Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro is petrified of what will be exposed when Senator Doug Mastriano conducts a forensic audit of the 2020 General Election. Not only will it expose that Biden lost bigly, but that he (Shapiro) did too.
Out of fear, Lyin' Josh went on Twitter and spun up four falsehoods in a single tweet about the Pennsylvania 2020 election and Mastriano's audit.
There were not two "audits" in Pennsylvania if you understand the definition of an audit.
Most audit definitions come from the world of finance and accounting. The common thread among audit definitions is that audits "confirm the authenticity" of the records. In this case, it's ballots and/or votes.
Nothing of the sort happened in Pennsylvania after the November 2020 election that confirmed the authenticity of the ballots.
What happened in Pennsylvania was nothing more than recounts based on a sample of ballots. Whether those were legal ballots or illegal ballots remains in question.
That's why Democrats all over the US (and their media mouthpieces) are decrying post-election audits in the battleground states.
Here are the details behind Lyin' Josh's "audits."
The first so-called "audit"was nothing more than a recount of a random sample of ballots. However, that recount was FATALLY FLAWED because at least four counties had incomplete records of the number of voters (a total of 205,000 more votes were cast than voters).
Wanda Murren, a spokesperson for the Pennsylvania Secretary of State readily admitted the records were incomplete.
It is improper to draw a sample without first resolving the discrepancy between the number of voters and votes cast. Was this issue duplicate ballots being counted? Or was it a record keeping issue as alleged by Murren? Or was it a combination of the two?
No one knows for sure. Only a forensic audit can resolve the questions.
Obviously, Pennsylvania should not have certified its election until the discrepancy was resolved. To otherwise do so was illegal.
To make matters worse, the counties with incomplete records included the two most populous counties -- Philadelphia and Allegheny, as well as two more rural counties of Butler and Cambria.
As such, the sample recount was based on approximately 75,000 votes with Philadelphia and Allegheny Counties defaulting to 2,000 ballots or just 0.3% of their ballots. That is an insufficient amount of sampling for those counties.
The sample for Allegheny County should have been 13,526 ballots in order to obtain a 99% confidence level at a 1% margin of error. Note that Biden allegedly won the Keystone State by 1.12%, therefore a plus or minus 1% error is required.
Similarly, Philadelphia would have required a sample size 16,246. Other populous counties also under-sampled by defaulting to 2,000. Here are the counties that under-sampled with correct sample number indicated.
Bucks: 15,970; Chester: 15,808; Cumberland: 14,892; Dauphin: 14,953; Delaware: 15,830; Erie: 14,840; Lackawanna: 14,545; Lancaster: 15,712: Lehigh: 15,266; Luzerne: 15,012; Montgomery: 16,116; Northampton: 15,169; Washington; 14,592; Westmoreland: 15,393; and York: 15,556.
The sum of those county's samples is approximately 125,000 ballots. Toss in Allegheny and Philadelphia and the sample grows to over 150,000. Adding back the rural counties, the proper sampling size would have been nearly 200,000 ballots.
In typical PA fashion of non-transparency, this audit (recount) report can be found nowhere.
As such, we have no idea which of the county samples were properly drawn randomly by a computer program or (as in the case of Maricopa County, Arizona) manipulated by the contractors who oversaw the voting equipment.
Conclusion 1: Sample sizes in population centers were not sufficient to determine if Biden actually won given his alleged 1.2 percent margin of victory.
Next, Pennsylvania conducted a Risk Limiting Audit (RLA) pilot after the election. 63 of 67 counties participated in the RLA with Beaver, Green, Franklin, and Lancaster counties not participating. Note that Lancaster was among the problematic counties in Pennsylvania based on various statistical analyses. The RLA examined a sample of just 45,000 ballots.
No official report of the RLA can be found on the Secretary of State website or the votespa.com websites.
Conclusion 2: Sample size of the RLA was not sufficient to determine if Biden actually won and obviously provided a lesser degree of confidence than the first sample.
Voters do not want to be 95% or 99% confident in election results. They want to be 100% confident.
The only way to get to that level of confidence is a full forensic audit.
Lyin' Josh's lies about Mastriano's Audit
Shapiro -- without any factual basis to back it up -- claimed that Masrtiano's proposed audit is a sham. In a July statement, Shapiro claimed that the audit requires the state to turn over "confidential and privileged information."
More nonsense.
The materials requested from the county elections boards would not violate anyone's privacy as those records are publicly available already and Pennsylvania grants access to those records to ANYONE who requests them. Moreover, elections are a public matter and nothing about an election should be privileged and/or confidential.
You can alway tell when someone is afraid of the facts because they resort to attacking the messenger.
Like a good little Radical, Alyinskyite Shapiro resorted to tying Mastriano to Trump for the purpose of diminishing the audit, alleging it was for the purpose of "paying homage to former President Trump and further spread of misinformation about our elections." Lyin' Josh also called the audit a "partisan fishing expedition."
As I proved above, Shapiro is spreading misinformation merely by referring to recounts as "audits."
Shapiro's History of Lies and The Second Mile
The top lie in Shapiro's tweet is the first line.
"I promise you'll always get the truth from me."
That part of the tweet was immediately met by rebuttals from Penn State alumni (of both political parties) who reminded Shapiro of his "promise" to investigate a potential child sex trafficking operation that was allegedly tied to The Second Mile children's charity.
The Second Mile was founded and led by notorious serial child molester, Jerry Sandusky.
According to FBI expert Ken Lanning, pedophiles typically associate with other pedophiles. Sandusky was the only person arrested for child molestation after a 3 year investigation by the AG's office and the Pennsylvania State Police -- even though there were publicly known ties between The Second Mile and other children's youth organizations in the Keystone State.
In addition, there was considerable circumstantial evidence that adult mentors and some board members of the charity were engaged in inappropriate conduct with minors.
Some of Sandusky's victims, between 10-15 years old, claimed (in legal filings) they attended pool parties that were held at night at the home of the Director of The Second Mile's Board. Alcoholic beverages were served at these parties where children were mixing with adults.
For those of you unfamiliar with the case, Sandusky was found guilty of multiple counts of indecent assault -- in some instances for "feeling up" boys in pools and hot tubs.
Again, based on FBI expert Ken Lanning's experience, it is very likely that some of Sandusky's associates liked young boys (and young girls) too. Shapiro had a multiple leads to investigate to determine if The Second Mile was a front for a child sex trafficking ring based on the claims by victims that were unsealed in the Penn State University vs. Pennsylvania Manufacturer's Association case alone.
However, there was more evidence than just those filings.
A former assistant district attorney in Pennsylvania wrote on social media that there was "a lot of unnecessary touching" when she observed adult mentors working out in local gyms with Second Mile children.
And one of the more prominent board members was an advocate of the so-called "Friend Fitness" program and he spread (or attempted to spread) the high-risk (one on one) fitness mentorship program to other youth service organizations in Pennsylvania.
In his 2016 election run for attorney general, Lyin' Josh promised to investigate The Second Mile.
He never did -- instead turning a blind eye to these serious allegations.
In 2016, he refused to talk when questioned about his non-investigation. Instead, he deflected by stating that the AG's office was distributing $750 thousand of the charity's assets -- down from $12 million when the scandal hit in 2011.
What happened to all that money?
Shapiro isn't the least bit interested (nor are most PA politicians). But the financial statements of the charity show that a lot of money was "paid" to people for pushing dirt around a vacant lot.
Interestingly enough, PA GOP Senate leader Jake Corman never pressed Josh on his promise to investigate the charity -- and the reason why is obvious. Corman was a Board member.
In 2011, shortly after the Sandusky charges were announced, former Philadelphia DA Lynn Abraham announced that she was hired to conduct an internal review of the charity's procedures. However, that review never got off the ground and nothing came of it. Officials of The Second Mile, including Corman, sheepishly remarked that there was no reason for the probe because the charity was shutting down. Corman:
"Maybe that's just my misunderstanding. Maybe because the organization is clearly not going to continue, maybe that sort of review isn't necessary. I'm not on the board anymore, so I guess I don't have a lot of standing."
The evidence suggests that Corman was very likely relieved by Abraham's non-review.
IRS records show that Corman was a member of the charity's Board of Directors in reporting year 2008-2009. As such, he was part of the decision to allow Sandusky to continue as the top fundraiser and face of the charity in 2009 -- while Sandusky was under criminal investigation for sexual abuse of a children.
Parents, children and charity volunteers, including a local judge, were kept in the dark about the ongoing Sandusky investigation from November 2009 until November 2011. During that time, at least one child participant of the charity was victimized by Sandusky (according to court testimony and legal filings).
In a world where the law actually matters, Corman and other board members would have been charged with child endangerment.
It wouldn't surprise most astute political observers if Shapiro whipped up an overblown indictment of Corman for alleged involvement in a sex scandal. A sex scandal involving Corman could be a means of delegitimizing Mastriano's audit and the subpoenas authorized by the Senate.
It wouldn't be the first time the PA AG's office used that tactic.
Corman knows that's exactly what happened when then AG Tom Corbett (Republican) used an indictment to smear two innocent Penn State University (PSU) officials and get his nemesis, then PSU president Graham Spanier, fired.
It took PSU officials five years to eventually get the charges dismissed. Those charges were outside the statutes of limitations at the time they were filed.
Perhaps Corman's history with The Second Mile is behind his alleged delay on issuing subpoenas?
Whether Shapiro would go that far is unknown.
The Second Mile has been the "third rail" of Pennsylvania politics. Every politician and public figure that has been associated with the charity has met their political demise.
Former AG and Governor Tom Corbett, a Republican who initiated the probe, was the first incumbent governor ever defeated.
Corbett's AG successor, Democrat Kathleen Kane, investigated The Second Mile and became the target of former prosecutors and law enforcement officials. They eventually framed her for false swearing and leaking criminal history information. She was forced to step down, was disbarred, and sentenced to serve time in jail.
Bruce Castor (yes, the same Bruce Castor who defended Trump at impeachment) served as Acting AG after Kane was removed. However, as Kane's Solicitor he made a May 2016 statement that he was bothered by the events surrounding the charity "like a pebble in my shoe." He outlined what an investigation might look like. When Kane made her resignation official on August 17, 2016, Castor was sworn in that day. Two days after his swearing in, Governor Tom Wolf named former AG prosecutor Bruce Beemer to replace Castor.
Shapiro, who obviously believed the media lies about Kane's alleged crimes, naively promised to investigate The Second Mile as part of this 2016 campaign. That promise garnered him a substantial amount of GOP cross-over votes from Penn State University supporters.
However, it is likely Shapiro, like Kane before him, quickly learned that the corrupt forces in Pennsylvania weren't about to allow an investigation of Sandusky's vicim farm.
He chickened out.
Shapiro's 2020 Election Results Don't Make Sense
Interestingly enough, Shapiro's failure to hold up his 2016 campaign promise is not reflected in his 2020 vote totals.
Based on the tweet above, the Penn State folks haven't forgotten that he didn't keep his promise.
In fact, some Penn State alumni with significant clout actively campaigned AGAINST Shapiro. And some of these alumni were Democrats who worked on Joe Biden's campaign!
Shapiro obviously knows that an audit will expose that he (and Biden) didn't win the 2020 election.
The math, as always, tells the story. Here is what you need to know about the Pennsylvania AG race in the post-Sandusky era.
In 2012, Kane ran on the promise to investigate The Second Mile. She beat Obama's vote total by over 135K as many PSU Republicans crossed party lines to vote for her. The PSU republicans returned "home" for the down ballot races but Democrats eked out wins in those statewide contests. Of course, RINO Mitt Romney didn't get the support from the party base and was easily defeated by Obama.
In 2016, Shapiro similarly ran on the promise to investigate The Second Mile and beat Clinton's vote total by 130K votes under similar circumstances. Populist candidate Trump won the Presidential election in the Keystone State (despite vote rigging efforts by Clinton) and Democrats again eked out victories in statewide contests with the exception of Pat Toomey edging Democrat opponent Katy McGinty.
Shapiro didn't follow through on his 2016 campaign promise and PSU supporters -- Democrats and Republicans alike - waged an anti-Shapiro campaign in 2020. But somehow, without approximately 130K votes in crossover GOP support and abandonment by Democrat PSU supporters, Shapiro won his contest in a runaway.
Suspicious.
It's also suspicious that Shapiro got approximately 2 million of 2.7 million write-in votes (or 74%) when Democrats mailed in only 64% of the write-in votes and independents added another 10.1%. Shapiro had more abandonment by Democrats than Biden and he obviously got less cross-over GOP support.
The Republicans on the down ballot, Auditor General Timothy DeFoor and Treasurer Stacy Garrity won by 208K and 52K votes, respectively -- getting over 600,000 write in votes while Trump and AG candidate Heather Heidelbaugh were well under 600,000.
| Absentee Votes | President | Attorney General | Auditor General | Treasurer |
| Democrat | 1,995,691 | 1,941,485 | 1,802,782 | 1,842,039 |
| Republican | 595,538 | 574,052 | 660,030 | 636,780 |
| Libertarian | 24,783 | 33,501 | 58,510 | 42,863 |
| Green | 453* | 30,491 | 33,834 | 38,034 |
| Source: https://www.electionreturns.pa.gov/ | ||||
| As of 12/14/2020 10:48:52 AM EST | ||||
And then there's the discrepancy of the Green Party candidate getting 30,000 votes less than his same party associates.
There is nothing clean about the absentee voting in Pennsylvania.
If Corman were smart, he'd be dropping those subpoenas tomorrow in order to prove that neither Shapiro nor Biden won Pennsylvania's 2020 election.
If Shapiro pulls the trigger to go after Corman over The Second Mile, the Senate leader can easily refute the charges as legally fraudulent (i.e., outside the statute of limitations) and call out Shapiro for a politically motivated prosecution.
Ray Blehar, August 12, 2021, 12:35 PM EDT
Updated: August 12, 2021 at 5:10 PM EDT and 11:45PM EDT to correct original sample sizes for Allegheny and Philadelphia counties, add correct sample sizes for highly populated counties, and provide a total for the correct sample state-wide.
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