Ok, so it all started with yesterday's blog post.
That's the one where I asserted that St Sen Mastriano effectively played out the clock in regards to testifying to anything of substance to the January 6 Committee.
In that blog post I wrote:
The bulk of the testimony, such as it is, is Doug's attorney Timothy Parlatore getting all feisty and nitpicky over whether a committee's subpoena was signed with an autopen or whether the committee has designated two individuals to conduct the investigation.
When Parlatore doesn't get the answers he wants, he and Doug walk.For the record, the committee said they dealt with in correspondence with Doug and his attorney.
If I am reading Parlatore's statements correctly (and if I am not, he's completely free to email me to correct the record), he's saying that the committee itself is not following it's own rules and so therefore Sen Mastriano won't comply and testify. Doug would be happy to comply, of course, if only the committee were to follow Parlatore's understanding of its own rules.
For the record, the committee states it's following its own rules.
Out of fairness (and I am nothing if not fair), I emailed this link to Attorney Parlatore and with that link I included this message:
Feel free to write back if you'd like. I promise to post it verbatim on the blog - nothing is off the record.
So let me uphold my end of the deal and post verbatim what Doug's attorney wrote:
You really should have read the lawsuit that we filed immediately thereafter, which lays out exactly what the issues with this committee conducting depositions were. When reading the docket, you’ll notice that the committee delayed responding to the lawsuit and ultimately defaulted because they had no response to the legal infirmities raised. Many witnesses raised similar issues and the committee chose to proceed by voluntary interview, rather than deposition to avoid exactly the litigation that Sen. Mastriano commenced.
While the email did include this:
CONFIDENTIAL NOTICE: This E-mail (including any attachments) is covered by the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, 18 U.S.C. Sections 2510-2521, is confidential, and may be legally privileged. If you are not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any retention, dissemination, distribution, or copying of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you have received the message in error, please reply to notify the sender and then delete the message. Thank you.Let me state that I promised to post whatever he sent and in his response he said nothing to me about not posting it on line. I am the intended recipient of the message and so (by my reading of the notice) I am not prohibited from the retaining, disseminating, distributing or copying it as far as I can tell.
In any event, it'll take some time to sift through Doug's lawsuit (and, of course, the committee's response etc). Though I will say that I'm not seeing much of a difference between my general description of Doug's case and his attorney's, albeit more detail driven, description.
Give me a few days to sift.
In the meantime, can I point out a few more than obvious facts?
- The January 6 Committee is in the process of dissolving and so any legal issues about its existence and legitimacy are soon going to be moot and,
- In the released testimony, Atty Parlatore stated "Senator Mastriano is not concerned about answering questions here. Our primary concern is obviously over this committee's demonstrated history of releasing edited and misleading clips in an effort to really lie to the public and mislead them. And considering that he's currently in a general election, we want to make sure that we have some protection for that" (p. 8) and,
- St Sen Doug Mastriano lost that general election by almost 800,000 votes.
Given those facts will St Sen Mastriano, that self-proclaimed champion of transparency, now answer the questions that the committee would have asked him?
For example, questions about:
- Doug's involvement and understanding of a hearing that took place on November 25, 2020, in Gettysburg at a Wyndham Hotel that was related to the election.
- Doug's knowledge of or involvement with the GOP electors who met to cast electoral college votes in December 2020 for the states that Trump lost.
- Doug's presence in Washington DC at or near Capitol Hill on January 6th.
Those three were mentioned in yesterday's blog post but something's popped up in the news that I really really want Doug to explain. It's also from his testimony.
This "would have" from the committee:
We would've asked about the calls Senator Mastriano may have had with the President or members of the White House or other officials on January 6, including a call he apparently place to the Vice President on the 6th. (p. 12)Whah? Doug apparently made a phone call to VP Pence on January 6? When? What time of day? Was it before, during or after the attack on the Capitol? And what did they discuss?
