(TNS) — An activist has filed a petition to knock Scott Perry off the Pennsylvania primary election ballot for his role in trying to decertify the 2020 election results.
Gene Stilp, who ran for the state House of Representatives in 2014, filed the lawsuit in the Commonwealth Court saying that Perry’s connection to the Jan. 6 insurrection is enough to bar him from running for office under the Fourteenth Amendment.
The Fourteenth Amendment bars anyone from holding office who has “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” against the United States.
“Scott Perry’s own actions and efforts have awakened the application of the Fourteenth Amendment, Section Three, of the United States Constitution which stops those who participate in insurrectionist activities from serving in certain capacities in the government of the United State,” Stilp said.
The lawsuit ties Perry, through his cellphone records, to a variety of people involved in Trump’s White House and campaign discussing how to overturn the 2020 election through voter fraud cases or interfering with the Jan. 6 certification process.
Perry worked with other “election deniers” to provide false sets of electors so the election results would be overturned. Many individuals involved in that scheme were indicted in Georgia — Perry is not one of them — and several of them have since pleaded guilty.
Perry communicated with White House officials and Trump campaign staff to discuss election fraud and procedural mechanisms, the lawsuit said.
Stilp previously filed a lawsuit trying to keep Trump off the Republican primary ballot in Pennsylvania, too. Colorado’s Supreme Court used the Fourteenth Amendment as grounds to remove Trump’s name from the ballot, while Maine’s secretary of state disqualified him from that state’s ballot too.
Perry has been embroiled in a three-year fight to keep his cell phone records away from federal investigators looking into a 2020 election subversion case against Trump. Most recently, a federal judge ruled around 80 percent of those records could be released to investigators.
Perry is running unopposed in the Republican primary for the 10th congressional district seat, which he has occupied since it was known as the 4th congressional district. He is the current chair of the House Freedom Caucus.
Federal investigators have not charged Perry with a crime related to the Jan. 6 insurrection or efforts to overturned the 2020 election.
