Harrisburg, Pa. – 11월 25, 2020 — Today, the Pennsylvania Senate Republican Policy Committee, at the urging of Senator Doug Mastriano (R-33 Adams/Cumberland/Franklin/York) in collaboration with Donald Trump and Trump campaign attorney Rudy Giuliani, held a public hearing on “election issues.” Senator Maria Collett (D-12 Montgomery/Bucks) would like to share her response to the hearing:
- “Today’s public hearing was a gross display of disingenuous pandering and one senator’s personal political aspirations under the thin guise of an official policy hearing. This would be distasteful any day. But on the eve of a Thanksgiving where many Pennsylvanians don’t have much to be thankful for, days after this same Republican legislature passed a budget that (a) robbed federal CARES dollars that should have been used to fund small business grants, food programs, emergency utility assistance, child care and more, and (b) cut off funding to more than 600 PennDOT projects. I am embarrassed that this is the picture of the Pennsylvania Senate that the Commonwealth, nation and world are seeing today.”
- “I take great issue with and am deeply ashamed by the use of official, taxpayer funded channels to offer air time and legitimacy to the baseless attacks and conspiracy theories of political “headliners” such as Mr. Giuliani and Mr. Trump, who wasn’t able to attend in person due to yet another COVID outbreak within his inner circle, but still managed to find time in his busy schedule of not negotiating a much needed second COVID relief package to speak. In his remarks during this official, taxpayer funded so-called policy hearing, Mr. Trump repeatedly slung attacks at Democrats, the city of Philadelphia, state and federal judges, and anyone who has challenged his ‘evidence’ of a dominant victory.”
- “If it wasn’t already clear, three hours in, when Trump campaign lawyer Jenna Ellis specifically asked Republican legislators to call for a special election “on behalf of our client” Mr. Trump, any pretense that this hearing was, as Senator Argall stated that his caucus lawyers wanted him to point out at the outset, “a legislative hearing” evaporated.”
- “As Judge Matthew Brann stated in his recent federal decision rejecting the Trump campaign’s attempts to invalidate millions of legally cast votes, the campaign offered nothing more than “strained legal arguments without merit and speculative accusations… unsupported by evidence. In the United States of America, this cannot justify the disenfranchisement of a single voter, let alone all the voters of its sixth most populated state.” Judge Brann, a “longtime conservative Republican” according to U.S. Senator Pat Toomey (R-PA), is right. I’ve already asked my Republican colleagues to rise to this occasion and set an example for their constituents by acknowledging what they know, which is that this has been a fair and secure election and that the Pennsylvania GOP, by and large, had a very successful 2020.”
- “By way of background, the Senate Democratic and Republican caucuses each have Policy Committees, charged with holding hearings on issues facing their constituencies. My office hosted one this summer about COVID food chain issues, with testimony from the PA Department of Agriculture, one of our district’s biggest employers, Hatfield Meats, experts from Penn State and small farm owners with the ultimate goal to build a better understanding of the current problems to inform future action. The Republican Policy Committee similarly held a hearing regarding the economic recovery of Western Pennsylvania, where restaurants and small businesses were invited to testify to their struggles as a result of the pandemic. While different in nature from our joint hearings, our separate caucus policy hearings are fact-gathering missions.”
- “Though I think today’s hearing was incredibly ill-timed and tone deaf given the more urgent problems threatening Pennsylvanians’ lives and livelihoods, the greater shame is that any relevant, factual testimony that may have addressed constituents’ questions about election security and the 2020 election was eclipsed by this political theatre.”
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