Phone banking works.

Insurrection-adjacent(?) Republican Representative Scott Perry, —who “pushed the White House and Justice Department to investigate implausible election fraud claims, including that an Italian defense contractor conspired with senior CIA officials to flip votes from President Donald Trump to Biden using military satellites,” and who was “also involved in the effort to install as acting attorney general Jeffrey Clark, a Justice Department official who backed plans to block Biden from taking office” — wants his phone back:

Six months after federal agents seized his phone as part of their investigation into false election fraud claims, Rep. Scott Perry will argue Thursday in front of a panel of three judges that the device cannot be searched…

The Constitution protects legislators from being questioned outside Congress about their work and was written to prevent the president from trying to corruptly influence lawmakers with threats of prosecution. It has protected a senator who read classified material aloud at a committee hearing and a lawmaker accused of getting paid to help immigrants attain citizenship.

But it is unclear whether the privilege applies to a lawmaker’s conversations with members of the executive branch at all, and particularly to discussions about subverting an election to keep the executive in power. The court has asked both Perry and the Justice Department to be prepared to discuss both of those questions.

I don’t think that any kind of protection applies in the face of a crime, but I could be wrong about that. Perry is objectively terrible  and very up to his eyeballs in the insurrection, so this will be an interesting case to watch.