Pennsylvania Gov. Says No Special Session Needed, ‘Time to Move on’ From Election 

Pennsylvania Gov. Says No Special Session Needed, ‘Time to Move on’ From Election 
Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf at a press conference in Pittsburgh, Pa., on Oct. 27, 2018. (Jeff Swensen/Getty Images)
Charlotte Cuthbertson
12/4/2020
Updated:
12/6/2020

Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf said on Dec. 4 that there’s “absolutely no reason” for state legislators to call a special session to resolve election issues.

“We had a free and fair election and now it’s time to move on,” Wolf, a Democrat, wrote on Twitter.
On Dec. 3, Republican state legislators in the Keystone State called on Wolf to convene a special session to swear in new members and “organize immediately in order to be actively engaged in continued oversight of this election to ensure the integrity of the process.”

The Pennsylvania 2020 legislative session ended on Nov. 30 and doesn’t pick up again until the first week of January when new members are sworn in.

But Republican lawmakers, in their letter to Wolf, are saying the election issues are extraordinary and call for immediate action.
“It really seems bizarre to me that the general assembly would push itself out of power for an entire month,” Sen. Doug Mastriano told The Epoch Times on Dec. 1.

“The challenge is that the certification is in the hands of the secretary of state and the governor—the very same people that we have issues with. So we have a bit of a constitutional crisis here.”

Pennsylvania’s 20 Electoral College electors are currently chosen by Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar, a Democrat. However, Mastriano said the authority actually belongs to the legislature, and he wants to wrest it back before Dec. 14 when electors convene in Congress to formally elect the next president.

Mastriano sent a response to Wolf, which was obtained by The Epoch Times. In it, Mastriano accused Wolf of dereliction of duty and of his office often being empty.

“As the Governor and Chief Executive, it is your duty to lead the effort to ensure public justice for anyone who acted in bad faith to taint this election—whether that actor was an election worker or someone bearing false witness,” Mastriano wrote. “In either case, I stand with the people of Pennsylvania who deserve and demand to understand the actions prior to, during, and after the November 3, 2020, election.”

More than 30 state legislators signed the letter to Wolf and listed 15 questions they said need to be answered to restore voters’ faith in the election process.

Among other questions, the lawmakers asked Wolf: “How were ballots delivered to the Pennsylvania Convention Center on November 3 and November 4? Are the logs to delivery trucks available for review?”

Citing “eyewitness testimony presented during the Pennsylvania Senate Majority Policy Committee hearing held” last week, they also asked for the “logs to the tabulators demonstrating which and when votes were recorded in Philadelphia during election week.”

The lawmakers made note of a truck driver working for a U.S. Postal Service subcontractor who told news outlets this week that he transported more than 100,000 completed absentee or mail-in ballots from Bethpage, New York, to Pennsylvania, under unusual circumstances.

“There is no logical explanation for this to happen,” they said. “We call on you to exercise the authority granted to you in our Pennsylvania constitution to call the General Assembly immediately into session so that we can provide the election oversight the public deserves.”

Boockvar’s office has said they’ve seen no evidence of voter fraud or irregularities that would overturn the election result.

Wolf also wrote on Twitter that “President Trump’s own attorney general said there was no widespread fraud.”
On Dec. 1, the Justice Department issued a statement in response to backlash after an article by The Associated Press which quoted Barr saying that “to date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have affected a different outcome in the election.”

A DOJ spokesperson said it was incorrect that the department had “concluded its investigation of election fraud and announced an affirmative finding of no fraud in the election,” according to CBS News reporter Catherine Herridge.

“The Department will continue to receive and vigorously pursue all specific and credible allegations of fraud as expeditiously as possible.”

Several days after the Nov. 3 election, Attorney General William Barr issued a memo to authorize federal investigators to probe alleged election fraud.

The Epoch Times reached out to the DOJ for comment on its investigations but didn’t immediately receive a response.

President Donald Trump has accused the DOJ and FBI of being “missing in action” over election investigations.

“This is total fraud. And how the FBI, and Department of Justice—I don’t know, maybe they’re involved—but how people are allowed to get away with this is stuff is unbelievable. This election was rigged. This election was a total fraud,” he told Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo on Nov. 29.

Jack Phillips and Ivan Pentchoukov contributed to this report.