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Conspiracy theories over the counting of the ballots in Pennsylvania appear to have made it the sad ground zero for much of the discord the country has experienced since President Donald Trump lost the November election.
Rioters who backed Trump cited bogus allegations of electoral fraud in Pennsylvania – shared by some of the state’s Republican lawmakers, including Congressman Scott Perry and Sen. Doug Mastriano – as the reason for “storming the Capitol. ” January 6th.
Today, state houses across the country, including one in Pennsylvania, are bracing for more clashes in the days to come.
The state in which the country’s democracy was founded, Pennsylvania has seen members of Congress oppose its constituents even as broken glass still littered the Capitol floor hours after the riot ended, perpetuating doubts among Trump supporters on the integrity of the state election.
Pennsylvania law enforcement agencies said last week they were bracing for potential violence in the state ahead of Joe Biden’s inauguration in Washington, DC, and Governor Tom Wolf has assigned 450 members of the the State National Guard to protect the Pennsylvania Capitol.
“I will not allow what happened in our nation’s capital to happen here,” said Wolf, who has also assigned about 2,000 members of the state National Guard to protect Washington.
Jack Thomas Tomarchio, who was the principal assistant deputy secretary of intelligence under the Bush administration and helped set up national intelligence gathering networks across the country, said Pennsylvania – where he lives – is particularly at risk because of the number of militias in the state and its central role in electoral fraud conspiracy theories.
Tomarchio, who said the Pennsylvania Democrats stole the election “out of sheer madness,” said the state faced workforce issues to protect state and federal buildings in face being targeted by domestic extremists.
“Pennsylvania is definitely a top target because it’s one of the states these groups were challenging,” he said. “At the same time, Pennsylvania has the dubious distinction of having around 28 militias, particularly in the upstate. These places are home to many right-wing extremist groups, so this is another reason why the state needs to be very careful.
The Republican-controlled legislature, however, has done little to lower the temperature.
A day before the riot on Capitol Hill, Republicans in Pennsylvania refused to sit on Sen. Jim Brewster, a Democrat who won a close race in the western state by 69 votes. They also removed Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, a Democrat, as Speaker of the Senate because he tried to sit Brewster down.
Brewster has since been seated after a federal judge sided with the Democrats, but some Republicans in the state are now trying to change Pennsylvania’s constitution and change the way Supreme Court justices in the The states are elected after lawsuits to overturn the election and challenge pandemic security measures were denied by the court.
“What Republicans are planning to do with the Supreme Court is reprehensible,” said Fetterman, as Republicans voted to impeach the Senate presidency last week in what Democrats called “an attempted coup.” State”.
“My guys had no problem with the Supreme Court from 2002 to 2015, when it was under Tory control,” he said. “But then the Democrats scrambled, we took over the Supreme Court and now they hate this Supreme Court. They are literally going to change the constitution to try to get rid of and gerrymander the court.
Currently, members of the state Supreme Court are elected to their seats in statewide elections for a 10-year term. Republicans want to limit these elections to districts that would be fired by the state legislature.
The attempt to change the state’s constitution could find its way ahead of Pennsylvania voters if passed, but Wolf, a Democrat, warned the effort was an attempt at control by “hyper-partisan” Republicans .
“I strongly oppose giving the legislature the power to gerrymander our justice system,” the governor said. “This constitutional amendment is just another effort by the Harrisburg Republicans to prevent the will of the people from being heard by preventing all Pennsylvanians from having a voice in the selection of judges for the highest courts in the state.
These efforts by Republican state lawmakers now have a history of several months: The GOP-controlled legislature refused to allow state workers to count ballots early in the election, and party members shared electoral fraud lies before and after the election – often parroting President Donald Trump and his lawyers.
Mastriano and Perry, both Republicans, are two Pennsylvania lawmakers who pushed voter fraud conspiracy theories in their state to two levels of government.
Both are military veterans: Mastriano served as a colonel in the army and taught at the Army War College, and Perry served as a brigadier general in the Pennsylvania National Guard. They have received numerous calls to resign for using their positions to bring allegations of electoral fraud to the general public.
Perry opposed voters in Pennsylvania after the riot, along with seven other Republican members of the state’s congressional delegation. Mastriano met with Trump about Pennsylvania’s White House election and held a hearing for the president’s attorneys in Gettysburg to try to further legitimize the unsubstantiated allegations.
Mastriano attended the protest in Washington last week, although he said he and his wife left before it turned into a riot on Capitol Hill.
Fetterman and other Democrats have placed much of the responsibility for perpetuating the Pennsylvania election lies at the feet of Perry, Mastriano, and the state’s Republicans.
“It’s staggering,” said Fetterman, who expressed concern for the safety of his family. “Last Tuesday there were literally 200 mad Trump protesters under my office balcony on the steps of the State Capitol, and then we had the great conflagration in the Senate when they voted to kick me out. There was no difference between Harrisburg and DC, as it could easily have been the same in Harrisburg, and they could have stormed the State Capitol.
“What I’m trying to say is they fanned it and fueled it and fanned it, and then Wednesday happened,” Fetterman added.
Neither Mastriano nor Perry responded to requests for comment about their active participation in the spread of voter fraud lies, their role in undermining voters in Pennsylvania, or calls for their resignations. Both have issued statements condemning the violence.
Perry also issued a one-word statement in response to requests to step down.
“No,” he wrote.
Mastriano, meanwhile, has since asked on social media that his supporters “do not participate in rallies or protests for the next ten days.” Let us focus on praying for our nation in these troubling times. The statement represents a sudden about-face in rhetoric he has previously used, such as when he told a host of a conservative radio show that Trump supporters are in ‘a death match with the Democrat party “on the election results, according to Media Matters for America.
Mastriano, who has become a right-wing celebrity and has seen his social media flourish from a few thousand to hundreds of thousands because of his opposition to the state’s pandemic precautions and the perpetuation of the country’s election lies. president, also used campaign funds to rent buses for his supporters from Chambersburg to Washington for the protest last week, according to NPR affiliate WHYY.
He charged $ 25 for an adult and $ 10 for a child to travel on the bus, the Facebook event shared by Doug Mastriano Fighting for Freedom said.
But the state senator – who was appointed by the Republican Senate leadership to chair the Senate Intergovernmental Operations Committee this week – told NewsMax that the Capitol riot was caused by only a few agitators and hinted that they were not Trump supporters.
“We were there peacefully,” he said, “99.9% of us, and they shouldn’t be blamed for anything.”
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