According to Rep. Scott Perry the speech and debate clause in the constitution protects members of congress who are plotting a coup with the president of the United States. One judge doesn’t think so. It remains to be seen if others do: The chief judge of the federal district court in Washington, D.C., secretly rejected Rep. Scott Perry’s bid to shield more than 2,000 messages relevant to Justice Department investigators probing efforts by Donald Trump to subvert the 2020 election, according to newly unsealed court filings. U.S. District Court Chief Judge Beryl Howell unsealed her extraordinary Dec. 28 decision on Friday evening, determining that the “powerful public interest” in seeing the previously secret opinion outweighed the need for continued secrecy. Perry, a Republican lawmaker from Pennsylvania, had urged Howell to block the Justice Department from accessing 2,219 documents stored on his phone, which was seized and imaged by the FBI last August as part of the 2020 election investigation. He claimed that the records reflected his efforts to research potential legislative decisions — like whether to vote to challenge election results on Jan. 6, 2021 — and therefore should be protected from disclosure by the Constitution’s speech or debate clause, a provision meant to safeguard lawmakers from pressure or intimidation by the executive branch. But Howell said Perry had taken an “astonishing view” of his immunity that would effectively put members of Congress above the law and free of political consequences for their actions. She ordered him to disclose 2,055 of the…