How a Pennsylvania state senator helped fuel Trump's election lies
CNN
Pennsylvania state Sen. Doug Mastriano went out of his way to help advance former President Donald Trump's election lies: He spearheaded a "hearing" at a hotel in Gettysburg a few weeks after the 2020 election, where Trump and his lawyer Rudy Giuliani made false claims about election fraud. He chartered buses to ferry his supporters to Washington on January 6. And he was briefly in charge of the Pennsylvania state Senate's partisan "audit" of the 2020 election.
Now Mastriano's role behind the scenes helping Trump try to overturn his loss to Joe Biden is under renewed scrutiny after a Democrat-led Senate Judiciary report released last week revealed his correspondence with the Justice Department spreading debunked claims of fraud. Mastriano is one of three under-the-radar figures the report singles out for further investigation for their efforts helping Trump try to subvert the election.
Rep. Scott Perry, a Pennsylvania Republican, introduced Trump to a top DOJ official who was open to election conspiracy theories. Attorney Cleta Mitchell helped Trump try to convince Georgia's secretary of state to "find" enough votes for him to win. And Mastriano pushed his fraud claims to the No. 2 Justice official while Trump was trying to convince then-acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen to publicly say there was fraud in the election, according to the report.