June 16, 2021

Uh-Oh. State Senator Mastriano's Election Misinformation Is More Deeply Entwined

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As we read in Forbes: 

The attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2020, was the direct result of a continuous drumbeat of disinformation starting before the Presidential elections in the U.S. in 2020, and continuing past the event itself. That flow of disinformation came largely, but not exclusively, through social media.

This includes the lie that there were more votes than voters in Pennsylvania - a lie spread by State Senator Doug Mastriano, who was able to witness first hand the fruits of his labors.

Anyway, back to the lie.

Today we read this from our friends at WITF:

A letter from Republican state Sen. Doug Mastriano that includes numerous false claims about Pennsylvania’s 2020 election has surfaced in a U.S. House committee’s investigation into the causes of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

The Democratic-led committee released a trove of emails that show Trump allies trying to pressure the Justice Department to look into baseless or disproven election-fraud claims. That effort supported a wider goal of overturning or invalidating election results in several swing states, including Pennsylvania.

Mastriano’s Dec. 28 letter, addressed to then-acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue, repeated many of the false claims he and other Republican state senators had entertained at a Nov. 25 Senate Majority Policy meeting that featured Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani.

This is the letter in question:

You'll probably notice that Twitter has already flagged it with:
This claim about election fraud has been disputed.

And, as WIFT notes:

Many of the roughly 18 claims in the five-page letter had already been proven wrong by then, or were debunked after Mastriano wrote the letter.
Here's how Mastriano's letter made it into the Trump treason mix. From WITF:
Nonetheless, the newly-released emails show private attorney Kurt Olsen, who the New York Times reports advised Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton on a lawsuit that asked the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn election results in states like Pennsylvania, cited Mastriano’s letter as “additional justification” for the Justice Department to present a similar suit to the Supreme Court. Olsen said that approach would ensure the claims would be “immediately investigated and not swept under the rug.”

That would be page 151 of the trove of email:


 And it's printed out in full (p. 153-157)

But if you look very carefully at the bottom of Olsen's document, you'll see this:

You might have to click on it to read it - sorry.

It's the URL for Olsen's source of the letter, this piece by Jim Holt at GatewayPundit.

But look at the piece's timestamp:

By Jim Hoft
Published December 30, 2020 at 7:52am

Now look at the timestamp on Olsen's email to Donoghue:

December 30 2020 at 10:40:22 AM EST

If I am reading this correctly, Holt's piece at the Gateway Pundit was just under 3 hours old when Olsen forwarded it to Donoghue.

Here's the second paragraph of Holt's piece:

The most damning evidence against Democrat fraud in the state is the fact that 205,122 more votes were counted in the state than the number of people who voted!

Too bad the AP debunked it the day before:

CLAIM: There were 205,000 more votes than voters in the 2020 election in Pennsylvania. 

AP’S ASSESSMENT: False. This analysis is based on incomplete data, according to the Pennsylvania Department of State.  

THE FACTS: A misleading claim about election results from a group of Republican state lawmakers in Pennsylvania is circulating widely on social media a week before Congress meets to reaffirm Joe Biden’s decisive presidential win.

So Kurt Olsen's research extends to that morning's Gateway Pundit but NOT the day-old Associated Press fact check of the same information. 

Good to know.

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