Jan. 6 probe targets Perry, Mastriano
Dems look into 2 Republicans’ roles in trying to overturn election
An investigation by U.S. Senate Democrats has singled out two Pennsylvania Republicans — U.S. Rep. Scott Perry and state Sen. Doug Mastriano — as key figures who used false and debunked theories to pressure the country’s top law enforcement officials to investigate the state’s 2020 presidential election results.
A report on its findings urges House investigators to look more deeply into what role Perry and Mastriano may have played in fomenting the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. It names them as two of three key allies of former President Donald Trump who aided his efforts to subvert the election results and have “notable” connections to the insurrection.
“These ties warrant further investigation to better place Trump’s efforts to enlist [the Department of Justice] in his efforts to overturn the presidential election in context with the
January 6 insurrection,” says the 394-page report released Thursday by Democrats on the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee.
Besides examining the roles of Perry and Mastriano, the report urges the House committee investigating the attack to also look into Trump attorney Cleta Mitchell.
Based on interviews with key figures at DOJ and emails and other documents, investigators found Perry and Mastriano directly contacted high-ranking Justice officials to reinforce Trump’s baseless claims about the election, and urged them to investigate.
Perry, they said, forwarded a debunked report to a top DOJ official as evidence of potential fraud in the state. The Trump-appointed U.S. attorney for Western Pennsylvania, Scott Brady, called the claims “not well founded.”
Mastriano, who was on the Capitol grounds during the
Jan. 6 riot and spent thousands to bus people to a Trump rally that preceded it, is expected to run for governor and has been a leading figure pushing for a partisan inquiry into the 2020 election. Perry represents a Harrisburg-area House district and is one of Congress’ most conservative voices. He led the House efforts to throw out Pennsylvania’s presidential votes, continuing to press the case hours after the riot ended.
While much of the report focuses on Trump’s actions and that of Jeffrey Clark, a Philadelphia native and former acting assistant attorney general in the DOJ’s civil division, it also renews the spotlight on two of the leading Pennsylvanians spreading the myth of a stolen election.
Neither Perry nor Mastriano responded to questions about the report Thursday.
Among the information included in the report:
In an Oval Office meeting, Perry introduced Trump to Clark, who later urged other top Justice Department officials to publicly announce that the department was investigating election fraud and to tell swing-state legislatures to appoint alternate slates of presidential electors. Trump considered installing Clark as acting attorney general when he felt the department was failing to investigate fraud claims to his liking, though he ultimately relented when top DOJ officials and White House lawyers threatened to resign in response.
Perry and Mastriano both called Richard Donoghue, then DOJ’s second-in-command, to amplify Trump’s pressure urging him to investigate Pennsylvania’s election results.
Trump specifically cited Perry and Mastriano in a Dec. 27 call with Donoghue and acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen to pressure them to investigate the election, breaking longstanding norms against White House influence over law enforcement matters. Trump, after mentioning Perry and Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, urged the DOJ officials to “just say the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the Republican congressmen.”
Perry followed up with Donoghue that same day, telling him that DOJ hadn’t done its job, the report said, and praising Clark as “the kind of guy who could really get in there and do something about this,” according to notes and interviews with Donoghue.
Perry later emailed Donoghue a flawed and incomplete analysis arguing that there were more votes than voters in Pennsylvania, which Donoghue sent to Brady, the U.S. attorney for Western Pennsylvania. Monthly later, Perry has continued citing those statistics to question the election results. “In reality, Pennsylvania votes cast equaled the same amount as registered voters who voted,” the report said, noting that the “so-called ‘analysis’ “was based on incomplete data, “which was clear at the time this allegation was made.”
Mastriano wrote a letter, eventually sent to Rosen, raising “a litany of false and debunked claims of widespread election fraud in Pennsylvania, which Mastriano had previously aired at a November 25, 2020 ‘hearing’ at a hotel in Gettysburg featuring Trump campaign lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Jenna Ellis.” In releasing the report Thursday, Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Illinois and chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said it showed “just how close we came to a constitutional crisis. Thanks to a number of upstanding Americans in the Department of Justice, Donald Trump was unable to bend the Department to his will. But it was not due to a lack of effort. We must never allow this unprecedented abuse of power to happen again.”
The report comes as Trump strongly hints at another presidential run, and continues promoting the lie that he easily won the 2020 election — and as Republicans in Pennsylvania and other states cite some voters’ doubts about election integrity to justify tightening voting laws. In some cases, new laws would take give elected politicians more power in overseeing election results.
It’s unclear what action might follow from the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 riot, but it has reportedly already asked telecommunications companies to preserve Perry’s phone records, along with those of several other House Republicans with potential ties to the Trump rally that preceded the attack.
A separate report from the committee’s Republicans defends Trump, though says little about Perry or Mastriano.
It notes that Trump ultimately did not fire the top DOJ officials or install Clark, as he had considered, and that Donoghue testified that Trump’s pressure had “no impact” on the departments investigation of the election. And they cite testimony saying Trump was making sure officials were “aware” of fraud allegations, rather than ordering them to take specific action.
“At every major decision point with respect to the scope of this investigation, the President met and listened to his most senior advisors,” the GOP analysis concludes.