Conspiracy theories about vote counting in Pennsylvania appear to have made the unfortunate ground zero of much of the strife the country has seen since President Donald Trump lost the November election.
Protesters who supported Trump cited false allegations of electoral fraud in Pennsylvania – shared by some of the state’s own Republican lawmakers, including Congressman Scott Perry and state senator Doug Mastriano – as a reason for “invading the Capitol” on January 6.
Now, states across the country, including that of Pennsylvania, are preparing for further clashes in the coming days.
The state where the country’s democracy was founded, Pennsylvania saw members of Congress object to their voters, even with broken glass still scattered across the Capitol hours after the riot ended, perpetuating doubts among Trump supporters about the integrity of the state election.
Pennsylvania public security agencies said last week that they are preparing for potential violence in the state before Joe Biden’s inauguration in Washington, DC, and Governor Tom Wolf has appointed 450 members of the state’s National Guard to protect the Capitol Building. Pennsylvania.
“I will not allow what happened in the capital of our country to happen here,” said Wolf, who also appointed about 2,000 members of the National Guard to protect Washington.
Jack Thomas Tomarchio, who served as the deputy deputy secretary of intelligence in the Bush administration and helped create domestic intelligence collection networks across the country, said that Pennsylvania – where he lives – is particularly threatened because of the number of groups of militias in the state and their central role in electoral fraud conspiracy theories.
Tomarchio, who called allegations that Pennsylvania Democrats stole the election “total bullshit”, said the state faces labor problems in protecting state and federal buildings to prevent them from being targets of domestic extremists.
“Pennsylvania is definitely a prominent target because it is one of the states that these groups were contesting,” he said. “At the same time, Pennsylvania has the dubious distinction of having about 28 militia groups, especially in the northern part of the state. These places are home to many right-wing extremist groups, and that is another reason why the state has to be very careful ”.
The Republican-controlled legislature did little to lower the temperature, however.
The day before the Capitol riot, Pennsylvania Republicans refused to elect Senator Jim Brewster, a Democrat who won a close contest in the western part of the state by 69 votes. They also removed Lt. Governor John Fetterman, a Democrat, from the Senate presidency because he tried to replace Brewster.
Brewster has already sat down after a federal judge sided with Democrats, but some state Republicans are now trying to amend the Pennsylvania constitution and change the way state Supreme Court justices are elected after lawsuits to overturn the election and contest measures pandemic security measures were denied by the state court.
“What Republicans are planning to do with the Supreme Court is reprehensible,” said Fetterman, who Republicans voted to remove as president of the Senate last week, in what state Democrats call an “attempted coup.”
“My guys had no problems with the Supreme Court from 2002 to 2015, when it was under conservative control,” he said. “But then the Democrats hurried, we took control of the Supreme Court and now they hate that Supreme Court. They will literally change the constitution to try to eliminate and rule the court. “
Currently, members of the Supreme Court are elected to their seats in state elections for 10-year terms. Republicans want to confine these elections to districts that would be drawn by the state legislature.
The attempt to change the state’s constitution could reach Pennsylvania voters if it passes, but Wolf, a Democrat, warned that the effort was an attempt at control by “hyperpartisan” Republicans.
“I am strongly opposed to giving the legislature the power to control our justice system,” said the governor. “This constitutional amendment is just one more effort by Harrisburg Republicans to prevent the people’s will from being heard, preventing all Pennsylvania residents from having a say in selecting judges for the state’s top courts.”
These efforts by Republican state legislators now have a history of months: the Republican-controlled legislature refused to allow state workers to count votes at the start of the election, and party members shared false electoral fraud before and after the election – often parroting President Donald Trump and his lawyers.
Mastriano and Perry, both Republicans, are two Pennsylvania lawmakers who have defended electoral fraud conspiracy theories in their state at two levels of government.
Both are veteran military personnel: Mastriano served as a colonel in the Army and taught at Army War College, and Perry served as a brigadier general in the Pennsylvania National Guard. They have received numerous resignations for using their positions to bring allegations of electoral fraud to the mainstream.
Perry opposed Pennsylvania voters after the riot occurred, along with seven other Republican members of the state’s Congressional delegation. Mastriano met with Trump about the Pennsylvania White House election and held a hearing for the president’s lawyers at Gettysburg to try to further legitimize the unsupported allegations.
Mastriano attended the Washington protest last week, although he said he and his wife left before it turned into a Capitol riot.
Fetterman and other Democrats attribute much of the responsibility for perpetuating electoral falsehoods in Pennsylvania at the feet of Perry, Mastriano and state Republicans.
“It’s impressive,” said Fetterman, who expressed concern for the safety of his family. “Last Tuesday there were literally 200 crazy Trump protesters under the balcony of my office, on the front steps of the state capitol, and then we had the big Senate conflict when they voted to expel me. There was no difference between Harrisburg and DC because it could easily have happened the same way in Harrisburg, and they could have invaded the state capitol. “
“What I’m trying to say is that they fed, fed and fed, and then it happened on Wednesday,” added Fetterman.
Neither Mastriano nor Perry responded to requests for comment on their active participation in the spread of false electoral fraud, their roles in undermining voters in Pennsylvania or requests to resign. Both issued statements condemning the violence.
Perry also released a one-word statement in response to demands that he step down.
“No,” he wrote.
Mastriano, meanwhile, asked on social media that his supporters “do not participate in rallies or protests in the next ten days. We will focus on praying for our nation during these difficult times. “The statement represents a sudden turnaround in the rhetoric he used earlier, like when he told a conservative radio program host that Trump supporters are in” a deadly struggle with the Democratic party “over the election results, according to Media Matters for America.
Mastriano, who became a right-wing celebrity and saw his social media flourish from a few thousand to hundreds of thousands because of his opposition to the state’s pandemic precautions and perpetuation of the president’s electoral falsehoods, also used campaign funds to rent buses for his supporters traveled 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, said the Facebook event shared by Doug Mastriano, who was fighting for freedom.
But the state senator – who was appointed by the Senate Republican leadership to chair the Senate’s Intergovernmental Operations Committee this week – said on 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 held responsible for anything.”