Trump ‘Big Lie’ Behind Pennsylvania Vote Audit Push, AG Says
Pennsylvania GOP Seeking to ‘Sow Electoral Distrust,’ AG Says
(Bloomberg) -- Former President Donald Trump’s “big lie” about the 2020 election being stolen is at the heart of Pennsylvania Republican lawmakers’ effort to access detailed personal information on 9 million registered voters, the state’s attorney general told a judge.
A subpoena for the data issued to state election officials last month by GOP state senators is an attempt to “sow electoral distrust,” Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, said in a court filing Thursday.
The fight comes on the heels of Shapiro’s announcement on Wednesday that he is running for governor of Pennsylvania in 2022, with voting rights at the center of his platform. As attorney general, he successfully fought off a wave of legal attacks over the 2020 election results by Trump and his supporters.
Republican state senators including Cris Dush and Jake Corman are trying to conduct an audit of the results similar to that recently conducted by Arizona’s GOP, which ultimately failed to show Trump was cheated. Shapiro’s filing seeks a court order quashing the subpoena on the grounds that it would violate voter privacy and propagate myths about a stolen election.
“These Senators are using their position of power to demand voters’ personal information, all so that they may continue to lie about our elections,” Shapiro said. “It is time for public officials to move past the Big Lie and to start reminding the public that our elections are accurate, fair, and secure.”
The state senate is due to reply to Shapiro’s motion by Oct. 22. Dush, chair of the Pennsylvania State Senate Intergovernmental Operations Committee, which issued the subpoena, didn’t immediately respond to a message seeking comment.
Pennsylvania, a longtime blue state that flipped to Trump in 2016, narrowly returned to the Democratic fold in 2020, one of several battleground states that delivered Joe Biden’s victory. The Arizona audit ultimately confirmed Biden’s win in that swing state as well.
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