Trumper Doug Mastriano sues Oklahoma historian for defamation

OVER HIS UNIV. OF NEW BRUNSWICK, CANADA, PHD THESIS

Emma Murphy, Pennsylvania Capital-Star
September 21, 2024 

Doug Mastriano Yong Kim/The Philadelphia Inquirer/TNS

OKLAHOMA CITY — An Oklahoma historian being sued for defamation by a Pennsylvania state lawmaker is seeking to have the lawsuit dismissed on the grounds that the legislator is trying to curtail free speech rights.

James Gregory Jr., a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Oklahoma, is being sued by Pennsylvania state Sen. Doug Mastriano, (R-Franklin), for defamation after Gregory criticized Mastriano’s academic research and raised concerns about its integrity.

Mastriano sued Gregory and nearly two dozen other defendants in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma in May, but the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, or FIRE, filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit on Thursday. The organization, which advocates for free speech and free thought rights, is representing Gregory.

“The First Amendment means all Americans have the right to criticize public officials, no matter how angry that criticism makes them,” said Greg Greubel, FIRE senior attorney, in a statement. “Politicians should be concerned about legislating for the people, not suing critics when their feelings get hurt.”

The lawsuit alleges that Mastriano is “the victim of a multi-year racketeering and antitrust enterprise” that seeks to steal, use and “debunk his work” that is worth at least $10 million in “tourism-related events, validated museum artifacts, book, media, television and movie deals.”

Mastriano is a decorated military veteran and a well-respected academic, who has published three books, two multinational studies and over 30 articles on “historic, military or strategic matters,” according to the lawsuit.

According to the lawsuit, Mastriano alleges a conspiracy to try to “steal” his Ph.D. in U.S. military history, his book sales, lucrative speaking engagements and other professional opportunities.

The lawsuit alleges that Gregory began to attempt to debunk Mastriano’s archeological research in 2019 and claimed the work was a “fraud.” The complaint prompted an investigation into Mastriano. Gregory, meanwhile, released his own book entitled “Unraveling The Myth of Sgt. York: The Other Sixteen.”

Mastriano and his Tulsa-based attorney did not respond to requests for comment by deadline.

According to Gregory’s motion to dismiss, Gregory first read Mastriano’s published work on World War I hero Sgt. Alvin York while he was an undergraduate student at OU.

Gregory reported over 200 concerns of academic fraud and inaccuracies to the University of New Brunswick in Canada, where Mastriano earned his Ph.D., in 2022, according to the lawsuit. Gregory said he had no knowledge of Mastriano’s political ambitions at the time and was simply doing his duty as a historian “to seek out the truth and correct the record.”

The motion to dismiss the case against Gregory argues that criticizing the work of a fellow historian is not defamation or racketeering and that the First Amendment and Oklahoma law are meant to protect Gregory’s right to question a public official’s scholarship.

“Historians arrive at the truth by debating ideas, inviting skepticism, and challenging assumptions and sources,” Gregory said in a statement. “By trying to silence that debate, Mastriano is literally on the wrong side of history — and history will prevail.”

In a statement, FIRE said Mastriano’s lawsuit is “intended to chill speech by forcing the speaker to defend themself against costly and time-consuming litigation.”

The group argues that the defamation claim should be dismissed in part because of Oklahoma’s Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation, or anti-SLAPP, law and because public debate among historians is not a violation of antitrust law.

FIRE said the Oklahoma Citizens Participation Act, passed in 2014 allows quick dismissals of lawsuits targeting free speech and holds the plaintiff responsible for paying the defendant’s legal fees.

“James’ plight is a perfect example of why robust anti-SLAPP protections are vital to expressive freedom,” Greubel said in a statement. “Otherwise, the First Amendment is nothing more than a luxury for those who can afford to fight off an expensive lawsuit.”

Gregory is also the director of the William A. Brookshire Military Museum at Louisiana State University and an adjunct at that university, FIRE said.

Mastriano went on to run for governor of Pennsylvania in 2022. He was not elected. In his lawsuit he alleges that Gregory’s criticisms of his scholarship led to Pennsylvanians deciding not to vote for him.

FIRE’s motion to dismiss argues Mastriano’s lawsuit should be thrown out as he failed to act within the one year statute of limitations, which would have expired in April, as required by Oklahoma law for defamation claims, among other rebuttals of the lawsuit.


Oklahoma Voice is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Oklahoma Voice maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Janelle Stecklein for questions: info@oklahomavoice.com. Follow Oklahoma Voice on Facebook and X.

Pennsylvania Capital-Star is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Pennsylvania Capital-Star maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Kim Lyons for questions: info@penncapital-star.com. Follow Pennsylvania Capital-Star on Facebook and X.

Amid campaign, Mastriano's disputed dissertation made public

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for Doug Mastriano 

Doug Mastriano prayed for Trump to ‘seize the power’ before Capitol attack

Martin Pengelly in New York - 

A week before the Capitol attack, on a video call organised by a member of a Christian nationalist group, a Pennsylvania state senator who is the Republican candidate for governor in the battleground state prayed that supporters of Donald Trump would “seize the power” on 6 January 2021.


Photograph: Mary Altaffer/AP© Provided by The Guardian

Doug Mastriano attended the pro-Trump rally in Washington that day, after which supporters, told by Trump to “fight like hell” to overturn his election defeat, stormed Congress in an attempt to stop certification of Joe Biden’s victory.

The riot was linked to nine deaths, including suicides in the aftermath of the attack among law enforcement.

Related: ‘You have to run’: Romney urged Biden to take down Trump, book says

Mastriano denies crossing police lines at the Capitol and affiliations with Christian nationalist groups. He is now one of a number of Republican candidates for state positions with sway over elections who support Trump’s lie that his 2020 defeat was the result of voter fraud.

Two months from election day, the polling website fivethirtyeight.com puts Mastriano just shy of seven points behind his Democratic opponent.

Mastriano’s 6 January prayer, first reported by Rolling Stone on Friday, was delivered during a Zoom call, titled Global Prayer for Election Integrity, organised by what the magazine called “a prominent figure in the far-right New Apostolic Restoration movement”.

As defined by Rolling Stone, “Christian nationalism is a central tenet of … NAR [which] emerge[ed] from charismatic Christianity (think: Pentecostalism) and is anchored in the belief that we are living in an age of new apostles and prophets, who receive direct revelations from the holy spirit.

“NAR adherents hold that the end times are fast approaching and their calling is to hasten the second coming of Christ by re-fashioning the modern world in a biblical manner.”

Mastriano is a US army veteran who once dressed up as a Confederate soldier. In his prayer, he listed historical events including the battle of Gettysburg in 1863 and the crash of United Airlines Flight 93, the plane which came down in a field in Pennsylvania on 9/11, after passengers attacked their hijackers.

He said: “In 2001, while our nation was attacked by terrorists, a strong Christian man from Paramus, New Jersey, Todd Beamer, said, ‘Let’s roll.’

“God I ask you that you help us roll in these dark times, that we fear not the darkness, that we will seize our Esther and Gideon moments. That … when you say, ‘Who shall I send?’ we will say, ‘Send me and not him or her’, we will take responsibility for our republic and not waver in these days that try our souls.

“We’re surrounded by wickedness and fear and dithering and inaction. But that’s not our problem. Our problem is following your lead.”

In the weeks before the Capitol attack, Mastriano was involved in failed attempts to overturn Trump’s defeat in Pennsylvania, the announcement of which confirmed Biden’s electoral college win.

On the Zoom call, Mastriano displayed what he said were “letters that President Trump asked me this morning to send to [Senate Republican leader] Mitch McConnell and [House leader] Kevin McCarthy, outlining the fraud in Pennsylvania, and this will embolden them to stand firm and disregard what has happened in Pennsylvania until they have an investigation”.

He also said: “We think about our elected officials in Pennsylvania who’ve been weak and feckless and we’ve handed over our power to a governor” – Tom Wolf, a Democrat – “who disregards the freedoms of this republic.

“I pray that we’ll take responsibility, we’ll seize the power that we had given to us by the constitution, and as well by you providentially. I pray for the leaders and also in the federal government, God, on the sixth of January that they will rise up with boldness.”

After the Capitol riot, when Congress reconvened, McCarthy was one of 138 Republican congressmen and nine senators who voted to object to results in Pennsylvania or Arizona or both.

Mastriano touts endorsement from rabbi who promoted Qanon conspiracy, ‘reptilian’ Hitler theory

2022/09/01

Doug Mastriano, Republican nominee for governor, 

speaks to supporters inside Gatsby's Bar& Grill in Aston.

 - HEATHER KHALIFA/The Philadelphia Inquirer/TNS

The headline looked promising for Doug Mastriano’s gubernatorial campaign, and the Republican state senator promptly shared it Thursday morning with his nearly 200,000 followers on Twitter and Facebook.

“Rabbi Endorses Mastriano as Shapiro Calls Him Antisemitic in Pennsylvania Gov. Race,” the far-rightEpoch Times proclaimed, referring to the Democratic nominee, Josh Shapiro.

Mastriano, a retired Army colonel from south central Pennsylvania, has been dogged by accusations of antisemitism this summer after he paid $5,000 to Gab, a social media site frequented by extremists and antisemites, in an effort to reach new voters. The site’s founder, Andrew Torba, has described Mastriano’s campaign as part of an “explicitly Christian” nationalist movement that should exclude followers of other faiths.

Jewish groups, both Democratic and Republican, reacted angrily to news reports about the GOP candidate’s strategy and Mastriano eventually cut ties with Torba and Gab. He said he “rejects antisemitism in any form.”

More recently, however, Mastriano has been repeating old tropes about George Soros on the campaign trail, claiming that Soros, who contributed to Shapiro in 2016 and 2020, had worked for the Nazis during World War II.

“Disgusting,” Mastriano said at a Delaware County bar and restaurant last week — although the crowd fell silent and seemed mostly confused.

On Thursday, Mastriano touted the endorsement of Rabbi Joseph Kolakowsi by sharing the article from the Epoch Times, a conservative publication affiliated with members of the controversial Chinese spiritual movement Falun Gong.

In it, the ultraorthodox rabbi defended Mastriano.

“While the Democrats have the chutzpah to claim that those of us from the Party of Lincoln are somehow racist, they do not look at the racist tenants of their own party, including abortion and gun control, both of which cause undue and disproportionate harm to people of color, and are historically rooted in openly racist ideologies,” the rabbi said.

Kolakowski identified himself to the publication as the leader of a Hasidic Jewish ministry in northeast Pennsylvania.

What the Epoch Times story did not mention is hundreds of internet posts and videos in which the 38-year-old rabbi shares unfounded claims of fraud in the 2020 election, expresses sympathy for Jan. 6 insurrectionists, and speaks favorably of the Qanon movement — a conspiracy theory that holds that President Donald Trump and his allies are engaged in a secret war with pedophilic, blood-drinking satanists.

“Whether they are right or wrong about their theories, the whole point of Qanon is to fight child abuse,” Kolakowski wrote earlier this year. “Why does the left hate a group that fights child abuse?”

On YouTube, Kolakowski has espoused more outlandish ideas, including a theory that Adolf Hitler and other malevolent world leaders are part lizard.

“There’s a reason why he never took off his boots,” the rabbi says in one video of the Nazi dictator. “(It) was to hide the fact that his feet were reptilian in nature because he came from this nonhuman race, demonic race. He was a hybrid.”

Kolakowski has previously courted controversy, appearing in a 2011 viral video filmed inside his home in which Orthodox worshipers are seen passing around an AK-47 assault rifle during prayers. Later, Kolakowski rose to the defense of conservative, far-right cartoonist Ben Garrison after the Anti-Defamation League criticized some of his cartoons as antisemitic.

“There was no reference to the Torah faith or religion in Mr. Garrison’s cartoon,” Kolakowski wrote. “I believe that George Soros is an enemy to the basic fundamental ideas of America and he is a very dangerous individual.”

Kolakowski repeatedly asserts that tropes about prominent Jews endeavoring to secretly dominate global finance, politics or the media are not antisemitic because secular Jews should not be considered Jewish — or, sometimes, even fully human. The rabbi says certain Jewish mystical texts support ideas espoused by conspiracy theorists like David Icke, who holds that the world is controlled by reptilian shape-shifters.

In a phone interview Thursday, Kolakowski said he felt Mastriano was being “unfairly maligned” as antisemitic. He said he reached out to Mastriano’s campaign, and “the campaign manager asked me to write something” — the statements that later appeared in the Epoch Times.

“I heard the slander that was made against him claiming he was antisemitic and I wanted to speak up personally,” Kolakowski said. He said he stood by his online statements about QAnon, the Jan. 6 riot, and other issues.

“I certainly don’t believe it was an insurrection,” he said. “I think a lot of people share that view.”

Mastriano’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment. It has generally ignored such requests from mainstream media outlets.

Mastriano rose to prominence by railing against coronavirus safety measures in 2020, and later, promoting unfounded claims of fraud in that November’s presidential election. He was present in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021 and rented buses so that others could attend.

Although Mastriano now says he rejects the Qanon movement, in 2018 he repeatedly shared tweets featuring pro-Qanon hashtags. Earlier this year, he spoke at an event promoting Qanon and 9/11 conspiracy theories.

Recently, Mastriano has sought to publicly moderate some of his beliefs. He has recently spoken less about his support for a ban on abortion, which this spring he described as his “number one issue.”

Supporters like Kolakowski, meanwhile, have shown little moderation.

This year, the rabbi asserted that the capitol insurrection was caused by Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi ordering Capitol Police to “push innocent people into that building in order to make the President’s supporters look bad.”

On Twitter, the rabbi celebrated the overturning of Roe v. Wade, which he described as “an excuse to lynch blacks in the womb.”

Prophets, 'Pizzagaters' and an Oath Keeper: A field guide to Doug Mastriano World
2022/09/02

HEATHER KHALIFA/The Philadelphia Inquirer/TNS

It’s now September — that time of year when political candidates start changing their colors weeks ahead of the autumn leaves. None more so than Pennsylvania’s Republican gubernatorial nominee, state Sen. Doug Mastriano, who in his right-wing media hits — the Christian nationalist continues to shun mainstream outlets, with the help of his goon squad — has tried to pooh-pooh the notion that he’s a dangerous extremist. This despite the fact that new evidence of his extremism — his fetish for the Confederacy, for example — keeps popping up.

Rather than relying Mastriano’s words, maybe it’s time to judge the retired Army colonel by the company he keeps. Let’s take stock of the rogues’ gallery of self-styled prophets, election deniers and militia types that Mastriano chooses to associate with, and ask yourself if the founding state of American democracy has ever seen a campaign quite like this.

Here (in alphabetical order) is a brief field guide to a few of the key players in Mastriano World:

Abby Abildness: The state director of the Pennsylvania Congressional Prayer Caucus and director of the Global Apostolic Prayer Network, Abildness is a key state leader in the Christian nationalist movement that loosely affiliates under the banner of the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) a group that seeks extremist Christian domination over government. She’s also a lobbyist in Harrisburg, where she’s forged ties with key 2020 election deniers like State Sen. Cris Dush and Mastriano. Mastriano also was filmed hugging Abildness at a July event built around a revisionist Christian history of William Penn and Pennsylvania’s founding.

Grant Clarkson: A past congressional intern and GOP legislative assistant in Harrisburg, Clarkson was identified by NBC News’ Ryan J. Reilly as part of the phalanx of campaign bodyguards that kept journalists away from Mastriano’s pre-primary rally in Bucks County in May. NBC also reported that Clarkson was photographed on the U.S. Capitol grounds at the height of the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection, when “he appeared to smile and laugh as rioters smashed media equipment on Capitol grounds.”

Jenna Ellis: The senior legal adviser to the Mastriano campaign and fierce defender of the candidate on Twitter, Ellis was a key attorney for Donald Trump as he sought to overturn President Biden’s 2020 election victory. A former traffic court lawyer and the author of a self-published book that claims that the U.S. Constitution can only be interpreted through the Bible, Ellis drafted two memos insisting that Vice President Mike Pence had the power to overturn Biden’s election victory. Her 2020 efforts are under scrutiny in several ongoing investigations, including a Georgia probe of election tampering where she has been ordered to testify.

James Emery: Another cog in Mastriano’s team of bodyguards from the May Bucks County rally, Emery is a member of the Elizabethtown Area School Board in central Pennsylvania and a licensed minister affiliated with that community’s LifeGate church, a congregation that has advocated for Christians to play a greater role in government. Investigative journalist Carter Walker of Lancaster’s LNP news organization has identified the LifeGate congregation as the nexus for several members of Mastriano’s security team.

Sean Feucht:The musical entertainment at Mastriano’s primary victory party in Chambersburg in May, the pro-Trump, anti-vaccine Christian rock star has emerged as the musical voice of the Ultra-MAGA movement in 2022. A growing political force who prayed in D.C. with Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert upon learning the Supreme Court would overturn Roe v. Wade, Feucht has become a multimillionaire in the post-COVID era, according to Rolling Stone, which reported on his glitzy mansions in Southern California and Montana.

Michael Flynn: Trump’s disgraced former national security adviser — who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI but was pardoned by the 45th president shortly before the Jan. 6 insurrection — hails from the same military intelligence world as Mastriano and has beena critical backer of his campaign. Flynn — who has been tied to the QAnon conspiracy theory movement — is slated to return to Pennsylvania next month for his controversial “ReAwaken America” tour. Like Mastriano himself, Flynn refused to answer investigators’ questions about his involvement in the run-up to Jan. 6.

Francine and Allen Fosdick: Self-described prophets and promoters of the QAnon conspiracy theory, the Fosdicks were the organizers of the two-day far-right Christian event called “Patriots Arise for God and Country” in Gettysburg this April. Mastriano, whose state senatorial district includes the historic Civil War battlefield, was a speaker at the event, where the couple presented him with a “Sword of David.” That confab also featured 9/11 conspiracy theories and a video claiming the world is experiencing a “great awakening” that will expose “ritual child sacrifice” and a “global satanic blood cult.”

Julie Green: Another self-anointed prophet, Green — the head of Julie Green Ministries — has claimed she has “a special relationship” with Mastriano and has foreseen that a GOP victory in November will cleanse Pennsylvania of corruption. Mastriano has invited Green to give the opening prayer at a campaign event and shared her prophecies on social media. According to a report by the left-leaning watchdog group Media Matters, Green has said “that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi ‘loves to drink the little children’s blood’; the government is conducting ‘human sacrifices’ to stay in power; and President Joe Biden is secretly dead and an ‘actor’ is playing him.”

Vishal Jetnarayan:Mastriano’s campaign manager — utterly unknown to veterans of Pennsylvania Republican politics — describes himself as (stop me if you’ve heard this one before) a prophet, active in two Chambersburg churches. He claims that he speaks directly with God and,according to a new report by WHYY’s Katie Meyer that dropped Thursday, has self-published books advising others on how they can do the same. She reported that Jetnarayan often emcees Mastriano’s events and is a booster of Green, his fellow prophet.

Sam Lazar:A 37-year-old right-wing political agitator from Lancaster County, Lazar appeared at Mastriano rallies and was photographed with the candidate even as Justice Department investigators and online sleuths honed in on Lazar’s participation in the Jan. 6 insurrection. (He’d posted about his involvement on Facebook, writing: “There’s a time for war. Our constitution allows us to abolish our [government] and install a new one in [its] place” and bragging of clashing with police while wearing face paint.) He was arrested and jailed in 2021 on charges of assaulting officers.

Mike Lindell: The notorious “My Pillow” mogul who re-invented himself during the latter portion of the Trump era as an obsessive backer of the former president’s Big Lie about rigged voting machines and 2020 election fraud, Lindell has also been a major booster of the Mastriano campaign, offering an early endorsement of the Pennsylvanian.

Scott Nagle: Nagle has been identified by LNP’s Walker, through interviews and a photograph posted to Facebook, as a member of Mastriano’s team of bodyguards. He was also, according to Walker’s report, listed as the Lancaster County leader of the radical group the Oath Keepers until January of this year. The leaders of the Oath Keepers, including its founder Stewart Rhodes, are currently facing federal sedition charges for their role in Jan. 6. Nagle has reportedly been photographed with Mastriano on several occasions.

Jeremy Oliver: WHYY’s Meyer reports that the Mastriano campaign has paid $82,500 to Oliver’s California-based Onslaught Media Group, and that Oliver — a former producer with the far-right One America News Network — has been appearing at Mastriano campaign events as a videographer. Meyer writes that Oliver has boosted the QAnon conspiracy theory on the site Gab — under fire for its links to antisemitism — and also posts frequently on Trump’s Truth Social site about theories such as Chinese hacking of U.S. voting machines.

Ivan Raiklin:A veteran Army intelligence officer, former Green Beret, and lawyer from Virginia, Raiklin emerged in late 2020 as a leader of Trump’s election-denial effort — writing the “Operation Pence Card” memo urging the then-vice president to undo Biden’s victory — and continues to lobby for Biden’s electors to be retroactively decertified. He showed up at Mastriano’s Chambersburg victory party in May, where he filmed a congratulatory video with the candidate and blurted out “20 electoral votes,” an apparent reference to decertifying the 2020 Pennsylvania result.

Toni Shuppe: The co-founder and CEO of Audit The Vote PA — a group dedicated to overturning the 2020 election results based on Trump’s Big Lie — Shuppe has emerged as a key supporter of Mastriano, filming an early endorsement video and appearing with the candidate at rallies. There has been speculation that Mastriano is considering appointing Shuppe as secretary of state to oversee Pennsylvania’s elections. According to a report this week by Media Matters, Shuppe has claimed the Pizzagate hoax “is 100% real” and praised QAnon as “a very valuable resource.”

Andrew Torba: Mastriano’s connection with the founder of the right-wing social media platform Gab erupted in controversy this summer when it was revealed his campaign had paid $5,000 to the site to boost Mastriano’s profile there. The candidate also sat down for an interview with Torba and said, “Thank God for what you’ve done.” Torba’s history of anti-Jewish remarks on Gab were made public in 2018 after the gunman who murdered 11 people in a Pittsburgh synagogue posted his manifesto there.

Steve Turley: A Delaware resident, Turley produced and screened the recent documentary called “Return of the American Patriot: The Rise of Pennsylvania” that cast a positive light on the Mastriano campaign as a revolution building on the Trumpist political movement. A Christian nationalist podcaster, Turley rails for the destruction of multiculturalism and insists the future of America is “evangelical, Mormon, and Amish.”

HE RAN FOR PENN GOVERNOR

Republican Doug Mastriano told supporters he didn't get any money from Ohio derailment train operator Norfolk Southern

Records show he took $1,000

Charles R. Davis
Tue, February 21, 2023 

Pennsylvania Republican state Sen. Doug Mastriano

Jeff Swensen/Getty Images

Pennsylvania state Sen. Doug Mastriano is holding a hearing Thursday on the East Palestine, Ohio, train derailment.

Mastriano, a Republican, recently denied receiving any money from train operator Norfolk Southern.

But campaign records show he accepted $1,000 from the company's political action committee.

On social media, state Sen. Doug Mastriano — a Pennsylvania Republican who last year ran for governor with the backing of former President Donald Trump — has gone after "radical environmentalists" and Democrats over this month's train derailment just across state lines in East Palestine, Ohio, suggesting both have neglected the crisis.

In one meme he shared Monday with his nearly 170,000 followers on Twitter, a parent, labeled "US government," is depicted in a pool lifting up one child dubbed "Ukraine" while another, "Ohio," struggles to stay afloat. Another comment he shared attacked President Joe Biden and Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, who defeated Mastriano in the 2022 election. "Biden's in Ukraine and Shapiro's MIA," the user wrote, praising Mastriano for visiting East Palestine over the weekend.

As chairman of the state Senate committee charged with overseeing Pennsylvania's emergency preparedness, Mastriano is hosting a hearing on Thursday where he will seek testimony from state officials as well as representatives from Norfolk Southern, the company whose rail cars crashed and contaminated local waterways with toxic chemicals, killing thousands of fish and sparking concerns for the long-term health of nearby residents.

Mastriano has positioned himself as a truth-teller who bucks the establishment in both parties. But in a Facebook live stream last week in which he addressed the derailment, the senator misrepresented his own financial connection to the disaster.

When the lawmaker — who campaigned for governor on a platform of deregulation and expanded oil and gas development — told viewers "we can probably use our imagination" to explain the alleged neglect of East Palestine, one viewer, Paulette, offered up this response: "Norfolk rail donates to politicians" ("Donating to Democrats I'm sure!" another viewer, Karen, added in the comments).

"Yeah, Paulette, I heard on one of the news stations last night that that rail network is heavy into donating to politicians," Mastriano replied during the February 16 stream. While Mastriano said he couldn't confirm that was the case, "I know my own finances. I didn't get any money from that train network."

That's not true, according to campaign finance records. Since 2019, Mastriano has in fact received $1,000 from Norfolk Southern's political action committee, the Good Government Fund, per filings with the Pennsylvania Secretary of State. The last contribution, amounting to $500, came in 2020 when he was running for reelection to the state Senate.

Mastriano did not respond to a request for comment.

Norfolk Southern has also donated to Democrats. Indeed, in the 2022 election cycle, at the federal level, it gave a total of $725,000 to candidates from both parties, with roughly 51% of its contributions going to members of the Democratic Party. That was the first time since 2010 that a majority of its support did not go to the GOP, according to OpenSecrets, a nonprofit that tracks money in politics.

The company has been criticized for lobbying against stricter regulation of the rail industry, including a rule proposed during the Obama administration — and rescinded by the Trump administration — that would have required trains carrying hazardous chemicals to be outfitted with more advanced brake technology, The Washington Post reported.

At a press conference on Tuesday, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican, assured East Palestine residents that their drinking water is safe. Earlier in the day he and EPA Administrator Michael Regan toured the area and drank tap water from residents' homes.

Joining them was Pennsylvania's Shapiro, a Democrat, who last week ordered his own state's environmental regulators to conduct independent monitoring of water supplies. He lauded the EPA for ordering Norfolk Southern to cover the cost of cleaning up the accident.

"It was my view that Norfolk Southern wasn't going to do this out of the goodness in their heart," he said, CBS affiliate KDKA reported, adding: "There is no goodness in their heart."

Business Insider

MASTRIANO VS UNIV OF NB

A controversy-courting U.S. politician causes stir on Canadian university campus

Alexander Panetta - CBC - TODAY

One of the most controversial politicians in the United States is causing a stir far north of the campaign trail: at a Canadian university that once granted him a doctorate.

Students at the University of New Brunswick are pushing their university for details about its role in granting Doug Mastriano the crowning academic achievement on his CV in 2013.

A UNB associate professor listed on Doug Mastriano's doctoral dissertation describes it as atrocious academic work and says he can't understand why the paper includes his name.

"This dissertation has bothered me for nine years," Jeffrey Brown told CBC News in an interview.

"[Mastriano] was awarded a PhD on very shaky grounds."

The famous alumnus is now running for governor of Pennsylvania in next month's midterm elections on a hard-right platform with potentially major implications, far beyond his state.
Election denier could gain power over elections

Election denialism is what made Mastriano nationally famous.

The state lawmaker tried overturning the 2020 election on behalf of Donald Trump; he was at the Capitol as the riot began there on Jan. 6, 2021 and even helped transport protesters to Washington.

Now he's the Republican nominee for governor of Pennsylvania. The polls show him trailing. But if he happens to win, he would gain new power over national elections.

The Pennsylvania governor will appoint the chief election administrator and also judges who would hear election cases in the critical swing state.


Mastriano tried overturning the 2020 election for Donald Trump. It made him a celebrity on the right. And he won a Republican gubernatorial nomination for this fall's midterm elections.© Mary Altaffer/AP

Up in New Brunswick, Brown's objections to Mastriano go way back, long predating his political career.

That old dispute within the university has now resurfaced publicly as Mastriano runs for an important office.

Prof describes work as dishonest, sloppy, fanatical

Mastriano's campaign used his doctorate in fending off a recent political controversy. When a photo surfaced showing Mastriano wearing a Confederate uniform at a 2014 educational event, an adviser dismissed it as a smear job against a historian, pointing to his academic credentials.

Brown was on the examining board for Mastriano's dissertation.



Mastriano's campaign has used his PhD to deflect criticism — including when Reuters reported in August on this 2014 photo showing Mastriano, left, wearing a Confederate uniform at a 2014 educational event.© Army War College via Reuters

Mastriano's work was dishonest, sloppy, tinged with religious zealotry, and indifferent to facts that contradicted his claims, said Brown, a scholar of U.S. history at UNB and a U.S.-Canada dual citizen.

He expressed alarm when the university granted the PhD and has provided CBC News with emails he sent colleagues at the time.

Brown lamented that the same traits he denounced back then are materializing in Mastriano's public life: namely the fanaticism and indifference to facts.

"The prospect of Doug Mastriano having any power, anywhere, is horrifying," said Brown, who met and worked with Mastriano on several revisions to his dissertation.

Eventually, Brown bowed out of the project. Or so he thought.

Thesis subject: a Christian soldier

Mastriano's dissertation involved a legendary American soldier, one of the most highly decorated of the last century.

Alvin York was a deeply religious Army sergeant who described being touched by God before a First World War battle where he killed 25 Germans.



A statue of Alvin York at the Tennessee legislature. Other scholars accuse Mastriano of corner-cutting and dishonesty.© Mark Humphrey/AP

His life story inspired a Gary Cooper movie. Mastriano has a long-running project to spread his story to younger generations, with a website, a doctoral dissertation and then a book.

Yet Mastriano's project was dogged by scrutiny from the start.

Even before he arrived in New Brunswick, Mastriano, then an Army intelligence officer, made news in 2008 for his work to pinpoint the location of York's heroics on a French battlefield.

Other scholars and a French bureaucrat accused him of sloppy research methods, misidentifying the battle location, ignoring contradictory details, digging without a permit and ruining an archeological site.

Mastriano dismissed his detractors as jealous and maintained his certainty he'd found the true battle site.

The archeological controversy was the initial reason Brown, the New Brunswick professor, voiced concern with the project.

Nobody examining Mastriano's work had any archeological expertise, so, he asked, how were they supposed to scrutinize a paper filled with archeological claims, claims being vigorously disputed?

The list of concerns grew with time.



Mastriano's academic work is dedicated to reviving the memory of York, a legendary First World War soldier inspired by his religious faith.© The Associated Press

One was the quality of the writing: Brown said it took multiple revisions to correct basic grammar, style and punctuation problems on almost every page.


A cursory read of the finished paper still turns up basic errors: a colonel's name repeatedly misspelled, an Italian military award misspelled in the introduction, and the wrong release year (1940) for the 1941 Gary Cooper movie.

There were more substantive complaints.

He said Mastriano offered opinions without facts or attribution to support them, an approach Brown called non-academic.

'That's what God wanted'

In a dramatic example of that, Brown said, Mastriano would make matter-of-fact claims even when referring to heavenly phenomena.

In one example, on Page 260, Mastriano writes: "The idea that York survived the carnage because of Divine Intervention also speaks of a miracle."

Brown said that approach just isn't scholarly.

"It wasn't so much, 'Sergeant York reported that,' or, 'York believed that,' as it was, 'God talked to York,'" Brown said in an interview.

"That's where Mastriano wanted to go with it: that this guy was literally directed by God to begin fighting people. That would be righteous. That's what God wanted."



A Mastriano rally last month at the Pennsylvania state capitol included prayers and an unfurling of a gigantic American flag.© Alexander Panetta/CBC

Faith is central to Mastriano's life, and to his gubernatorial campaign.

He's said journalists who appear to mock his faith will be barred from covering his campaign events and has bristled at being described as a "Christian nationalist."

In the past, he's explained how the Alvin York story fits into his faith.

In a 2019 speech, he espoused York as an alternative to the pacifist, turn-the-other-cheek philosophy within Christianity, as evidence the faithful can be warriors.

Prayer is a regular part of his campaign events. It was a recurring theme in speeches at a rally last month at the Pennsylvania legislature.

"Lord, you told us to pray for our enemies," one speaker said, in a prayer to open the rally.

"We pray that they would lose."

The critics amass

Criticism of Mastriano's scholarly work goes back years and spans several countries.

In Oklahoma, a teacher and history PhD candidate wrote last year to the UNB warning that Mastriano's work was rife with academic fraud.

James Gregory, who first encountered Mastriano's work in his published book, says he's since found over 150 problems with the thesis.

It's rampant with fake footnotes, he says, meaning the paper often makes a claim, cites a footnote to back it up, then, when you actually go check the source mentioned in the footnote, it says something else.

He showed CBC News some examples.

For instance, Mastriano's paper says a journalist first took an interest in York's story because of its religious aspect; a footnote then cites a telegram the journalist, Canadian George Pattullo, sent on Jan. 30, 1919. But Gregory tracked down the telegram and there's nothing about religion, just Pattullo's travel plans and a request for battlefield data.

"His dissertation is just filled with these issues," Gregory said. "He's making it up."

"It's academic fraud."

Gregory insists he has no political axe to grind. He says he's a registered Republican, in Oklahoma, and doesn't care who the governor of Pennsylvania is.

His gripe, he says, is strictly academic. And somewhat personal. That's because Gregory has also written about York; he cited Mastriano in his work and now he's feeling deceived.

"It's tainted," Gregory said.

"He was wrong. Therefore my article was wrong. And everyone in the future who cites Mastriano's work, now, their work is tainted.

"It's not just that he's changing history by lying and making things up. He's also ruining everyone else's work that trusts him."

Gregory said he actually had a cordial relationship with Mastriano, exchanging messages online about their shared scholarly interest in York.

Then, suddenly, Gregory says, when he started spotting details that contradicted Mastriano's work, the politician cut off contact and blocked him on Facebook.

UNB students concerned, frustrated

Some students in New Brunswick started worrying about reputational taint after the Associated Press first reported on the controversy at their school.

A headline in a Fredericton newspaper cuts to the heart of their concern, asking: "Will employers question the value of UNB PhDs?"

A dozen Master's and PhD students gathered last month to discuss plans to press the university for details about Mastriano's degree.

The students plan to release a letter soon.

"A lot of us vented our frustrations at this.… This reflects on our academic training," said Richard Yeomans, a PhD candidate in the history department.

"This man's credentials are unearned.… It's very clear a vanity degree was granted to him."

Mastriano's thesis supervisor, Marc Milner, a history professor and honourary colonel in the Air Force, did not respond to emails seeking comment.

Multiple efforts to reach current and retired staff at the university, including the communications office, received no response.

Mastriano, meanwhile, did not respond to requests for comment via phone calls to his three state legislative offices and emails to his legislative and campaign staff.

The professor, Brown, has a theory about what happened.



Mastriano is the underdog in the race. He's behind in polling and fundraising. National Republicans aren't helping him. Organizers of his recent rally at the Pennsylvania legislature said they were disappointed when only a few dozen people turned out.© Alexander Panetta/CBC News

The school, he says, has a good relationship with the military, and let Mastriano through to avoid disrupting that.

He sent CBC News printouts of email exchanges from 2012 and 2013 laying out his myriad concerns, including one final note.

In that note, Brown told Milner that, from what he understood, regardless of his complaints, Mastriano would get his degree anyway.

Brown wrote: "I know that I will regret it if I allow my signature to stand on this dissertation."

He says Milner responded that his services were no longer needed because the three-member examining committee already had enough people.

Brown backed away, after having spent months on the project.

But he just got a surprise.

The university finally released Mastriano's thesis over the summer, amid external pressure after a years-long delay in making it public.

Brown's name is still there, listed on the examining board.

Amid campaign, Mastriano's disputed dissertation made public






 Pennsylvania Republican gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano speaks ahead of former President Donald Trump at a rally in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., Saturday, Sept. 3, 2022. A Canadian university is making public Mastriano's 2013 doctoral thesis about World War I hero Sgt. Alvin York. The online posting includes six pages of corrections Mastriano added a year ago that in some cases don't appear to correct anything. Rival researchers have long criticized Mastriano's investigation into York as plagued by factual errors, amateurish archaeology and sloppy writing. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer, File)

ASSOCIATED PRESS
MARK SCOLFORO
Fri, September 9, 2022 

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — A Canadian university has quietly made public Pennsylvania gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano's 2013 doctoral thesis about a legendary World War I hero, including six pages of recently added corrections that, in some cases, do not appear to fix anything.

Researchers who have long criticized Mastriano's investigation into U.S. Army Sgt. Alvin C. York as plagued by factual errors, amateurish archaeology and sloppy writing say the dissertation, released last month by the University of New Brunswick, echoes the problems in his 2014 book based on the same research.

Mastriano won the Republican primary in May thanks, in part, to a late endorsement by former President Donald Trump. He came to political prominence by leading protests against pandemic mitigation efforts, energetically supporting the movement to overturn Trump’s 2020 reelection defeat and appearing outside the U.S. Capitol during the Jan. 6 insurrection.

The far-right state senator, a retired Army colonel, regularly brings up his Ph.D. status in public remarks and on the campaign trail as evidence of his knowledgeability. When a photo of Mastriano wearing a Confederate uniform surfaced last month, he brandished his academic credentials as a defense of his credibility.

Mastriano’s 480-page thesis includes a retelling of York’s life story and the results of Mastriano’s own research. The version now online has Mastriano’s June 2021 corrections, appended after a complaint from another researcher prompted the university to review the work.

A University of New Brunswick history professor, Jeff Brown, provided documents to The Associated Press that recorded his own misgivings about the dissertation nearly a decade ago when he was on Mastriano's doctoral committee. He says he was “appalled” by the dissertation and “disturbed by the fact that no one on the committee was qualified to evaluate the huge part of it that was archaeological.”

Brown said he flagged glaring issues to other faculty members and administrators and was dismissed from Mastriano's committee by the lead adviser — yet the published dissertation still listed Brown on the title page, giving the impression that he endorsed the material.

Brown said in an email that Mastriano’s main adviser, now-retired history professor Marc Milner, told him “that as it turns out, I never really needed to be on the examining committee after all, so there was no need to worry about evaluating Mastriano’s dissertation (despite the fact that I had already done so).”

“This was presented to me as a favour, to relieve me of the necessity of having to decide whether to sign off on it or not,” Brown added. “I never understood how I suddenly became superfluous.”

Neither Milner nor Mastriano responded to multiple requests for comment.

The 21 revisions made last year, numbered in a list that skips from No. 9 to No. 11, include altered footnote references along with several changes that do not actually appear to correct anything but instead add descriptive text or defend aspects of the dissertation.

The most significant correction involves his longstanding claim that a photo of an American soldier leading German prisoners was misdated and mislabeled by the military photographer in 1918, and that it in fact shows York with three officers he would force to surrender two weeks after the date.

Mastriano's certainty about the American soldier's identity has evolved over the years: He wrote in 2007 that the photo “is now believed to show” York, then was “fairly sure” in 2011, described York as “clearly identified” in the 2013 dissertation and declared in the 2014 book that the photo “is confirmed to be" York. But his new explanatory footnote backtracks, saying it “seems to show Corporal York marching his prisoners into the American lines, with what is likely the German officers.”

“He didn’t ‘fix’ that — he just doubled down on his ridiculous assessment,” said University of Oklahoma history graduate student and instructor James Gregory, the complainant who triggered New Brunswick's review.

He said Mastriano’s revisions ignored more than a dozen of the problems Gregory found in the book and argued Mastriano “has no evidence other than this guy has a mustache and looks like Alvin York.” Gregory is preparing a similar list for the Canadian university with what he has identified as the dissertation’s errors.

A spokesperson for the University of New Brunswick, Heather Campbell, said Mastriano's “credentials are not impacted” as a result of the corrections and the school’s review. And retired history professor Steve Turner, another committee member, wrote in an email last week he stands by the decision to accept Mastriano’s thesis and grant him a doctorate.

“There was no reason to question the authenticity or accuracy of the sources cited in footnotes,” Turner said.

Turner said he did not recall that Brown raised concerns about the work but remembered Mastriano as “respectful and polite” during a meeting in which Turner urged him to engage more directly with critics of his research.

“I believe the truth is nonexistent in Mastriano’s vocabulary, but the word ‘detractors’ is and he applies it to anyone who is in disagreement with him,” said one of those critics, British author Michael Kelly. Kelly's 2018 book, “Hero on the Western Front,” includes a section on the controversy over Mastriano’s findings.

Mastriano claims to have pinpointed where York engaged in the gun battle with German troops for which he received the Medal of Honor. But critics like Kelly call his work shoddy and substandard, built on falsified evidence and bald assertions.

Penn State history professor Dan Letwin, asked to evaluate the dissertation’s quality, said it does not appear to meet current academic standards for doctoral-level historical research, describing it as “very lacking.”

“There’s nothing interpretive here about big historical questions,” Letwin said.

Last year, after Mastriano's book was questioned, New Brunswick officials declined to comment on the dissertation without Mastriano's permission.

But earlier this summer, the dean of New Brunswick’s school of graduate studies, Drew Rendall, came back from a yearlong sabbatical to learn Mastriano's dissertation was still under embargo. Embargoes of a few years are not uncommon in academia, particularly when there are plans to turn the work into a book, but it's unclear why the embargo on Mastriano's dissertation more than doubled the school's usual four-year limit.

Rendall said he notified Mastriano the thesis was being made public but never received a reply.

The 2014 book 's publisher, the University Press of Kentucky, is also planning corrections if it does another printing. Mastriano was sent a list of about 30 questions, some regarding minor typos and others seeking “additional sources to confirm specific information in the book,” press director Ashley Runyon said in an email.

The publisher plans to use his responses and its own review of primary sources “for future printings of the book to correct any errors,” Runyon wrote. Mastriano was informed of the proposed changes but has not responded, and the press has the final say in the revisions, Runyon added.

The book, which features the photo of a soldier leading German prisoners inside and on its dust jacket, is going to be changed to add information about the dispute in a preface, she said.

Michigan GOP memo blames Tudor Dixon's performance for lost majorities

2022/11/11

Gretchen Whitmer on WXYZ Channel 7 at Oakland University on Oct. 24, 2022, 

in Rochester, Michigan. - Robin Buckson/The Detroit News/TNS

Lansing, Mich. — A Thursday memo from Paul Cordes, the chief of staff for the Michigan Republican Party, blamed the party's historic midterm election losses on GOP gubernatorial candidate Tudor Dixon's performance and an internal power struggle.

On Tuesday, Michigan Democrats won majorities in the Michigan Legislature for the first time in 40 years. Democrats won 20 of the 38 seats in the Michigan Senate and 56 of the 110 seats in the state House.

Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer captured a second term by 10 percentage points over Dixon, a first time candidate from Norton Shores.

Dixon under-performed other GOP candidates and failed to keep the governor's race close enough to give Republicans "a chance at keeping majorities in both chambers," Cordes wrote in his memo. Tudor's performance cost the party "around the edges in the close House and Senate races" and the GOP is "out of majorities because of it," Cordes contended.

"Tudor's efforts focused largely on Republican red meat issues, in hopes of inspiring a 2020-like showing at the polls," Cordes added. "There were more ads on transgender sports than inflation, gas prices and bread and butter issues that could have swayed independent voters.

"We did not have a turn out problem — middle-of-the-road voters simply didn't like what Tudor was selling."

Dixon, a former political commentator, fired back on social media Thursday night, saying the memo was "the perfect example" of what is wrong with the Michigan Republican Party. She said the issue with the party is the leadership of Chairman Ron Weiser, Co-Chairwoman Meshawn Maddock and Cordes.

"It's easy to come out and point fingers now, but the truth is they fought against me every step of the way and put the entire ticket at risk," Dixon said. "We need fresh leadership at the @MIGOP or Republicans will never have a voice in Michigan again."

Cordes fired right back late Thursday. In a statement, Cordes said Dixon's tweets were "a clear lie." "We turned out more Republicans than in previous midterm elections," Cordes said. "I'm struggling to find what parts of the memo, based on data from this past Tuesday, she's struggling with. Our memo speaks for itself."

The back-and-forth came two days after the Michigan Republican Party's losses on Election Day. It also occurred ahead of an expected fight about the next chair of the party.

Cordes said in his memo that Dixon had "almost no cash on hand" after winning the Aug. 2 primary and faced "millions of dollars in unanswered advertisements" using her own words on the subject of abortion.

The Republican nominee opposed abortion, including in cases involving rape and incest, as a proposal to enshrine abortion rights in the state Constitution was on the ballot. Most of Dixon's primary opponents held the same view except for Metro Detroit businessman Kevin Rinke, who said he supported exceptions for incest and rape.

Voters viewed "Tudor and Proposal 3 as a package deal" at the polls, Cordes wrote.

"Because of that, there was likely never any real chance at defeating what is truly one of the most evil and extreme constitutional amendments ever put before voters," Cordes said.

Proposal 3 passed with 57% support on Tuesday.

Cordes also touched on former President Donald Trump, who had endorsed Dixon, attorney general candidate Matt DePerno and secretary of state candidate Kristina Karamo.

"In what many of them saw as sending a message to Donald Trump and his supporters, longtime donors to the party remained on the sidelines despite constant warnings of the possibility of the outcome we saw come to fruition on Election Day: A statewide sweep and one-party Democratic rule in Lansing, something that has not been seen in nearly 40 years in Michigan," Cordes said.

"Countless hours spent courting donors consistently shifted into back and forths about Mar-a-Lago's influence over our process, party and voters," Cordes said. "All while Democrats raised tens of millions of dollars and invested record amounts statewide and in legislative districts."

High-quality, substantive candidates and well-funded campaigns are critical to winning elections, Cordes wrote.

"We struggled in both regards to the detriment of Michiganders across the state," he said.

© The Detroit News

How Doug Mastriano’s run for Pa. governor veered far off course

2022/11/11

Pennsylvania Republican gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano speaks during a rally featuring former President Donald Trump at the Arnold Palmer Regional Airport on Nov. 5, 2022, in Latrobe, Pennsylvania. - Win McNamee/Getty Images North America/TNS

DONEGAL, Pa. — Last week here in Westmoreland County, hours before Donald Trump flew in to rally voters for Doug Mastriano, a woman was doing yard work beside a lawn sign on Route 31 that read: “Elect Jesus for Eternal Life.”

Mastriano had presented himself as the next-best candidate — a retired Army colonel turned Republican state senator on a self-described divine mission to shatter the wall between church and state as Pennsylvania’s next governor.

Months earlier, at a far-right Christian conference called “Patriots Arise for God and Country,” where QAnon and 9/11 conspiracy theories were discussed, Mastriano had assured attendees he’d be elected.

“My God will make it so,” he said.

Somewhere along the campaign trail, his triumph veered off-course.

Mastriano not only lost Tuesday’s election, he was trounced — despite a midterm political environment that should have been favorable to Republicans.

Unofficial results on Thursday had Democrat Josh Shapiro, the state’s attorney general, ahead of Mastriano by 56% to 42%, or about 748,000 votes.

Mastriano’s slogan was “walk as free people.” Whether he knew it or not, he was quickly running behind.

He emerged victorious from the GOP primary, but an opposition research apparatus dismantled his low-budget campaign. It could become a textbook example of how not to run for statewide office in Pennsylvania.

“He made it very easy,” said Alexandra De Luca, a strategist with American Bridge 21st Century, a progressive group that closely tracked Mastriano’s activities, online and off. He left a trove of damaging material online, some of which became fodder for attack ads.

“It’s like he didn’t even know he was running from behind, like if he prayed and fasted enough, he would win,” she said. “But that’s not how elections work.”

At first, there were signs that some establishment Republicans might be rallying to Mastriano’s side.

Andy Reilly, a Republican national committeeman from Delaware County, hosted a Mastriano fund-raiser in July. Reilly, who had previously been involved in a failed behind-the-scenes plan to block Mastriano from securing the GOP nomination in May, urged his fellow Republicans to “take a second look” at the candidate.

Many of them didn’t like what they saw.

Mastriano failed to raise much money, connect with moderate voters, or even convince the Republican Governors Association he was a viable candidate.

By September, he was campaigning with a right-wing evangelist named Lance Wallnau who had previously sold $45 Trump “prayer coins” and believed that President Joe Biden is the “Antichrist” and COVID-19 vaccines are used for “surveillance under the skin.”

The following week, Mastriano announced a plan that involved“40 days of fasting & prayer.”

He often referenced his military history and questioned Shapiro’s masculinity — “See you in Manheim if you’re man enough,” Mastriano tweeted at his opponent last month — but the Republican seemed uncomfortable associating with anyone but his most loyal supporters. Even though he didn’t have enough money to compete with Shapiro on TV, he also wouldn’t agree to a debate unless the campaigns could select the moderators. Mastriano believed a traditional format with an independent moderator was a “trap” for him.

At his campaign events, reporters were warned “not to engage with Doug or Rebbie,” as if Mastriano and his wife were exotic zoo animals best observed from a distance. Staffers even escorted some journalists to the bathroom to prevent them from being unsupervised inside the building, according to one reporter.

Mastriano was great at speaking to his fans, many of whom first heard of him through his fireside chats on Facebook Live during the 2020 coronavirus lockdowns. He was not so good at listening, and showed little interest in the exchange of ideas common in American democracy. One of his digital ads, ironically, featured stock footage from Russian propaganda, and a four-minute fund-raising request used footage from Russia, Poland and Belarus.

“I think they got a little too cocky,” said Jennifer Cohn, an attorney and columnist for the Bucks County Beacon, a progressive publication that reported extensively on Mastriano’s ties to Christian nationalist figures.

“(Mastriano) is truly a religious fanatic and is supported by religious fanatics,” Cohn said, referring to Wallnau and others affiliated with the far-right New Apostolic Reformation movement and Seven Mountains Dominionism, which holds that Christians should take control of seven secular “mountains” — including the government.

“People (who watched videos of their events) for the most part were horrified,” she said. “The NAR fanatics weren’t hiding it anymore. It backfired.”

By late October, even some of Mastriano’s political patrons had thrown up their hands in frustration.

Former Sen. Rick Santorum, a fellow conservative Republican who had campaigned with Mastriano, told a radio host that Mastriano had insisted on running a “covert campaign” that was destined to fail.

De Luca and her staff, meanwhile, were repeatedly perplexed by the amateurish nature of Mastriano’s campaign.

“They were trying to run this race as an under-the-radar state Senate race,” she said, adding that Mastriano likely dragged down Mehmet Oz, the Republican Senate candidate, who lost to Democrat John Fetterman.

Still, Mastriano refused to change course. He appeared convinced that an endorsement from Trump and a blessing from God was enough to defeat Shapiro.

But when Trump’s plane touched down at the Arnold Palmer Regional Airport in Latrobe last week, the former president walked to the lectern and spoke for about an hour — mostly about himself — before calling Mastriano up to the stage.

By that point, the crowd was already starting to thin.

On Tuesday night at the Penn Harris Hotel, as the clock approached midnight and television networks began calling the race for Shapiro, Mastriano’s wife held out hope, asking supporters gathered in the ballroom to pray “for the Lord to intervene.”

“Father, as we wait, we just don’t sit and wait, but we wait in expectation,” she said. “We wait in expectation of what you have, Father.”

“Amen!” people in the crowd shouted in unison.

Soon, journalists started packing up their gear. Supporters began leaving.

Mastriano chatted with a small group in a far corner of the room, as the DJ played Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up.” It was as sure a sign as any that no intervention would be forthcoming.

And yet.

In a Tuesday morning interview, Chris Stigall, a conservative radio host, asked Mastriano, if he lost, “Where do you go next?”

Mastriano said he would not even brook the possibility of defeat. Nor did he concede on Wednesday.

“You know, we’re going to win,” he said. “I just don’t see how we can’t with the lack of enthusiasm on the other side.”

Staff writer Chris Brennan contributed to this article.

____

© The Philadelphia Inquirer

Canadian University makes new review of Mastriano's doctoral research
 

ON MYTHICAL WWI ACE SGT YORK 

 Pennsylvania Republican gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano speaks during a campaign stop in Erie, Pa., Thursday, Sept. 29, 2022. A Canadian university that granted a doctorate in history to Mastriano is investigating a fresh complaint about his work that makes hundreds of allegations of academic fraud. (AP Photo/David Dermer, File)

MARK SCOLFORO
Wed, November 2, 2022 

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — A Canadian university that granted a doctorate in history to Doug Mastriano nearly a decade before he became the Republican nominee for governor of Pennsylvania is investigating a fresh complaint about his work that makes multiple allegations of academic fraud in his recently public dissertation.

University of New Brunswick President Paul Mazerolle told The Associated Press in a phone interview Saturday that the school is also bringing in a team of outsiders to review its policies and procedures for graduate study, including issues raised by how Mastriano's research was handled and evaluated.

“Being subject to a complaint, I need to let that process run its course,” Mazerolle said, “recognizing that there's a time issue, and this is almost 10 years ago this was all propagated. And that's why we need to have this looked at through our complaint processes.”

He said the school's lead integrity officer, chemistry professor David MaGee, is performing an initial review to decide if a full investigation is warranted and who should conduct it. There is no time limit.

Mastriano, who was elected to the Pennsylvania Senate in 2019 after decades as a U.S. Army officer, was awarded a doctorate in history in 2013 for his research into American World War I hero Sgt. Alvin York. But that research, which formed the basis of his 2014 book, has long been criticized by other researchers as inaccurate, sloppy and even fraudulent.

 Mastriano, Oz hold rallies to get out the Republican vote


Mastriano has not directly responded to numerous requests for comment about his research from The Associated Press, going back almost two years, including on Tuesday. He is currently running against Democratic Attorney General Josh Shapiro in the Nov. 8 election for governor.

But on Monday, he discussed his graduate research during an online interview, saying “the left wing goes after our academic work on the right."

“I mean of all the things I’ve done, it was brutal,” he told Real America's Voice, speaking of his doctoral studies. “And I did have concerns that some of the left-leaning professors there would hold my politics or my military background against me.”

One of the rival researchers who has challenged his work, University of Oklahoma history doctoral student James Gregory, sent the new complaint to New Brunswick administrators on Oct. 6, about a month after the school quietly made public Mastriano's doctoral dissertation. Dissertation embargoes like the one that prevented access to Mastriano's work for nearly a decade are among the topics being examined by the outside team Mazerolle is having look into graduate research policies and practices.

“His dissertation and subsequent book are built upon falsified research," Gregory wrote in a cover letter to a list of what he described as 213 cases of academic misconduct in Mastriano's doctoral thesis. “This has polluted the historiography of Alvin York causing every historian who used his work to have an inaccurate base on which their claims are built.”

In the letter addressed “to whom it should concern,” Gregory recounted how a complaint he made last year, based on problems he identified with the book, was handled. He said MaGee told him the allegations did not warrant a formal investigation and amounted to honest errors that would be corrected.

But Gregory argued the corrections made in response to issues with the book, which were appended to the dissertation in 2021 before it was posted online this August, are themselves “plagued with academic misconduct" and ignored most of what Gregory complained about last year.

“I find this to be a gross case of incompetence for a university which is supposed to uphold academic integrity,” Gregory said. “Not only does it showcase the poor response to a serious allegation, but it also reduces the reputation and level of standards for all other students at the University of New Brunswick.”

Mastriano's dissertation, largely a biography of the war hero from Tennessee, also documented his attempt to locate the precise spot of York's famed gun battle in the woods of northern France in the waning days of the war.

A faculty member who evaluated the work, New Brunswick history professor Jeff Brown, said Mastriano's degree was granted over his protests. Armed with his doctorate, Mastriano finished his military career by teaching at the Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, until 2017.

The controversy led some current New Brunswick history graduate students to seek a meeting with their department head, and Mazerolle said the fallout has caught his attention.

“I'm hearing generally two things” from faculty and graduate students, Mazerolle said. “One is that people are wanting to get on with their work and that this is kind of a distraction. And then I'm hearing on the other side, there are people who are deeply concerned and worrying about the reputation of the department and worried about the reputation of people's degrees.”

Mazerolle said the external reviewers of the school's processes and policies, who have not yet been named, will focus on the role of faculty advisors as well as the handling of embargoed dissertations.

Richard Yeomans, a doctoral student in history at New Brunswick was among about 20 graduate students who met with administrators to discuss the matter about two weeks ago. He said in an email Wednesday that he doubts MaGee can be impartial, given his response to Gregory’s 2021 complaint.

The graduate students have been “collectively unimpressed with how this situation has been handled, and the disruptions that this has caused to all of us. Of course, we want to get back to our research, but we want and need accountability to do so,” Yeomans said.

Days after filing the new complaint, Gregory received an email from MaGee saying the initial investigation was starting right away.

“It’s unfortunate that it took an entire publicity debacle for UNB to look for actual reviewers to confirm my complaints. I can only hope they do their due diligence this time in regards to the faulty dissertation,” Gregory said Tuesday. “They should also make sure to correct the issues that led to this poor example of research being awarded a Ph.D.”

Trump, Mastriano's wife criticize Jews for not loving Israel enough


Ben Adler
Senior Editor
Wed, November 2, 2022

Republican gubernatorial candidate for Pennsylvania Governor Doug Mastriano, with his wife, Rebecca, left. (Mark Makela/Getty Images)

Prominent Republicans, including former President Donald Trump and the wife of Pennsylvania GOP gubernatorial nominee Doug Mastriano, have recently engaged in an unusual form of antisemitism: attacking American Jews for being insufficiently loyal to Israel.

The most recent instance was last Saturday, when an Israeli reporter asked Mastriano, a Pennsylvania state senator, about his association with the antisemitic founder of the far-right social network Gab and Mastriano’s criticism of his Democratic opponent for sending his children to a Jewish school.

Mastriano’s wife, Rebecca Mastriano, then stepped in front of the microphones and offered a her own response.

“As a family, we so much love Israel,” she said. “In fact, I’m going to say we probably love Israel more than a lot of Jews do, I have to say that.”

She then added that she and her husband have been involved for “at least 10 years [in] outreach to Israel and Jerusalem. We have — I had — visited Israel, say, for five years.”

By responding to a question about antisemitism with a pivot to Israel and a swipe at the many American Jews who do not necessarily support all of the Israeli government’s policies, experts on antisemitism say Mastriano was playing into long-standing tropes that depict Jews as foreigners with loyalty to another country.

“She’s basically saying, how dare you raise the question of antisemitism? We’re more committed to the state of Israel — i.e. the Jewish people, for her — than many Jews,” Eliyahu Stern, a professor of modern Jewish history at Yale University, told Yahoo News. “That’s very problematic. Mastriano’s comments make evangelicals more authentic Jews than Jews. They seek to divide Jews against themselves.”

Supporters of Donald Trump wave Israeli and U.S. flags on U.S. Election Day, in Carmiel, Israel, Nov. 3, 2020. (Ariel Schalit/AP)

Mastriano’s comments were similar to an Oct. 16 post by Trump on Truth Social, in which the former president also suggested that Jews in the United States are insufficiently supportive of Israel.

“No President has done more for Israel than I have,” Trump wrote. “Somewhat surprisingly, however, our wonderful Evangelicals are far more appreciative of this than the people of the Jewish faith, especially those living in the U.S. Those living in Israel, though, are a different story - Highest approval rating in the World, could easily be P.M.! U.S. Jews have to get their act together and appreciate what they have in Israel - Before it is too late!”

Trump’s messaging on Jews is deeply problematic, experts say.

“On the one hand, you see [extremist candidates] using antisemitism, and on the other hand, they seem to use this pro-Israel language of a means of offsetting their hateful language against Jews,” Jack Rosen, president of the American Jewish Congress, told Yahoo News. “To use Israel as a wedge ... that doesn’t help Israel at all, and it upsets the Jewish community.”

Surveys show American Jews have the same breadth of political concerns as their non-Jewish neighbors. A national survey by the Jewish Electorate Institute in September asked Jewish voters to choose the two issues most important to them this year, and found that Israel was the ninth most popular choice, tied with affordable housing, and chosen as a top-two issue by only 7% of voters. That’s far lower than the proportion who chose issues such as the future of democracy, abortion, inflation and the economy, and climate change.

“Our issues are American issues: the welfare of people in the country, health care, education etc.” Rosen said, “We’re not a single-issue community.” 

A voter at Frank McCourt High School, an early voting polling site, in Manhattan, Nov. 1.

 (Ted Shaffrey/AP)

Many American Jews also bristle at the implication that criticizing policies of the right-leaning Israeli government means one is insufficiently committed to Israel.

“‘I love Israel’ could be interpreted as a blanket statement that Israel can do no wrong,” said Andy Bachman, a Reform rabbi and former executive director of the Jewish Community Project of Lower Manhattan. “What they’re really saying is Republicans will give Israel a blank check.”

But immunity from criticism isn’t in Israel’s best interest, Bachman added.

“To truly love a child is to point out a child’s errors,” Bachman said. “To truly love a child is to criticize a child because criticism leads to growth.”

Mastriano’s opponent, Pennsylvania Attorney General Joshua Shapiro, is an observant Jew who sends his children to Jewish day school, for which Mastriano has repeatedly attacked him. Mastriano calls it a “privileged, exclusive, elite” school, and has said that it demonstrates Shapiro’s “disdain for people like us.”

Jenna Ellis, a campaign aide to Mastriano, falsely claimed on Twitter that “Shapiro is at best a secular Jew in the same way Joe Biden is a secular Catholic.”

Mastriano’s campaign paid paid $5,000 to the Christian nationalist social media platform Gab, whose founder Andrew Torba has made a number of antisemitic statements including one in which he said that Jews are not welcome in the conservative movement. “We don't want people who are atheists,” Torba said in a livestream. “We don’t want people who are Jewish. We don't want people who are, you know, nonbelievers, agnostic, whatever. This is an explicitly Christian movement because this is an explicitly Christian country.”

Torba also said that he and Mastriano do not do interviews with reporters who aren’t Christian. “[Mastriano] does not talk to these people,” Torba said. “He does not give press access to these people. These people are dishonest. They’re liars. They’re a den of vipers, and they want to destroy you.”

Under pressure to renounce Torba’s statements, Mastriano issued a statement rejecting antisemitism.

Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro speaking at Triumph Baptist Church, Oct. 29.

 (Alex Wong/Getty Images)

On Monday, a coalition of Democratic and progressive Jewish groups called on Mehmet Oz, the Republican senatorial nominee in Pennsylvania, to unendorse Mastriano. “Despite the recent rise in antisemitism, Oz has refused to denounce Mastriano’s hate speech and instead continues to endorse and support him,” leaders of Democratic Majority of Israel, Jewish Democratic Council of America, Democratic Jewish Outreach PA, Pittsburgh Jews Unite Against Extremism and the “pro-Israel, pro-peace” organization J Street wrote in a statement.

On Wednesday, the Washington Post reported that Mastriano was featured in a 2019 film about the Holocaust that scholars say is inaccurate and offensive. In it, a Holocaust survivor asks a modern-day school board to include the Holocaust in school textbooks — while also deploying conservative talking points about gun control and abortion. “It’s time to say never again!” the survivor played by Mastriano says about abortion, repurposing a familiar refrain about the genocide of Jews. “It is offensive to weaponize the Holocaust for political ends, yet that is what this film does and quite proudly,” Neil Leifert, director of the Center for Holocaust and Jewish Studies at Penn State, told the Post.

Trump has repeatedly complained that American Jews do not reward the Republican Party’s blanket support for Israel — which he has referred to as “your country” when speaking to American Jews — regarding the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict. “Jewish people who live in the United States don’t love Israel enough,” Trump told an Orthodox Jewish magazine last year. In 2019, he said “any Jewish people who would vote for a Democrat, I think it shows either a total lack of knowledge or great disloyalty.” Since at least 71% of Jewish voters lean Democratic, according to a Pew Research Center study from 2020, Trump essentially called the majority of the Jewish population ignorant or disloyal.

In 2017, Trump infamously said there were “some very fine people” among the white nationalists who held a rally in Charlottesville, Va., and chanted “Jews will not replace us,” in reference to the “great replacement“ theory that also motivated the mass shooter who killed 11 at a Pittsburgh synagogue in 2018.

Trump has also engaged in crude ethnic stereotyping about Jews as transactional and obsessed with money. In 2015, he told the Republican Jewish Committee, “I don’t want your money, therefore you’re probably not going to support me,” and “I’m a negotiator like you, folks; we’re negotiators. ... This room negotiates perhaps more than any room I’ve spoken to — maybe more.”

Mastriano’s and Trump’s recent comments come at a time in which open antisemitism has become a regular occurrence, including recent comments by the hip-hop artist Kanye West and Brooklyn Nets star Kyrie Irving. The Anti-Defamation League found that antisemitic incidents reached an all-time high in 2021.

“I’m concerned at a time of rising antisemitism, [Mastriano is] dodging the question to talk about Israel instead,” Stern said.

GOP Senate candidate Mehmet Oz with former Donald Trump at a rally in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., Sept. 3. (Ed Jones/AFP via Getty Images)

Mastriano’s campaign and a representative for Trump’s did not respond to a request for comment.

Mastriano is a staunch social conservative who has said that the separation of church and state in the U.S. is a “myth.” His wife’s comments, like Trump’s, stem in part from the embrace of Israel by many evangelical Christians, who believe that the Jewish return to the Holy Land is a necessary condition for the resurrection of Jesus Christ and the subsequent rapture, in which Christians will ascend to Heaven. Jews, many evangelicals believe, will be left behind to suffer tribulations such as earthquakes and stars falling from the sky.

Christian Republicans have sometimes accused Jews of being inadequately supportive of the Israeli government. For instance, in 2014, then-Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., said Jewish leaders who supported the Obama administration’s agreement with Iran to prevent the country from obtaining nuclear weapons “sold out Israel.”

“For the better part of the last 40 years, the Christian evangelical community has been very proud of its blanket support for Israeli policy,” Bachman said. “The evangelical movement, in particular, really gives Israel for all intents and purposes carte blanche, does not believe it’s acceptable to criticize Israel.”

“There also is a kind of millennialist movement afoot and they see support for Israel as necessary to bring about the messianic age and the return of Jesus and the rapture,” Bachman added.

Then-presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks at the Republican Jewish Coalition Presidential Forum in Washington, Dec. 3, 2015. (Susan Walsh/AP)

Comparisons of evangelicals and Jews on the question of loyalty to Israel invites more antisemitism, some observers say.

“This doesn’t come out of the blue,” Peter Beinart, editor at large of the magazine Jewish Currents, said in a video posted on his Substack about Rebecca Mastriano’s comments. “This has been Trump’s line, right? Trump has said now repeatedly that basically there’s something wrong with American Jews because they don’t love Israel as much as he does. And again, I think you see the way that Trump has changed American discourse in ways that make antisemitism more legitimate. Right-wing American support, evangelical Christian support for Israel is really nothing new. It goes back certainly to the 1980s. But I think what is more new is this use of the Christian right’s support for Israel as a weapon to attack Jews in the United States.”

“Trump and other Republicans have responded to criticisms that they tolerate and accept antisemitism on the political right, associate with antisemites, or make use of antisemitic stereotypes with defensive statements that themselves have antisemitic undertones,” Chad Goldberg, a sociologist at the University of Wisconsin, told Yahoo News in an email. “They expect American Jews to be primarily and even exclusively motivated by allegiance to Israel, which (ignoring Israel’s own internal political conflicts) they nearly always conflate with Israel’s far right.”

And then, using a Yiddish word for audacity — which Bachmann once famously mispronounced — Goldberg added, “Furthermore, with this kind of rhetoric, non-Jewish Republicans arrogate to themselves the authority to distinguish ‘good’ from ‘bad’ Jews. This is not just laughable chutzpah.”