Pennsylvania lawmakers played a key role in Trump’s plan to oust the acting attorney general

But the plan was in line with the stance Mr Perry had taken since November when he started falsely claim that there was rampant fraud in the elections and throughout it Mr. Perry has remained defiant. Given the call for resignation for his role in the effort to overthrow the election, Mr Perry gave a one-word answer: “No.”

Mr. Perry, a retired brigadier general in the Pennsylvania Army National Guard and a veteran of the Iraq War, was previously screened for openness to the conspirator. He suggested for no reason that the 2017 mass shooting in Las Vegas by a lone shooter from “terrorist infiltration through the southern border. ”And refused to endorse a resolution condemning QAnon, a pro-Trump conspiracy movement. (Mr. Perry said he believed that the resolution violates an individual’s right to freedom of expression and that he has not personally subscribed to the movement.)

An early supporter of the Stop the Steal movement,

Mr. Perry was one of 126 Republicans in the House of Representatives who joined a lawsuit in December to support an extraordinary lawsuit seeking to overturn Mr. Biden’s victory. And he joined over two dozen of his colleagues who urged Mr. Trump Order Attorney General William P. Barr to “Investigate Irregularities in 2020 Elections”.

He declined to ratify the Pennsylvania election results on behalf of 79 other Republicans in the House, although he later did so recognized Mr. Biden as elected President.

The plan that Mr. Perry had worked out with Mr. Clark sparked a crisis in the Justice Department. When Mr. Clark reached out to Mr. Rosen with the letter from Georgia in late December, four former administrators said Mr. Rosen refused to send it. On January 3, Mr. Clark announced to Mr. Rosen that he would take his job at Mr. Trump’s behest.

As Mr Rosen prepared to meet Mr Trump later that day and fight for his job, his top deputies, including Assistant Attorney General Richard P. Donoghue, and outgoing Chief of Staff Patrick Hovakimian convened the department’s chief executives at one Conference call according to information provided by five former officials with knowledge of the conference call.

They told department heads that Mr. Rosen’s work was in jeopardy because of Mr. Clark’s machinations and that if Mr. Rosen was removed, they would resign. They ended the call by asking their coworkers to privately consider what they would do if this happened. For the next 15 minutes, everyone emailed or texted Mr. Hovakimian saying they would stop.