Two Pennsylvania Republicans are key figures in former President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, according to the United States House Select Committee to Investigate the Jan. 6 Attack on the United States Capitol.
The committee said midstate Rep. Scott Perry and State Sen. Doug Mastriano – who would later win the Republican nomination for governor – worked to keep Trump in power after his loss to Joe Biden.
Throughout the year, as they ran for office amid Justice Department and congressional inquiries about the insurrection, their efforts to help Trump overturn the election were repeatedly in the news.
Perry, according to the committee, introduced Trump to environmental lawyer Jeffrey Clark. Trump considered installing Clark as attorney general because he was sympathetic to Trump’s election fraud claims.
Committee member Rep. Adam Kinzinger said Perry texted Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows days after that introduction.
“Rep. Perry followed up and says, ‘Mark, you should call Jeff. I just got off the phone with him and he explained to me why the principal deputy won’t work, especially with the FBI. They will view it as not having the authority to enforce what needs to be done,’” Kinzinger said.
The plan failed when DOJ leadership threatened to resign if Trump followed through with it.
The committee also played testimony from former Trump White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson who claimed Perry sought a pardon from the former president.
“Mr. Perry, did he talk to you directly?” asked committee member Rep. Liz Cheney during the former aide’s testimony.
Hutchinson replied, “He did.”
Perry denies he sought a pardon and has refused multiple subpoenas and interview requests from the committee.
The Jan. 6 Committee also subpoenaed Doug Mastriano to turn over any information about his involvement with Trump’s fake electors scheme. He obliged, but mostly sent social media posts, since he was allowed to exclude any information involving his position as a state senator.
Mastriano, the committee claims, helped Trump’s cause by spending thousands of campaign dollars to bus people to the “Save America Rally” in Washington, D.C., and was on Capitol grounds as the insurrection unfolded.
They noted that Mastriano helped arrange Rudy Giuliani’s so-called election fraud “hearing” in Pennsylvania, during which he claimed – without proof – that Democrat Governor Tom Wolf helped rig the election.
“A state of 13 million people and [Wolf] wants to discount it because his guy won, so that nothing bad happened, and that’s just unacceptable,” Mastriano said. “If there’s any hint of fraud out there, we need to investigate.”
No fraud was detected during multiple audits of Pennsylvania’s 2020 election results.
The committee recommended Perry face sanctions from the House Ethics Committee for failing to respond to a subpoena requesting his testimony.
Perry and Mastriano’s connections to the January 6th Capitol attack were called “particularly notable,” adding that further investigation was needed to get the full scope of their involvement with Trump’s plan to stay in power.
