September 24, 2021

Does State Sen. Mastriano REALLY Want An Arizona Style "Audit"?

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This is what Pennsylvania State Senator Doug Mastriano said last June about the election "audit" undertaken in Arizona:

I recently accepted an invitation to meet with Arizona State Legislators and tour the Maricopa County Audit facility in Phoenix, AZ.  I was joined by my colleagues Senator Cris Dush and Representative Rob Kauffman.

I was more than impressed with what I saw on the ground in Phoenix. What stood out to me most were the measures being taken to ensure transparency, security, and accuracy. [Emphasis added.]

And:

A county audit like the one authorized by the Arizona State Senate is critically necessary for our Commonwealth. Those who have concerns about the accuracy of the 2020 election will have a forensic audit to investigate their concerns. Those who think that there was zero voter fraud, no irregularities, and the elections were conducted perfectly will have the chance to be vindicated.

And this is what the NYTimes is reporting today about the "audit" Mastriano praised only three and a half months ago:

After months of delays and blistering criticism, a review of the 2020 election in Arizona’s largest county, ordered up and financed by Republicans, has failed to show that former President Donald J. Trump was cheated of victory, according to draft versions of the report.

In fact, the draft report from the company Cyber Ninjas found just the opposite: It tallied 99 additional votes for President Biden and 261 fewer votes for Mr. Trump in Maricopa County, the fast-growing region that includes Phoenix.

Ooo, Doug. That's gotta sting.

The county itself tweeted the news:

So all that work, Senator, only to show that the gap between Biden and Trump was actually 360 votes wider?  

This must be so embarrassing for you, huh?

I mean last June you praised the accuracy of the "audit" in Arizona (in order to push for a similar "audit" here in Pennsylvania only) to have the thing bite you in the ass now.

Oh, and there was this in that Times piece:

“Those people stormed the Capitol because they believed the election was fraudulent when it was not,” said Matt A. Barreto, a professor of political science at the University of California, Los Angeles, and faculty director of the Voting Rights Project. “And had we had leaders who just accepted the results and encouraged their team to try harder next time, we could have avoided that very ugly fiasco.”

You were there at the Capitol on January 6, right? You saw breaches on both sides of the Capitol and personally walked through the barricades that had been moved by the rioters, didn't you?

And then you lied to the people of Pennsylvania about it. 

Did you see that Steve Bannon has been subpoenaed by the Congress? 

You were on Bannon's podcast, talking about this Arizona audit, right? Let me remind you in case you've "forgotten" the details:

Trump has persistently claimed the 2020 election was rigged against him, and pressured Republican lawmakers in Pennsylvania and other states he lost narrowly to conduct an audit, as is happening in Arizona.

In an interview streamed online by former Trump adviser Steve Bannon, [PA Sen. Doug Mastriano, R-Franklin] Mastriano suggested the undertaking will be similar to that in Arizona, where Republicans are searching for evidence of fraud in what critics say is an attempt to discredit President Joe Biden's victory in the state.

“As we go through the ballots, my desire is to recount them, but also forensically analyze with photographic material whether the ballots were copied or filled in by a human,” Mastriano told Bannon, saying he planned to study what type of paper was used, look for what he called software “shenanigans” and review the chain of custody for the ballots.

Now that Bannon's been subpoenaed, when can we expect to see your subpoena to testify before Congress about your involvement in the insurrection?


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