This story was updated at 3:30 p.m.
In a televised hearing on Monday, the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol briefly focused its presentation on the city of Philadelphia, and the efforts there by election officials to dispel former President Donald Trump’s claims of voter fraud in the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election.
In live testimony to the committee, former Philadelphia city commissioner Al Schmidt, the lone Republican on the three-member panel overseeing the city’s elections, said election officials probed every claim that was referred to them -- “no matter how fantastical, no matter how absurd” they were.
The committee also showed footage from its interview with former U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr, who said the former president’s claims that more people voted in Philadelphia than there were voters was “absolute rubbish.”
Mr. Barr also said he had asked a U.S. attorney in Philadelphia about claims that there was a discrepancy between the number of absentee ballots issued and cast -- spread in the aftermath of the 2020 election by now-Pennsylvania GOP gubernatorial nominee Doug Mastriano -- and that he was told that was false.
Asked by the committee about Mr. Trump’s numerous claims about fraudulent voting practices in Philadelphia and the specific theory that 8,000 dead people had voted, Mr. Schmidt responded in no uncertain terms.
“Not only was there no evidence of 8,000 dead voters voting in Pennsylvania, there wasn’t evidence of 8,” Mr. Schmidt testified under oath.
Mr. Schmidt’s testimony came as the committee, on Monday, sought to present evidence that Mr. Trump engaged in a widespread effort to spread false information that the election had been rigged and stolen -- even though his own advisers and allies told him he had lost.
The hearing was also meant to show the consequences that some officials, like Mr. Schmidt, faced for saying anything contrary to Mr. Trump’s claims.
Mr. Schmidt was asked about Mr. Trump’s tweet in the aftermath of the 2020 contests that criticized him, by name, and said he was a RINO -- Republican-in-name-only -- who was ignoring a “mountain of corruption and dishonesty” in Philadelphia.
In response, Mr. Schmidt said the threats he received after Mr. Trump’s tweet were more personal than he had experienced before.
“After the president tweeted at me by name, calling me out the way that he did, the threats became much more specific, much more graphic. and included not just me -- by name -- but included members of my family, my name, their ages, our address, pictures of our home, just every bit of detail that you could imagine,” Mr. Schmidt testified. “That was what changed with that tweet.”
In his testimony to the committee, Mr. Barr remarked that Mr. Trump simply “ran weaker” than other Republican candidates in Pennsylvania. That doesn’t suggest the election was stolen by fraud, he added.
Recalling a specific claim that more mail-in ballots were counted in Pennsylvania than the number of ballots issued to voters, Mr. Barr said former U.S. Attorney Bill McSwain confirmed to him there was no such discrepancy.
Mr. Barr said the claim was started by Mr. Mastriano, a state senator — and now gubernatorial nominee — who hosted a hearing in Gettysburg after the 2020 election to give Mr. Trump’s legal team a chance to make its case of a stolen election.
Mr. Mastriano was mixing “apples and oranges” when he made that claim, Mr. Barr said; the senator was looking at the number of applications for the Republican primary and comparing it to the number of votes cast in the general election.
Mr. Mastriano could not be reached for comment on Monday. He is running for governor against Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro, a Democrat. His campaign put out a statement Monday morning, announcing that former Trump lawyer Jenna Ellis has been appointed senior legal adviser. Ms. Ellis was a key participant in Mr. Mastriano’s Gettysburg hearing.
In a fundraising pitch after Monday’s hearing, the Pennsylvania Democratic Party cited Mr. Barr’s testimony about Mr. Mastriano and said the senator “to this day continues to lie about the 2020 election. That’s why he has Trump’s endorsement!”
Mr. Trump did back Mr. Mastriano in the Republican primary. He also specifically told voters to avoid Mr. McSwain, who was also running for the GOP nomination. In a statement at the time, the former president said Mr. McSwain “did absolutely nothing on the massive Election Fraud that took place in Philadelphia and throughout the commonwealth.”
Mr. McSwain, who finished in third place in the May primary with 15.8% of the vote, had previously said that it was Mr. Barr who blocked him from investigating potential irregularities in the election. In response, Mr. Barr told The Philadelphia Inquirer that Mr. McSwain was never told to “stand down” from investigating.
Julian Routh: jrouth@post-gazette.com
First Published: June 13, 2022, 5:41 p.m.
