Scott Perry
People who lived through the 1970s will recognize this terminology. The “unindicted co-conspirator” in the Watergate scandal, which sent several of President Nixon’s closest associates to prison, was Nixon himself. Now the phrase is being revived to insinuate Trump committed crimes while president.
So far, the only people who’ve been indicted or prosecuted for Trump’s 2021 coup attempt are several hundred Jan. 6 rioters. That could change, of course, but that’s where things stand today, Tuesday, January 31, 2023.
One of the so-far-unindicted conspirators is Trump himself, and it looks like Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA) may be another.
Perry (bio here) has been acting like he’s got something to hide. He refused to cooperate with investigators or testify before the House Jan. 6 committee. He reportedly asked Trump for a pardon, which he calls “a lie” (see story here). But Perry has a history of criminal falsification in private business (detailed in his bio), so I wouldn’t necessarily take his word for it.
The FBI seized Perry’s phone last year, and his lawyers are fighting in the courts to keep investigators from accessing it. A former high-ranking Homeland Security official thinks Perry was “heavily involved with the plotting around the Jan. 6 attack” (story here). Former FBI agent Peter Srzok thinks Perry was a “key player” in organizing the efforts to overthrow the 2020 election (watch video below).
This much is clear: Perry is an extremist who embraced and promoted ridiculous election conspiracy theories. That’s not a crime. But voting for someone like that isn’t what I would do.