scott perry who led the effort to try to install jeffrey clark as attorney general as part of the scheme to use the justice department to overthrow the 2020 election. last year, perry had his phone seized by the fbi. and the doj investigation of the fake elector plot prior to the attack on the capitol. perry also sought a pardon in the weeks after january 6th, according to the house january 6th committee. in fact, his name is all over the committee reports. perry was referred to the house ethics committee for refusing to comply with a subpoena. he was also a conduit for the conspiracy theories directly to donald trump, namely italy gate, an absurd claim that an italian defense contractor had conspired with cia officials to use military satellites to flip votes from trump to joe biden. but despite all of that, kevin mccarthy and republicans saw fit to place perry on a committee with oversight of agencies that have investigated the scheme to overthrow the election, like the
needed. you are going back to the fight? yes. he s confident eastman will find ways to fight for their country. it is a lot of, work it is a lot of money, it is a lot of time, why do it? they do not tell you, this but you can read it in their body language. they have a second chance. that is very rewarding. erin gilchrist, nbc news, silver spring, maryland. and we hope and pray those ukrainian soldiers are able to get that important second chance that they all deserve. and on that inspiration, i wish you a very good night. from all of our colleagues across the networks of nbc news, thank you for staying up late. i will see you at the end of tomorrow. do you remember italy gate, it was a conspiracy theory that made it all the way up to the white house after the 2020
do you have a sense of where you know, some of this stuff was on youtube. some of it appears to be concocted out of thin air. is there a source you that see the lawmakers going back to by way of a citation? i mean, and i guess i would also ask, is it your sense that meadows do we have any indication that he was taking this to the president? was this being circulated in the upper echelons of the oval office? so, to the first question, i can say they cast a wide net in terms what they re taking in. i think that s the way of putting it. essentially anything that agrees with the world view it seems they would run with it. you have paul gosar, for example, citing an article from a website called some told me. i can t say that on tv. you have authority outlets being a source of these people, breitbart. italy-gate in particular came
from a random youtuber named brad johnson and kind of filtered its way into republican officials and then to mark meadows. as to whether or not these are making it to trump, the evidence we have suggests that yes. there s limited evidence in the texts themselves about whether or not the information got to trump. we heard from the january 6th committee that trump was given a lot of this information. that he was bringing it up with doj officials who would shoot it down. italy-gate, people like it because it s the craziest one. also it s unclear if trump heard about it. some people who pushed it said they brought it to him. dominion voting machines was taken seriously enough that now there a defamation suit makes its way through court. i know it s impossible to know what s in the hearts and minds of these lawmakers. but i think it s important to stress that, a., these are lawmakers, these are not just random people on the internet trying to get in mark meadows
that s really something that happened. not the conspiracy theory part. the fact that 34 republicans among the 34 republican lawmakers that were texting mark meadows, some of them believe in that. or stuff like the conspiracy theory that italian defense contractors somehow used satellites to alter the election results. the chair of the house caucus steve perry was one of the people. they say he was fixated on that italy-gate. he bombarded mark meadows setting up machines that would seize voters around the country and put them under lock and key. perry was far from alone. tpm s piece reports that mark meadows was getting similar reports about the italy-gate from a republican in georgia. these are elected members of the