the president, so regardless of how sensitive it is, if while he's the president, he says it's unclassified, [then] it's unclassified, whether they like it or not," said Perry.
He also said he's concerned that before last week's raid, Trump had invited the FBI to look through the boxes and complied with their requests to safeguard them.
"They could have taken anything they wanted," Perry said. "They could have called the president's attorneys and said, 'Look, we've got some questions about this, that, or the other thing,' they didn't bother with any of that. They just created the spectacle of a raid on the former president of the United States' home."
Further, Trump wouldn't have packed up the boxes himself while leaving the White House, said Perry.
"They act as if the president, at the end of his presidency, sat on the living room carpet in his sweatpants and put these documents in a box," he said. "This is the General Services Administration. They know exactly what's in there."
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Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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