Pennsylvania State Sen. Doug Mastriano, who is pushing for a vote audit in his state, Tuesday ridiculed White House press secretary Jen Psaki's claims that a national voting initiative is needed because the challenge now is the worst "to our democracy since the Civil War," telling Newsmax that Psaki has "no clue what she's talking about."
He also told Newsmax's "National Report" that a full audit would also give Democrats who argue that there were no irregularities the opportunity to "prove us wrong."
"I live right here by Gettysburg," Mastriano said. "I was at the battlefield yesterday. (Psaki) has no clue what she's talking about, from the party that perpetuated slavery and Jim Crow and the KKK. Oh, the irony. All I want to do is get to the bottom of what happened in 2020 and 2021."
Last week, Mastriano, who chairs the state's Intergovernmental Operations Committee, initiated a forensic audit of the 2020 presidential election and the 2021 May primary. The lawmaker, of Franklin County, also issued a comprehensive statement about his letters to several counties, requesting the materials that would be needed to investigate the state's election system.
But with the objections coming from the Biden administration and Democrats, "they won't mention that I'm looking at two elections, and it looks like they can't handle the truth or they're afraid of something," Mastriano told Newsmax.
The lawmaker wrote a letter to President Joe Biden to ask for a meeting while the president is in Pennsylvania on Tuesday. In it, he said a full forensic investigation is necessary for transparency and accountability, and that "those who have concerns about the integrity of the election will have those concerns investigated."
Further, he said in his letter that people who still believe there was no voter fraud or irregularities will have the chance to be vindicated.
Mastriano said he hasn't heard from Biden, and that's because Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf and state Attorney General Josh Shapiro "declared Joe Biden the winner before one ballot was counted last year, so that shows you really a conflict of interest."
Wolf and Shapiro aren't going to tell Biden "the truth," said Mastriano, so "I want to lay it out to him that this is why we need to do it. If you believe in our constitutional republic, let's open up the books and prove me wrong. Or maybe there were issues and then it will get them corrected."
Shapiro has pushed against the audit, but "according to the Constitution, which clearly our attorney general has not read or forgotten about, article one section four clause one gives a legislative body in the states the power, the manner and how elections are conducted," said Mastriano. "We also have the power upheld by the Supreme Court to launch investigations. We have oversight of elections. These are nothing but Democrat's scare tactics they need to put aside their partisanship and just come on board. Join us. Prove us wrong."
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Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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