Ask a Pol caught up with Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA), chair of the newly empowered House Freedom Caucus, during UFO whistleblower David Grusch’s testimony to the House Oversight Committee this week.
As you’ll hear, Perry was traversing a skinny, old school escalator system tucked inside the Rayburn House Office Building, which is where the UFO hearing took place earlier this week. The escalator’s are tight, so Matt Laslo was recording from behind for most of it.
Perry’s on the Oversight Committee’s Subcommittee on National Security, the Border, and Foreign Affairs, which conducted the hearing. We caught up with Perry in the middle of the UFO hearing, but he didn’t come back to question the witnesses, to our knowledge (with a C-SPAN assist!).
Below find a rough transcript of Ask a Pol’s interview with Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA), slightly edited for clarity.
Matt Laslo: “...whistleblower David Grusch is testifying.”
Laslo was turning his mic on while asking first half of question.
Scott Perry: “It seems like they have a high degree of credibility to me. Also, highly qualified.”
ML: “Do you have more questions?”
CP: “What’s that?”
ML: “Do you have more questions now on…?”
CP: “I do. I haven’t had an opportunity to ask questions yet.”
ML: “Do you think we’ll ever get to the bottom of this, I mean, the government says about 300 or so objects flying above that they can’t even identify. That’s a little unsettling.”
CP: “Well, we’re not going to get to the bottom of it under the current information paradigm here.”
ML: “With this increased pressure, though, seems like you guys might force them to?”
CP: “I think there’s a lot of considerations here — not the least of which is national security and the security of our people — but we’re also a government of, for and by the people. And they don’t seem to have any of this information. It’s their country.”
Matt Laslo is a veteran congressional correspondent and founder of Ask a Pol—a people-powered press corps. Find him on most social media @MattLaslo.
Camila Aponte and Noah Kolenda contributed to the production of this transcript. Take typos up with Congress (or ping us, please! Our apologies in advance).
We’re @Ask_a_Pol or @askpols on Insta.
EXCLUSIVE — Rep. Scott Perry: “It seems like they have a high degree of credibility"