I read this in
The NY Times today:
The Justice Department has asked the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol for evidence it has accumulated about the scheme by former President Donald J. Trump and his allies to put forward false slates of pro-Trump electors in battleground states won by Joseph R. Biden Jr. in 2020.
Whenever I see phrases like "committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack" and " false slates of pro-Trump electors" in the same paragraph in a news item, my middle-aged New England born and raised brain immediately turns to this document and to this paragraph in that document:
Based on publicly available information and information produced to the Select Committee, we believe that you have documents and information that are relevant to the Select Committee’s investigation. For example, we understand that you have knowledge of and participated in a plan to arrange for an alternate slate of electors to be presented to the President of the Senate on January 6, 2021...[Emphasis added.]
In case you didn't know it, that's from the subpoena the January 6 Committee sent to PA State Senator (and now GOP candidate for PA Gov.) Doug Mastriano.
So the committee asked Doug for "documents and deposition" regarding (among other things) the slate of fake electors and back in early June, Doug did, in fact, send some documents to the committee.
Not surprisingly, very little had anything to do with the fake elector plan itself.
This is the sort of stuff Doug submitted to the committee:
A point that did not go un-noticed by Politico:
The Jan. 6 select committee received materials this week from Pennsylvania GOP gubernatorial nominee Doug Mastriano — and with them, perhaps, a new dilemma.
Mastriano’s previously unreported cooperation with the Capitol attack probe came in the form of a submission, obtained by POLITICO, that includes documents about his work to arrange buses that carried pro-Trump protesters to Washington on Jan. 6, 2021.
But when the select committee subpoenaed Mastriano, it specifically said he didn’t need to send any materials related to official actions in his current position as a Pennsylvania state senator. Given that sizable carve-out, the vast majority of the materials Mastriano sent to the committee are public social media posts.
Little or no substance that I could find. If anyone else finds something substantial in the submission about the fake elector plan and not just an announcement about it, let me know. You should be able to get there from the Politico piece above.
But back to The Times piece on DOJ:
Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi and the chairman of the committee, disclosed the request to reporters on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, and a person familiar with the panel’s work said discussions with the Justice Department about the false elector scheme were ongoing. Those talks suggest that the department is sharpening its focus on that aspect of Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the election, one with a direct line to the former president.
Mr. Thompson said the committee was working with federal prosecutors to allow them to review the transcripts of interviews the panel has done with people who served as so-called alternate electors for Mr. Trump. Mr. Thompson said the Justice Department’s investigation into “fraudulent electors” was the only specific topic the agency had broached with the committee.
In late May, The Times published this:
The Justice Department has stepped up its criminal investigation into the creation of alternate slates of pro-Trump electors seeking to overturn Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory in the 2020 election, with a particular focus on a team of lawyers that worked on behalf of President Donald J. Trump, according to people familiar with the matter.
A federal grand jury in Washington has started issuing subpoenas in recent weeks to people linked to the alternate elector plan, requesting information about several lawyers including Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani and one of his chief legal advisers, John Eastman, one of the people said.
The subpoenas also seek information on other pro-Trump lawyers like Jenna Ellis, who worked with Mr. Giuliani, and Kenneth Chesebro, who wrote memos supporting the elector scheme in the weeks after the election.
Did you notice that Jenna Ellis is among the subpoenaed?
Did you recall that Jenna Ellis is now working for PA State Senator (and now GOP candidate for PA Gov) Doug Mastriano? Yeppers, as "senior legal advisor."
Lotsa threads. Lotsa dots to connect.
Could someone, some stalwart member of Pennsylvania's political journalist class please ask Doug Mastriano about what he knows about Trump's plan to install PA's fake electors?
