Exclusive — Rep. Russell Fry Barrels into Congress Passing Bill, Probing Biden: ‘The Country Needs Us to Be Effective’

After defeating a controversial Trump impeachment supporter, freshman Rep. Russell Fry has wasted little time this year in bringing bills to the table and immersing himself in the GOP’s most high-profile probes.

“I’m just happy to be here,” Fry told Breitbart News in a wide-ranging interview in his Capitol Hill office last week, about an hour before he would head to the floor to vote on his own bill for the first time.

The 38-year-old lawmaker added, “I think I’m still in that honeymoon phase of feeling incredibly proud to be selected to represent this district.”

Fry, who ousted Rep. Tom Rice in a rout last year with the backing of former President Donald Trump, joined the ranks of a small handful of freshmen who have authored successful bills this Congress with the passage of H.R. 3091 on Wednesday.

The bill, geared toward allowing federal law enforcement officers to purchase retired firearms, would correct what Fry says is currently an “insane waste of taxpayer dollars” on destroying perfectly functional guns.

Fry, a former state lawmaker who campaigned for Congress on an America First agenda, grew up in a lower-middle class home in coastal South Carolina and has long been drawn to top roles in his career pursuits.

The conservative southerner was president of the Student Bar Association at Charleston School of Law before becoming chief majority whip in the Statehouse and freshman class president in Congress.

Fry was elected to the little-known lattermost role, which first-term House members have voted on since the 1940s, and sees it as a means for his freshmen colleagues to be brought up to speed fast on the intricacies of the House.

“How quickly can we race up that learning curve to be effective? The Republican Conference needs us to be effective, the country needs us to be effective,” Fry said.

Fry, who one senior aide from another office said she felt was “not a freshman” because of the ease at which he has adapted to his job, is also spreading his efforts across two of the House’s top investigative committees, Oversight and Judiciary.

On Oversight’s premier probe into the Biden family’s lucrative foreign business dealings, Fry said his constituents are highly interested in the family’s web of financial transactions, the legal soundness of which remains in question.

“Look, I think it’s very concerning at the end of the day that you have a member of a president’s family [Hunter Biden] who ostensibly doesn’t have any marketable skill except his access to power, and so when these finances are uncovered and we see things in the bank records that raise pretty dramatic suspicion, I think the American people are right to ask the question, ‘Well, what is this for?’” Fry said.

He added pragmatically, “Getting to the bottom of that is cumbersome and complex but is very firmly in the purview of the committee and what we should be doing.”

Oversight chairman Rep. James Comer (R-KY) called Fry a “tremendous asset.”

Fry “continues to go to bat for the American people to root out waste, fraud, and abuse in the federal government,” Comer said in a statement, adding that the South Carolina Republican is “focused on advancing results for his constituents and is getting results.”

On Judiciary, Fry’s busy workload has materialized into legislation. Through that panel, he drafted his successful pro-law enforcement bill as well as a key bill aimed at Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s prosecution of Trump.

The “No More Political Prosecutions Act” marked the first legislative response that Republicans have had to Bragg’s grand jury indictment of Trump, which the GOP has widely condemned as a political attack rather than a sincere enforcement of the law.

The committee is also leading immigration and border security legislation and appears poised to consider impeachment articles against Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

“I think it’s time that we start getting serious about pressure that we can levy on him and that department because at the end of the day, the American people are suffering because of his failed leadership,” Fry said of Mayorkas. “So, for me, all options are on the table.”

Like Comer, Judiciary chairman Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) spoke highly of Fry.

“He comes prepared and I just like him,” Jordan said.

Fry is also part of the Trump campaign’s 2024 leadership team in the Palmetto State despite his state ties to two prominent Trump challengers.

He served in the South Carolina House when Nikki Haley was governor and maintains a good relationship with Sen. Tim Scott — they like to compare socks, Fry says — but Fry nevertheless remains behind the out-of-state former president who boosted him as he sought to unseat Rice in the 2022 primary.

Rice’s “career-defining” vote to impeach Trump over the January 6 riot is what prompted Fry to initially jump in the race, he said.

Rice’s vote “was wrong for the country and it was wrong for the district he represents,” Fry said of the deeply red Myrtle Beach region.

Fry’s more seasoned South Carolina colleagues welcome his presence in Washington.

“I love working with Russell,” said Rep. Nancy Mace, who beat out Trump’s preferred candidate in her district’s 2022 primary, the opposite of what transpired in Fry’s district just north of her.

Another fellow South Carolinian, House Freedom Caucus member Rep. Ralph Norman, commended Fry for doing “a phenomenal job.”

“He’s quick on the issues. He takes an interest in it,” Norman said. “He’s in it for the right reasons.”