Source: Pennsylvania lawmaker tests positive for COVID in West Wing meeting with President Trump

HARRISBURG, Pa .– A Pennsylvania state senator abruptly left a West Wing meeting with President Donald Trump after being told he had tested positive for coronavirus, a person with direct knowledge said on Sunday of the meeting at the Associated Press.

Republican Senator Doug Mastriano had gone to the White House last Wednesday with like-minded Republican lawmakers shortly after a more than four-hour public meeting that Mastriano helped organize in Gettysburg – without a mask – to discuss efforts to overthrow the President-elect Joe Biden. victory in the state.

Trump told Mastriano that White House medical staff will take care of him, his son and his son’s friend, who were also there for the Oval Office meeting and tested positive. The meeting continued after Mastriano and the others left, the person said.

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The person spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the private session as the matter is politically sensitive.

Positive cases of the coronavirus are increasing across the United States, and the nation’s top infectious disease expert said on Sunday that the United States could see “a skyrocketing” in the coming weeks. The number of new COVID-19 cases reported in the United States exceeded 200,000 for the first time on Friday.

Anyone near the president must take a quick test. Trump himself was hospitalized in October after contracting the virus. Dozens of White House employees and others close to the president have also tested positive, including the first lady and two of the president’s sons.

All of the attendees at Wednesday’s meeting passed COVID-19 tests, but positive results were not announced until after they arrived in the West Wing of the White House, the person said.

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“The president immediately called the White House doctor and he took them back, I guess, to the medical center,” the person said. The meeting with Trump was aimed at strategizing on the efforts regarding the election, the person said.

After Mastriano and the others left, the discussion with Trump continued for about half an hour. Mastriano did not return to the meeting.

Mastriano called for the Pennsylvania Senate Republican Political Committee meeting earlier Wednesday which drew Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, a second Trump lawyer, several witnesses and a crowd of onlookers. Only a few of them were masked.

The committee let Giuliani and others, for several hours, express their beliefs that there had been problems with the way the Pennsylvania vote was conducted and counted. All the claims were baseless; no evidence was presented to support the allegations they made.

Trump even participated, calling from the White House while one of his attorneys held a phone near a microphone. He reiterated the same unsubstantiated fraud allegations he had been tweeting about for weeks.

These beliefs have persisted despite Trump’s repeated defeat in state and federal courts, including the Philadelphia-based Federal Court of Appeals ruling on Friday that said the “Trump campaign claims have no basis.” and a ruling by the state’s Supreme Court on Saturday that dismissed a court challenge. the election and the effort to stop the certification of its results.

Mastriano, a curator from a rural central Pennsylvania district and a staunch Trump supporter, did not return several messages left on Sunday to solicit comment.

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Republican Senator Dave Argall, who chairs the political committee, declined in a text message on Sunday to discuss Mastriano’s state of health and the White House visit.

“I have received conflicting information which I am trying to resolve,” Argall said in the text. “I understand that a statement from the Senate later today will help us all understand this better.”

Argall said he would not speak publicly about the matter “until I know more.”

Republican Senate spokeswoman Kate Flessner declined to comment, describing it as a personnel issue.

The person familiar with the White House visit said several people boarded a large van from Gettysburg, where the political committee met in a hotel, in the White House. Mastriano, his son and his son’s friend drove in another vehicle.

It is unclear why Mastriano’s son and his friend accompanied the state senator to the meeting, which the person said was also attended by Trump and the president’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, who were tested positive in early November.

Mastriano has aggressively opposed policies under the administration of Democratic Governor Tom Wolf to mitigate the spread of the coronavirus and keep people safe.

He has led rallies where he pleaded for reopening of businesses despite the risk of infection and has repeatedly and strongly denounced Wolf’s orders. Mastriano also spoke with a few thousand Trump supporters who gathered outside Capitol Hill on November 7, hours after Democrat Joe Biden’s national victory became evident.