Investigators on the Jan. 6 Committee believe that former Energy Secretary Rick Perry authored a Nov. 4 text to Mark Meadows suggesting that three state legislatures overrule their voters and cast electoral votes for Trump, CNN reports.
Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) presented the text on Tuesday night, which reads: “HERE’s an AGRESSIVE (sic) STRATEGY: Why can t (sic) the states of GA NC PENN and other R controlled state houses declare this is BS (where conflicts and election not called that night) and just send their own electors to vote and have it go to the SCOTUS.”
CNN reported that the phone number that the text was sent from matches Perry’s, according to both people who have Perry’s phone number and public records from his time as Energy Secretary.
A Perry spokesperson denied to the network that he was the author of the text, and was unable to explain why the number appeared to match that of the former Texas governor.
Perry sent the text on Nov. 4, one day after the election was held and as votes in key states were still being counted.
But the plan resembles what Trump would partly spend the following two months doing: trying to pressure state legislatures into sending Trump, and not Biden, electors to Congress, regardless of their vote counts. Republicans in swing states, many of them heavily gerrymandered, have since moved to make it easier for future state legislatures to overrule the will of voters and send electors for the candidates that they, and not the voters, prefer.
This appears to be the first time that the former Texas governor’s name has appeared in connection with the Big Lie and Capitol insurrection.
Though Perry played a starring role in former President Trump’s first impeachment, this seems to be his first appearance in the saga that culminated in the second impeachment, and remains the focus on the Jan. 6 committee’s work.
