If you were involved in the Trump-aligned efforts to overturn the 2020 election, Phoenix’s Veterans Memorial Coliseum is the hottest place to be.
Three Republican members of Pennsylvania’s legislature are in Arizona Wednesday. They will be observing the Arizona state Senate’s shambolic audit of Maricopa County’s 2020 results.
The trip was first announced by the Arizona auditors, and confirmed in interviews the Pennsylvania lawmakers gave the Epoch Times.
“I kind of see this as a fact-finding mission to see what’s happening on the ground in Arizona,” Pennsylvania state Rep. Rob Kauffman (R) told The Epoch Times.
He’s joined on the trip by Republican Pennsylvania Sens. Doug Mastriano and Cris Dush.
None of the lawmakers’ offices responded to inquiries about the trip from TPM. Mastriano tweeted Wednesday that “ZERO” taxpayer dollars were being spent to pay for it.
— Senator Doug Mastriano (@SenMastriano) June 2, 2021
The lawmakers traveling to Arizona were some of the loudest cheerleaders of former President Trump’s efforts to meddle in the Pennsylvania electoral results, where Trump was defeated by President Biden by more than 80,000 votes.
Mastriano, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer, helped orchestrate the faux Gettysburg, Pennsylvania hearing on Nov. 25 that featured an appearance from Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani and a cellphone cameo from Trump himself. Mastriano traveled to Washington a few days later to meet with Trump in the West Wing — a meeting the lawmaker had to exit early when he learned mid-way through that he had tested positive for COVID-19.
Dush sponsored a resolution in late November 2020 that sought to delay Pennsylvania’s certification of its results, while claiming falsely that the election was “in dispute.”
Kauffman likewise signed on to calls that Congress reject the electors Pennsylvania was putting forward for Biden.
The Arizona Senate’s review of the Maricopa County election is the latest example of state Republican lawmakers’ refusal to accept Trump’s defeat. It has run into a whole host of legal, financial and logistical issues, and its procedures have been shaped by people who have promoted some of the most sensational conspiracy theories of mass fraud about the presidential election.
But that chaos has not deterred Trump supporters from hoping that it will be replicated in other battleground states Trump lost.
The Pennsylvania Republicans had previously called for 2020 audits in their state — an interest that was echoed this week.
Dush told Epoch Times that he couldn’t say yet whether their Arizona trip would lead to a Pennsylvania audit, “but if we bring some substantial information back with us I could see it happening.”
