Judge allowed Biden's DOJ to access emails from three Trump lawyers and Republican Rep. Scott Perry

A federal judge granted government investigators access to email messages involving Pennsylvania Republican Rep. Scott Perry – the official whose cell phone was seized by the FBI in August, it was revealed Friday.

U.S. District Court Judge Beryl Howell ruled that emails between Perry and other figures in former President Donald Trump‘s election overturn effort were not protected by privilege.

This included 37 emails among Perry, former DOJ official Jeffrey Clark, lawyer John Eastman, and Clark’s aide Ken Klokowski, a former senior counsel in DOJ’s Civil Division. That made them fair game for investigators conducting the wide-ranging probe into January 6 and the election overturn effort.

The decision came in an unsealed ruling from June, Politico reported. The judge also ruled a batch of some 331 documents from Clark – who featured prominently in the House January 6 Committee’s public hearings – were not protected in a September order on attorney-client privilege.

A federal judge issued a previously sealed ruling stating that  emails between Perry and other figures in former President Donald Trump’s election overturn effort were not privileged

Perry has also been revealed to have been in frequent contact with former Trump White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, after publication of texts obtained by the January 6 Committee.

In one, he wrote Meadows a week after the November 2020 elections, which had since been called for Joe Biden: ‘Mark, these are instructions are from the cyber forensic team. Please ensure widest dissemination and action. Plz tell every state senior that they need to: 1. Preserve the specific voting machines (scanners) used at the polling places where the glitch occurred. (Put them under lock and key – nobody touches them),’ followed by other detailed instructions.

Perry shared another unsubstantiated election fraud claim on November 12 with Meadows, after referencing a conspiracy theory evidently involving CIA Director Gina Haspel and the British, the National Security Agency, and Dominion voting machines.

Judge Howell also ruled earlier that a batch of email communications involving lawyer John Eastman, who was at the White House during a tense meeting January 3, were not privileged

Bizarrely some of the emails appear to relate to a book outline proposal former DOJ official Jeffrey Clark created. Trump wanted to install him as acting AG

‘And Gina is still running around on the Hill covering for the Brits who helped quarterback this entire operation,’ he wrote, after Meadows inquired whether a ‘witness’ was willing to sign an affidavit. The texts were obtained by Talking Points Memo this week.

‘Believe me, I’m going to do everything I can including putting you on the phone with her. Also, apparently, our dept of state shut down all its systems on Oct 2/3 and lost all its data requiring them to replace all their hard drives. Don’t know yet if it matters but the state legislative auditors are holding that for their subpoenas next week,’ he wrote.   

‘DNI needs to task NSA to immediately seize and begin looking for international comms related to Dominion – was china malware involved?” Perry wondered in another text. He called for an audit of ‘their overseas accounts at CIA.’

Part of Judge Howell’s decision related to an autobiography Clark appears to have produced an outline for – despite being a relatively unknown mid-level official who Trump explored installing as acting Attorney General in his last week’s in office.

That prompted a mass resignation threat by other DOJ officials.

Clark outlined the autobiographer in October 2021, according to Politico, which said it would have included a description of the angry White House meeting on January 3, 2021, where White House lawyers clashed with Eastman, a former law professor at Chapman University whose name has been floated as one of a group of potential criminal referrals that the January 6 Committee is working on. 

In August Perry demanded the return of his phone and its contents. He he then sued for the return of the material, arguing that his conversations and data as a member of Congress are protected by the ‘Speech and Debate’ clause of the Constitution. He dropped the suit in October.