Candidate For Governor Quickly Ends Interview With Committee Investigating January 6 Attack

Doug Mastriano, the Republican state senator who is his party’s nominee for governor, quickly ended an interview Tuesday with investigators from the January 6th Select Committee.

News reports indicate Mastriano abruptly ended his interview with the committee, which has a Democratic majority but has two Republicans on it.

Tuesday morning’s meeting was suddenly halted by the Republican state senator and candidate for governor of Pennsylvania when the committee members refused to accept his demands, according to The New York Times.

Tim Parlatore, as reported by Politico, penned a letter before the interview that Mastrinao would only take part in answering questions asked by the committee investigating the events surrounding 2021 attack if he were allowed to record the session.

Parlatore said in a Tuesday interview with the USA Today Network that his client had asked for either a transcript of the proposed interview, a recording of the interview, a commitment to release the entire interview immediately following it, a delay in the deposition until after the general election, or all four.

“This committee has already demonstrated that they will take clips of these interviews and release them without the proper context to create a false narrative,” he told a reporter from the national newspaper chain.

Upset over then-President Donald Trump’s 2020 election loss, Mastriano attempted to stop Congress from certifying the results that Joe Biden had won. Emails released show Mastriano was a key figure in the plan to submit a false slate electors to the federal government in an attempt to install Trump for a second term after he lost.

Mastriano, a U.S. Army veteran, was in Washington D.C. on January 6, 2021. Video emerged after that he had crossed police lines, but he has said he didn’t enter the U.S. Capitol with attackers.

Mastriano easily won the spring GOP primary election, but he has faced push back over statements about the 2020 election, being on the U.S. Capitol grounds around the time of the January 6, 2021 attack, his embrace of aspects and supporters of the violent Qanon conspiracy, a campaign consultant who made anti-Semitic statements, and other controversies.

Several high-profile state Republicans, including from Bucks County, have come out against Mastriano and for Democratic candidate Josh Shapiro, who serves as the state’s attorney general.

Josh Shapiro, the state’s attorney general who is running for governor as the Democratic nominee, posted a message Wednesday on Twitter about Mastriano’s abrupt exit from his interview with the committee.

“He’s not answering to the press. He’s not answering to a Congressional subpoena. He’s not answering to the people. Pennsylvanians deserve to know: why not?” Shapiro asked.

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