House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) has announced two new additions to the House Intelligence Committee — Reps. Scott Perry (R-Pennsylvania) and Ronny Jackson (R-Texas). Perry's selection in particular is noteworthy, given that he will now have oversight over the agency currently investigating him.
In late 2023, the New York Times reported that Perry's phone was seized as part of the FBI's investigation into the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol. The FBI attempted to gain access to roughly 2,000 messages on Perry's phone in which he discussed plans to overturn the 2020 election. Perry fought the seizure, but a federal judge ultimately allowed the FBI access to more than 1,600 of those messages.
The messages showed Perry attempting to gain information about any potential voter fraud (even Attorney General William Barr admitted there was effectively none), then-Vice President Mike Pence's legal ability to declare Donald Trump the winner of the election and attempts to influence people outside of the federal government, among other topics. The FBI created a forensic copy of the messages before returning the Pennsylvania Republican's phone back to him
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Perry's attorney, John Irving, later clarified that Perry was not a subject of the investigation. Nonetheless, Perry still filed motions to keep the FBI from seeing other messages.
"Representative Perry has directed us to cooperate with the Justice Department in order to ensure that it gets the information it is entitled to, but to also protect information that it is not entitled to," Irving told the Times.
John Bresnahan, co-founder of Punchbowl News, tweeted that Perry "will have oversight over FBI counter-intel programs," and noted that Perry is still "suing [the] DOJ after FBI agents seized his cellphone as part of the Jan. 6 criminal investigation into Trump."
The additions of Jackson and Perry to the House Intelligence Committee are likely the result of lobbying from the former president, according to a May report from Politico. That report also referenced the far-right House Freedom Caucus — which Perry used to chair — as a major influence on Johnson's decision to fill the two open seats on the committee.
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Jackson's addition to the powerful and influential committee is also controversial, given his record of lying about his military rank. As the Washington Post reported earlier this year, Jackson's website said he was a retired Navy Real Admiral, even though he has since been demoted to a retired captain due to a damning 2021 report from the Navy's Office of Inspector General.
That report found that as Trump's White House physician, Jackson made "sexual and denigrating statements" to subordinates, drank alcohol on the job and sometimes even performed official duties while on the prescription sleep drug Ambien. And according to a separate Rolling Stone report, Jackson allegedly gave prescription drugs to unnamed "senior staff" members of the Trump White House, including Ambien, anti-anxiety medication Xanax and the stimulant Modafinil.
"[Jackson] would come around Air Force One asking Donald Trump’s senior staff if they needed anything," former White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham said, according to Rolling Stone's Noah Schachtman and Asawin Suebsaeng. "This included Provigil and Ambien, and he would hand them out, typically in the form of packets with two or three pills in them. When this happened on Air Force One, a nurse would be trailing him, writing down who got what."
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