We'll start from here, at WESA. In a piece titled:
How Doug Mastriano and Scott Perry were central to the Jan. 6 Committee’s investigation we find this:
Two Pennsylvania Republicans are key figures in former President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, according to the United States House Select Committee to Investigate the Jan. 6 Attack on the United States Capitol.
And this:
Mastriano, the committee claims, helped Trump’s cause by spending thousands of campaign dollars to bus people to the “Save America Rally” in Washington, D.C., and was on Capitol grounds as the insurrection unfolded.
They noted that Mastriano helped arrange Rudy Giuliani’s so-called election fraud “hearing” in Pennsylvania, during which he claimed – without proof – that Democrat Governor Tom Wolf helped rig the election.
And then this is how (now-suspended lawyer) Rudy Giuliani describes it in his own deposition..
Giuliani is asked this question:
After the Pennsylvania hearing, I understand that you went to the White House with a number of State legislators. Do you remember doing that? (p 64-65)
That would be Doug's November 25, 2020 hearing in Gettysburg. We've already
talked about it. Many times.
And this is how Rudy answered:
Oh, yeah. That I think I can -- I don't think this is privileged. During the course of the hearing, the President spoke to them by Zoom or one of those things, like we're using. And he thanked them for having the hearing because at that point, that was quite a courageous thing to do, because we -- we had lawyers who were being threatened, were being thrown out of their law firms; we had people who were threatened with death, one of the lawyers in another case was threatened the death; we had legislators that to me told me they were frightened to hold the hearing because their career would be ruined and the local newspaper would destroy them. They wanted to hold the hearing but they were afraid.
And the leadership largely, in some of these legislatures, opposed it. Well, Doug Mastriano was the first to grant us a hearing, which was quite a breakthrough because when he did that, we got calls from the other legislators. So he had the courage to be the one to go first, which I appreciated a lot. I consider courage maybe the greatest virtue that a person can have.
And the President did too. So the President asked if he could be a witness at the hearing, and I said, it would be better if you called in, which he did.
Q He did call in. And then afterwards you guys went to the White House, correct, with a number of legislators?
A He invited them to the White House. He said, when you're finished, you're only in Williamsburg, why don't you come to the White House, which turned out to be quite a logistical nightmare because there were 200 people. I don't think he realized that.
Q Very briefly about the meeting at the White House, did anybody discuss the role of legislatures and potentially choosing their own electors during that meeting at the White House after the hearing in Pennsylvania?
A Well, the meeting at the White House was kind of helter-skelter. It took a long time for everybody to get there. It turned out that -- everybody was being tested for COVID at the time. It turned out that several or more than several of the people there had tested positive for COVID, including --
Q Understood. And, Mr. Giuliani, I don't mean to cut you off, but I'm not so much interested in the COVID technicalities of what was happening. Just my question was, do you remember the President or anybody else discussing the role of legislatures and the fact that they could choose their own electors in that meeting at the White House?
A I'm sorry, you really have to let me answer the question the way I want to, because when people just say I can't remember, other people say, Oh, they're just trying to hide something. I'm trying to point out to you, this was a very confusing meeting with a lot of things going on, and the mere fact that I can't remember if that was discussed is explainable by the fact that I was dealing with a COVID problem because it affected the Mastriano family. They had COVID, and I was with them for quite some time. And, in fact, I think that's when I actually might have contracted it.
But in any event, I was in and out of that meeting because there were a lot of logistical problems going on. I remember the meeting, if you -- I remember the meeting -- and I would not say this is attorney-client privilege. It was with a large group of people. I remember the meeting being more a thank you by the President for, you know, for doing what they did.
Q Holding the hearing?
A Yeah.
So, on the day Doug Mastriano (and some members of his family, apparently) met with Donald Trump in the White House, two things happened; Trump thanked him for that hearing and Doug tested positive for COVID-19.
Depending on how you read Giuliani's answer, the "Mastriano family" might have been the source of Rudy's own COVID-19 infection.
Wherever you look in the planning (or execution) of Trump's attempted coup in Pennsylvania, you find Doug Mastriano.
More to come.
