gary tuchman caught up to mastriano and some of his followers in pennsylvania over the weekend. ♪ and♪ >> reporter: a rally at the pennsylvania state capitol. >> you know, we were oppressed this past year. >> pennsylvania state senator doug mastriano was telling his supporters why he believes there needs to be an election audit in his home state, much the same as the so-called audit that he visited which is still taking place in arizona, run by a small little known cyber security firm called cyber ninjas. mastriano was also making a startling comparison. >> the better elections in iraq when we were there occupying the country. there were better elections in afghanistan. >> reporter: mastriano had only done interviews about his arizona experience with advocates, but he agreed to talk with us, and his supporters were by his side. >> all i want know is what happened. >> reporter: let me ask you this, though. you know that dozens of judges and courts around the country have ruled against voting claims. the u.s. supreme court. is there a higher authority than the courts? >>> supreme court.

do you trust that mastriano isn't about overturning anything? >> well, of course.hey would -- they would love to. recall, mastriano and the others put on that snake-handling demonstration in the ballroom in gettysburg, late, in 2020 trying to evoverturn the election results. i mean, this is what they do. this is all they know and this is all they have to run on. and currying the former president's favor is their only play to be electorally viable, nowadays in the republican party. and that's a tragedy. if you tell the truth in the republican party, you lose your elective career in politics. we've seen it with my counterpart in georgia and across the country. the bottom line is this. no one, including the republicans, themselves, believe there was any fraud. they know, better than anybody, what the results are. and this is strictly about simping for donald trump so he curries favor and they endorse him. he endorses them. and they, ultimately, would win in their respective primaries. >> you're confident, that there is not going to be a maricopa-style, you know, so-ca

mastriano spoke at that state senate election hearing that amplified baseless conspiracies of election find out what the heck happened in the election. >> reporter: what happened? joe biden won pennsylvania, by more than 80,000 votes. there was no-widespread fraud found in pennsylvania. and nearly all of trump's lawsuits failed in the state. >> what is happening at the coliseum is not an audit. it is not transparent. it does not conform with election laws. it does not conform with elections process. and is not conducted by elections officials. >> reporter: for weeks, ryan, an expert in election technology, has been monitoring this exercise. about half of the nearly 2.1 million ballots cast in 2020 have been spun, examined, and photographed by a little-known company called cyber ninjas. despite two audits conducted by the county showing no-widespread election fraud. >> the more people that see that they can benefit from this, the more likely that this is going to continue to grab a stronghold across our country. >> reporter: so you don't think pennsylvania's the end, then, potentially?

mastriano said if there's nothing to hide, great. -- what do you -- what do you have to say to that? >> i mean, it's -- it's just more shameless carnival barking for their leader. that's all this is. it's not going anywhere. there's -- this is the same group of people that held, like, a snake-handling session in a ramada ballroom in gettysburg in november of 2020. trying to create all this. it's not going anywhere because they know that they went one for 62 or whatever last year. and there's no basis to any of this. this is, all, about trying to talk about anything, other than the fact that our society is back to being open now. that, you know, people can go to the phillies' game at 100% capacity. of course, republicans want to talk about fantasies and conspiracies because, you know, they don't have anything positive to talk about because joe biden has taken this countcountry in the direction that we have been needing to go ever since donald trump left office. >> do you think this is about -- i mean, what -- what do you think about t

one of them is a state senator, doug mastriano. "the washington post" is reporting that he has had the ear of president trump. does that concern you, katie? >> well, this whole entire sham audit concerns me, and we've been saying for quite some time that they are writing the playbook here in arizona to take this across the country. and we've been talking about how does this end, and i don't know that it does. the longer they drag this out, the more money they're able to continue making on it. but they're also able to continue undermining the public's confidence in our election systems, which is a tool to suppress votes in future elections. they're laying the groundwork to try to steal future elections. this whole entire thing is concerning. >> what are you guys -- speaking of, can you use the machines and the things that they're working with again? aren't they vulnerable to hacking and all that, or are they -- i don't know. are you going to have to get new machines? >> certainly the chain of custody of the maricopa county tabulatio

. >> that was pennsylvania state senator doug mastriano. i will see, the guy who went to the capital on january six. was touring arizona today, being interviewed by donald trump's former chief strategist. the guy who got arrested and then got pardoned, so now he's back on his podcast. breaking the legitimacy of our elections breaks everything else. that is why this become such a central. point it is why people like steve bannon have been stoking the idea that the litmus test, the thing that measures fidelity to the government, is signing up for this mass delusion. pursuing it through these toxic needs. the big lie. it fundamentally undermines the legitimacy of american self governance. this was the attack on democracy is all about. and is going to cause levels of damage and destruction that even if advocates cannot imagine. anne-marie slaughter is a professor at princeton. ceo of the think tank new america. >> warning of the threats to american democracy. ari berman, is -- and how the gop's repeating history. anne-marie, we start with you.

mastriano traveling the country to create this chaos, this scene in maricopa that we have been covering trying to start something like that in pennsylvania. i know that trump never runs coordinated operations but it is clear some people still function as foot soldiers. >> thanks for clarifying. i think we are in this moment talking about him being reinstated or just trying to change democracy as we know it. right? >> all of the above! >> right. that -- yeah. i think there's a very much robust plan to spread the idea that republicans are really the only ones who know how to run elections and that for elections to be done fairly one democrats need to lose but two there needs to be changes of rules so democrats have a harder time getting elected. i talked to a long time civil rights activist saying something that stuck with me and it is this. it is not voter oppression but voter nullification. we have to talk about it in those terms because what he is saying and what is true is seeing is not just making it harder to vote but an effort among people that support trump to try to find out if t

yesterday, we told you about the die-hard trump supporter in the pennsylvania state senate, doug mastriano, he is an elected official and he traveled to arizona to learn about their ongoing, ridiculous, toxic ballot audit because he wants to bring it back to his home state. >> do you plan to replicate this process in pennsylvania? >> if -- if we do an audit in pennsylvania and we got a lot of issues in pennsylvania. we need to do an audit. and this is the process to follow right here. i mean, this is the model. >> this effort to, um, reverse engineer an overturning the election is starting to spread. and the exile disgraced ex-president is following along closely. the washington. >> reporter: that obsession is leading him to believe another ludicrous figure, the maga pillow guy. remember him? who is taking credit for plapting the seeds of the idea of the august restoration, which to be fair, he kind of did. >> the election of 2020 is going bye-bye. it was an attack by other countries, communism coming in. i don't know what they are going to do after they pull it down. >> but hang on. hang

and the reason we know about it is because, you know, audit supporters tweeted a picture showing mastrianohey did is kicked out the legitimate news organizations in the pool that included a cnn camera. we found out later that one of the reporters in the next shift did manage to speak to one of the other pennsylvania lawmakers who did tell the pool that they are looking forward to having an arizona state audit in pennsylvania. anderson. >> kyung law, appreciate it. joining us is arizona secretary of state katie hobbs who announced her run for governor and michigan secretary of state. when you see you have pennsylvania state lawmakers touring this so-called audit in your state, do you think more and more audits will start happening around the country and if so, what does that mean? >> what i think is so critical for everyone to understand and i think they do because we have been talking about this for so long, this is dangerous. this is not an audit. it doesn't meet any standards of best practices that you would see in a post election audit and it's going to do nothing to determine the valid

american news host christina bob, who has been covering the arizona audit, and state senator doug mastriano, which basically means that trump is hear thing sort of thing. listen to this. >> we're in a race against time, everyone. we need this election pulled down, we need our get president donald trump back in, and that's coming. >> it's apparent that donald trump absolutely crushed joe biden in the election. the american people resoundingly choose donald j. trump and democrats are trying to steal it. >> half of the nation believes that this election was stolen from president trump, and i agree with that, and that's a fact. i believe we won the state and we're going prove it. >> this is all totally false. it's incredible that it's going out there. it's incredible that in some of those cases we just heard, the people saying it believe it. what are you doing to fight back against claims like this? >> so the fact is, the 2020 general election is over. i mean, i believe strongly, certainly, that our county election officials, the administration and most of the members of the general assembly, i