Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.) quietly dropped his lawsuit against the Justice Department on Wednesday over the FBI seizing his cellphone data this summer.
Perry’s attorneys filed a motion to dismiss the GOP lawmaker’s case without prejudice in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. Axios was the first to report the news.
Perry first said in August that the FBI seized his cellphone while he was traveling with family in New Jersey, just a day after the bureau searched the Florida home of former President Donald Trump. Agents bearing a search warrant made a forensic copy of Perry’s device and returned the phone to him.
The lawmaker later sued the Department of Justice, asking the court to block authorities from searching through the data and to return “any other property” the government seized. He said he was “outraged” by the seizure, saying “none of this is the government’s business.”
“As with President Trump last night, DOJ chose this unnecessary and aggressive action instead of simply contacting my attorneys,” Perry said at the time in a statement. “These kinds of banana republic tactics should concern every Citizen.”
It’s unclear what investigation the warrant was related to, but Justice Department investigators have in recent months homed in on several Trump allies who worked to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election ahead of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack at the U.S. Capitol.
Perry, a close ally of the former president, served as a go-between for the White House and former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark in the days after Trump’s election loss. The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection also named Perry as a key member of efforts to force DOJ officials to look into Trump’s rampant lies about election fraud.
The Republican was named among several members of Congress who sought preemptive pardons from Trump surrounding the attempts to overturn the election results.
Perry has denied he sought a pardon. The lawmaker is up for reelection next month.