PennLive journalists report state lawmakers subpoenaed in 2020 election probe

• Scott LaMar
  BioRecent Stories

  

  Scott LaMar has worked in both radio and television for more than four decades.
  
  Currently, LaMar is the Host and Executive Producer of The Spark program on WITF-FM, 89.5 & 93.3 in Harrisburg, Pa.
  
  Previously, LaMar was WITF TV’s Sr. Public Affairs producer and produced the station’s award-winning weekly public affairs TV program, Smart Talk.
  
  In addition to his on-air duties, LaMar has moderated political candidate debates, including those for candidates running for Pennsylvania governor and the U.S. Senate and was a regular contributor to BBC World News TV before and after the 2020 U.S. Presidential election.
  
  LaMar often emcees or moderates local events and has gone as far as California to emcee a national event.
  
  The American Society of Civil Engineers honored LaMar with their national Excellence in Journalism award in 2020. He has been nominated for five Mid-Atlantic Emmy Awards.
  
  LaMar and The Spark have been recognized throughout the Central Pennsylvania community including ADVOZ Lancaster’s “Dignity in Dialogue Award”, the South-Central Assembly’s “Regional Citizen Award” and was named a “Humanitarian Hero” by The Humane Society of the United States/Pennsylvania.
  
  A native of Coatesville, Pa., LaMar has also worked as a broadcast news anchor, sports play-by-play announcer and manager.

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Attorney General Merrick Garland at the Justice Department in August. The department is seeking a permanent injunction against the Texas law.

Airdate: August 15, 2022

Since the Congressional Committee investigating the January 6^th insurrection at the U.S. Capitol began hearings earlier this year, there have calls from Democrats and others for the Justice Department to conduct a criminal probe of former President Donald Trump and his allies’ alleged attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 president election.

There were criticisms of Attorney General Merrick Garland for not moving fast enough or even confirming a criminal investigation was underway.

That all changed last week when the FBI executed a search warrant at Trump’s Mar-A-Lago estate in Florida – not looking for election-related materials, but documents he may have removed from the White House when he left.

Back on the election front though, Central Pennsylvania Republican Congressman Scott Perry confirmed the FBI seized his cell phone looking for evidence related to efforts to overturn President Joe Biden’s victory.

Then PennLive reported that several Republican state lawmakers were subpoenaed as well, apparently for information on a set of fake electors that republicans named in case Biden’s win in Pennsylvania was overturned.  The PennLive journalists who broke that story – Jan Murphy and Charles Thompson were on Monday’s Smart Talk.

Murphy said the Pennsylvania legislators who were subpoenaed haven’t been identified publicly yet, “Your legislator who did not receive a subpoena, they’re more than willing to tell you that they did not. The ones that did, they refer to the caucus spokesman statements, which from the House side, it’s we don’t comment on potential or pending ongoing investigations. And the Senate, [Sen.] Jake Corman spokesman said federal subpoenas typically request confidentiality from the witnesses being subpoenaed in order to avoid impediment to the ongoing investigation. So it would be inappropriate to comment. And it’s, from people we have talked to, it seems to be pretty clear that folks who did receive them are taking that requirement for confidentiality to heart. And and they’re very concerned about that they might get themselves in more trouble if they if they would come forward.”

Rep. Perry said he was told he was not the target of an investigation but Thompson added,”That’s probably a true statement in the sense that it appears and I’m borrowing from reporting from The New York Times about that warrant. But we know that that they’ve been doing an internal investigation through their office, the Department of Justice through their Office of Inspector General into the activities of Jeffrey Clark. And that was the senior level attorney in the Department of Justice that was being promoted by Perry and others as an 11th hour acting attorney general replacement, who would do Donald Trump’s bidding and, sort of promoting that there had been fraud in the 2020 vote and that legislatures should decertify their vote counts and so forth. That was a real last minute Hail Mary attempt to kind of weaponize the Department of Justice for Trump’s efforts to cling to power. Jeffrey Clark was at the center of that. Perry was at the center of that because he introduced Clark to Trump and was promoting his replacement.”