Rep. Scott Perry, R-Pa., must disclose to federal prosecutors more than 1,600 text messages, emails and other communications related to the investigation into Donald Trump and his allies’ attempts to overturn the 2020 election, a federal judge ruled Tuesday. Chief U.S. District Judge James Boasberg found that the majority of the messages between Perry and other members of Congress, members of the Trump administration and allies outside of the government could not be concealed from prosecutors by the representative’s constitutional protections as a member of Congress, Politico reports.
I’m pretty sure that they already have all the messages. In the linked article it says:
There were originally 2,055 communications that he tried to hide, and the court has now said that 1,659 of them are not protected by the Speech and Debate clause. That means that the court must have reviewed all those messages in order to come to that conclusion.
The court is essentially telling him to consent to the messages being made available to investigators or to appeal the ruling, which he probably will. Eventually, assuming the ruling isn’t overturned, the court will allow the Justice Department to use the messages in their investigation without his consent since he has no grounds to refuse.