There were two rather large news stories dropped in the last couple of days.
The second, from The Washington Post, starts this way:
The Justice Department is investigating President Donald Trump’s actions as part of its criminal probe of efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, according to four people familiar with the matter.
Wow.
But let's set that aside for a moment and look at the other big story - this from The New York Times. It begins with this:
Previously undisclosed emails provide an inside look at the increasingly desperate and often slapdash efforts by advisers to President Donald J. Trump to reverse his election defeat in the weeks before the Jan. 6 attack, including acknowledgments that a key element of their plan was of dubious legality and lived up to its billing as “fake.”
The dozens of emails among people connected to the Trump campaign, outside advisers and close associates of Mr. Trump show a particular focus on assembling lists of people who would claim — with no basis — to be Electoral College electors on his behalf in battleground states that he had lost.
And contains this:
As they organized the fake elector scheme, lawyers appointed a “point person” in seven states to help organize those electors who were willing to sign their names to false documents. In Pennsylvania, that point person was Douglas V. Mastriano, a proponent of Mr. Trump’s lies of a stolen election who is now the Republican nominee for governor.
But even Mr. Mastriano needed assurances to go along with a plan other Republicans were telling him was “illegal,” according to a Dec. 12 email sent by Ms. Bobb that also referred to Mr. Giuliani, the former mayor of New York City.
There we go. PA State Senator (and now GOP cand. for PA Gov) Doug Mastriano was the "point person" in Pennsylvania helping organize the alternative electors.
But we've always had a hint that that was the case, haven't we? There's this from The January 6 Committee subpoena sent to Doug earlier this year:
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...But "point person" is new, innit?
Do us a favor and take a look at the paragraph above, from The NYTimes. It says that Doug needed some assurances as others GOPers were telling him the plan was illegal.
Perhaps that explains the added text in the PA Alternative Electors certificates. As I wrote about back then, most of the other states' certificates contained this language:
WE, THE UNDERSIGNED, being the duly elected and qualified Electors for President and Vice President of the United States of America from the State of Wisconsin, do hereby certify the following...
However Pennsylvania's contained this:
WE, THE UNDERSIGNED, on the understanding that if, as a result of a final non-appealable Court Order or other proceeding prescribed by law, we are ultimately recognized as being the duly elected and qualified Electors for President and Vice President of the United States of America from the State of Pennsylvania, hereby certify the following... [Emphasis added.]
I emphasized the added text:
...on the understanding that if, as a result of a final non-appealable Court Order or other proceeding prescribed by law, we are ultimately recognized as...
And let's remember that it was Doug who sent out, on November 27, 2020, a memorandum announcing an upcoming resolution. A resolution that, after listing all of the big lie it can muster, ends with:
Urges the United States Congress to recognize and count as the State of Pennsylvania’s electoral votes for President and Vice-President only such electoral votes as are certified directly by the Pennsylvania House of Representatives and the Pennsylvania Senate by subsequent resolution. [Emphasis added.]He even tweeted:
There is mounting evidence that the PA presidential election was compromised. If this is the case, under Article II, Section 1.2 of the US Constitution, the state legislature has the sole authority to direct the manner of selecting delegates to the Electoral College. (1)
— Senator Doug Mastriano (@SenMastriano) November 28, 2020
Doug = Pennsylvania Point Person.
Once that's set, there's more to learn.
For example googling "Mastriano" and "Boris Epsteyn" and you'll get to this piece from a few days ago at Politico. Starts:
As Donald Trump struggled to remain in power in late 2020, an anchor for a far-right TV network briefed a group of the president’s lawyers in detail on a plot to mobilize so-called alternate pro-Trump electors, according to an email reviewed by POLITICO.
And tucked in the tail end of the piece there's this:
In Pennsylvania, Bobb wrote, Trump’s team was waiting to hear from the office of state Sen. Doug Mastriano — now Republicans’ nominee in the state’s gubernatorial contest — to get a room for the alternate electors.
They asked Doug Mastriano to get them a room.
That's how deeply Doug was involved.