We'll start here:
In our second hearing, you will see that Donald Trump and his advisors knew that he had, in fact, lost the election. But, despite this, President Trump engaged in a massive effort to spread false and fraudulent information – to convince huge portions of the U.S. population that fraud had stolen the election from him. This was not true.
And:
As you will see in great detail in these hearings, President Trump ignored the rulings of our nation’s courts, he ignored his own campaign leadership, his White House staff, many Republican state officials, he ignored the Department of Justice, and the Department of Homeland Security.
President Trump invested millions of dollars of campaign funds purposely spreading false information, running ads he knew were false, and convincing millions of Americans that the election was corrupt and he was the true President. As you will see, this misinformation campaign provoked the violence on January 6th.
And this weekend on CNN there was this:
Jamie Raskin on CNN says he thinks the January 6 committee can prove that Trump knew he lost the 2020 election while he was lying about it and trying to overturn the result pic.twitter.com/eeZG1q7r8n
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) June 12, 2022
And then The NY Times:
On Monday, they plan to describe the origin and spread of Mr. Trump’s election lies, including the former president’s refusal to listen to advisers who told him that he had lost and that there was no evidence of widespread irregularities that could change the outcome. Then they plan on demonstrating the chaos those falsehoods caused throughout several states, ultimately resulting in the riot.
A committee aide said the panel would focus in particular on Mr. Trump’s decision on election night to declare victory even though he had been told he did not have the numbers to win.
The curious thing about the Times reporting is that it includes this right after:
Two weeks after the 2020 election, a team of lawyers closely allied with Donald J. Trump held a widely watched news conference at the Republican Party’s headquarters in Washington. At the event, they laid out a bizarre conspiracy theory claiming that a voting machine company had worked with an election software firm, the financier George Soros and Venezuela to steal the presidential contest from Mr. Trump.
But there was a problem for the Trump team, according to court documents released on Monday evening.
By the time the news conference occurred on Nov. 19, Mr. Trump’s campaign had already prepared an internal memo on many of the outlandish claims about the company, Dominion Voting Systems, and the separate software company, Smartmatic. The memo had determined that those allegations were untrue.
Note the date: November 19, 2020.
The very next day, November 20, 2020, Pennsylvania St Sen (and now GOP candidate for PA Gov) Doug Mastriano posted this on Facebook:
Take a look at the lucky coincidence of the comments on the right:
Then there's that whole "hearing" in Gettysburg.
Lots of big lying there.
There are only a couple of possibilities that I can see;
- Doug knew at that point that the big lie was, in fact a big lie and was misleading his fanbase anyway or
- Doug himself was duped by the Trump campaign and was spreading the big lie.
So which is it, Senator?
Are you a liar or were you duped by the liars?
And if it's the latter, then why haven't you said so?
