A lawsuit has been filed against Pennsylvania Congressman Scott Perry aiming to remove him from the 2024 primary ballots with the same insurrection argument used to disqualify Donald Trump in two states.
Gene Stilp, an activist who previously ran for Congress in Pennsylvania as a Democrat, is seeking to have the Republican banned from running for office over claims he violated the U.S. Constitution's insurrection clause by supporting Trump's false 2020 election fraud claims.
Perry, the chair of the House Freedom Caucus, is alleged to have been in frequent discussions with Trump as part of the plot to install Department of Justice official Jeffrey Clark as attorney general to support the false claim the 2020 election was rigged in the final few weeks of Trump's presidency. He is also accused of being involved in the fake elector scheme to falsely declare Trump had beaten Biden in several key states.
Perry has not been charged with any offense but did have his phone seized by the FBI in August 2022 as part of Special Counsel Jack Smith's federal election obstruction investigation. Trump has pleaded not guilty to four charges in the case.
The lawsuit alleges that Perry's attempts to keep Trump in power after he lost the 2020 election is a violation of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which states that a person who "engaged in insurrection or rebellion" after taking an oath of office to support the U.S. Constitution cannot run for office again.
The section, which was introduced in the wake of the Civil War, has been successfully cited in lawsuits in Colorado and Maine, where Trump has been disqualified for running for president over his actions surrounding the January 6 attack. Trump, the frontrunner in the 2024 GOP primary, is appealing both rulings and has been added back to the ballot in Colorado as he awaits a decision.
"Scott Perry was a leading proponent of using the January 6, 2021 Congressional presidential election certification process to disrupt the transfer of presidential administration from Trump to Biden," the lawsuit filed in Pennsylvania's Commonwealth Court states.
In a statement to the Associated Press, Perry's lawyer, John P. Rowley, said he is confident the lawsuit from Stilp will be dismissed.
"This lawsuit was filed by a partisan activist who clearly has no regard or understanding of how our Democratic Republic works," Rowley said. "It is but the latest effort by an extremist to disqualify a duly elected official with whom he disagrees. We are confident the Supreme Court will put an end to this lunacy."
Newsweek reached out to Perry's office for further comment via email.
Similar lawsuits that aimed to have Trump barred from running for office while citing the 14th Amendment have been dismissed by the courts in states such as Florida, New Hampshire and Michigan.
The 14th Amendment has previously been cited in legal challenges from groups hoping to disbar other Republican figures from office over the January 6 attack, including Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene. In May 2022, a Georgia judge rejected the effort to disqualify Greene from running for office as there was insufficient evidence to suggest she supported an insurrection.
Perry has not been formally accused of any crime in connection to any investigation into alleged criminal attempts to overturn the 2020 election results.
In December, a judge ruled that around 1,600 communications sent from Perry, including texts and emails, could be handed to federal prosecutors after rejecting the argument they fall under the U.S. Constitution's "speech or debate" clause. The clause means members of Congress can't be questioned in criminal investigations on matters relating to their legislative duties.
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