Meet the Pro-Coup Caucus Running the House GOP
A series tracking the growing assault on voting rights, and efforts to undermine the democratic process in America.
The last time the ultra-conservative faction of House Republicans known as the Freedom Caucus elected a leader, Pennsylvania Rep. Scott Perry hadn’t quite earned his bona fides. Now, fresh off news that he played a key role in Donald Trump’s 2020 coup attempt, Perry is apparently much more qualified for the job.
Perry got elected as the new chairman of the Freedom Caucus this week, inheriting the job created by its founder, a then-North Carolina congressman named Mark Meadows. Yup, that’s the same Mark Meadows who went on to become Trump’s White House chief of staff and who this week refused to comply with a subpoena from the January 6 select committee to tell what he knows about Trump’s coup attempt.
The Freedom Caucus was once the place where 40 or so right-wing lawmakers like Meadows and Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan made trouble for GOP leaders, messing with bills over conservative leverage issues like abortion and immigration. They got powerful enough to oust Speaker John Boehner in 2015, and he’s had a few things to say about them since. Today, the Freedom Caucus is Trump’s most loyal power base in Congress, where messianic messengers like Matt Gaetz, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Paul Gosar gather to push lies about a stolen election and to help recast the deadly Jan. 6 riot as a patriotic cause.
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In the weeks after Trump’s 2020 loss, Perry leaned on DOJ officials to investigate bogus fraud claims in Pennsylvania and recruited other Justice officials into the effort to overturn election results coordinated from the White House, according to a Senate investigation. As such, he’s a potential witness, if not a possible actor, in the investigation of the coup plot.
With those qualifications, Perry is now the point man for the Freedom Caucus as it boosts violent tweets against Democrats and threats against fellow Republicans who vote for bipartisan bills. Next year, when GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy will probably become Speaker under Republican control, it’ll be Perry’s job to act as an enforcer, making sure McCarthy, or whoever the speaker is, doesn’t stray from the Trumpist doctrine of retribution and election damage.
It flew under the radar this week, but there are signs that McCarthy already has a head start. Freedom Caucus member Rep. Chip Roy, of Texas, blasted McCarthy for failing to prevent a few Republicans from voting for an infrastructure bill. Roy was annoyed that he had to explain that to angry constituents.
McCarthy shot back that he often has to explain Roy’s votes, too. More than one person noticed that Roy, a staunch Trumpist conservative, voted to certify the 2020 election results on Jan. 6. That makes him an outlier among his Freedom Caucus friends. If that was McCarthy’s point, what…