GOP lawmaker's lawsuit against newspaper backfires and exposes damning 2020 election emails

A series of damning emails about the 2020 election were exposed as a result of a lawsuit filed against a local newspaper by Pennsylvania State Sen. Dan Laughlin.

As the Philadelphia Inquirer reports, Laughlin filed a lawsuit last year against the Erie Reader alleging that he had been defamed in an opinion column published by the newspaper.

The lawsuit opened up Laughlin to discovery -- and wound up churning up several emails related to former President Donald Trump's pressure campaign to get Pennsylvania Republicans to overturn President Joe Biden's win in their state.

Among the most notable communications was between Pennsylvania State Sen. Doug Mastriano and then-One America News anchor Christina Bobb, who has since become part of Trump's legal team.

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Mastriano, a staunch Trump ally who last year failed to win his race to become Pennsylvania's governor despite Trump's support, told Bobb that he was worried about Trump's proposals to have state legislatures throw out certified election results, as other Republicans had told him such a scheme would be "illegal."

The emails reveal that Trump personally called Mastriano to push him on the legality of the scheme and gave him materials that falsely accused Dominion Voting Systems of rigging the election for Biden.

Other emails show that Laughlin was not happy about some of the actions that fellow Republicans were taking to get Trump back into the White House, including an attempt by U.S. Rep. Mike Kelly (R-PA) to get every single mail-in ballot thrown out.

“We’re not saying a word on this crap,” Laughlin wrote in December of 2020. “Mike Kelly is hurting our party right now.”

Read more about the newly unearthed emails at this link.