We'll start here at WTAE:
And the piece is about this:
President Biden's administration is leading the way to wipe out student loan debt for thousands of people in the country, including about 5,600 here in Pennsylvania.
And so on.
In a fairly typical move the reporter, Chandi Chapman, got a response from the opposing side of the political aisle. In this case Sam DeMarco, chairman of the Republican Committee of Allegheny County:
He said, "The term forgiveness is a misnomer because no one is forgiving anything. What they are doing is, the Biden administration is trying to shift the burden of paying loans back on the taxpayers and people who never took these loans out in the first place."
And so on.
Let's dig into DeMarco's bio, shall we?
For example, there's this from the Allegheny County. Sam's an At Large Council Representative. And included in that official Allegheny County bio is this:
The Councilman is also very involved in our non-profit community and currently sits on the Board of Trustees for the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, the Board of Trustees for Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Hall and Museum Trust, and the Board of Visit Pittsburgh, the official tourism promotion agency for Allegheny County. He is also an Honorary Board Member of the Tuskegee Airman Memorial of Western Pennsylvania Region, and a member of Amen Corner.No where in this bio is there any mention of this: Sam DeMarco was one of Trump's fake electors in late 2020.
It's a curious story and as I wrote it up in January of 2022, Pennsylvania is one of the two special case "swing states with fake Trump electors."
Let me explain. Joe Biden won the election and Donald Trump tried to subvert the certification of that election by seeking to get his own fake electors from seven swing states recognized by Congress.
They were seven of these states and five of them:
- Nevada
- Wisconsin
- Arizona
- Michigan
- Georgia
Each sent in "certificates" that had 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 Nevada, do hereby certify the following...However two states:
- New Mexico
- Pennsylvania
Altered the text of their fake certifications. For the purposes of our story here, this is what Pennsylvania's fake certification stated:
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...
And in case you missed it, this is what they added:
...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...
Otherwise it's exactly the same.
About that, CNN has this:
One of the pro-Trump electors from Pennsylvania, Sam DeMarco, told CNN there was a last-minute dispute, where the state’s GOP electors pushed Trump campaign officials to add legal caveats to the fake certificate to say they were only electors-in-waiting, if Trump’s legal challenges prevailed.
The fake documents from Pennsylvania and New Mexico ultimately contained these caveats, but the documents from the other five states explicitly claimed, falsely, that the pro-Trump electors were the rightful electors.
It’s not clear that any of the fake electors themselves participated in strategy sessions with top Trump campaign brass. But both Maddock from Michigan and DeMarco from Pennsylvania have said they were in direct contact with members of the Trump campaign.
And on that "hedged language" (CNN's phrase), CNN had this:
If anything, this provided a veneer of legal protection for Trump supporters who were trying to exploit the Electoral College process to overturn an election.
That link goes back to Mike Wereschagin at Lancaster Online reporting that:
Republican electors in two other states — Pennsylvania and Nevada — hedged the language on their certificates to say they’d cast their votes for Trump only if his election challenges succeeded in the courts.
That small distinction could spare Trump electors in those two states the legal trouble potentially facing their counterparts in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and Wisconsin.
So the added text was added was for political and legal cover. Got it.
Why would they feel they needed such cover?
However much they may have disliked the original language, they still participated in the plot to overturn the election - why else would they sign the altered fake certificates?
One last question: Does the Carnegie Library know that one of Trump's fake electors sits on its board?
He's one of its "Public Trustees" you know.
