In combative news conference, Rep. Mike Kelly responds to claims of pardon, fake electors

U.S. Rep. Mike Kelly on Friday challenged the veracity of a recent column written by the Erie County Democratic Party chairman and urged his opponent in the upcoming midterm election to condemn what he called "blatant lies."

Kelly, of Butler, R-16th Dist., however, was met with allegations of spreading lies of his own — about the outcome of the 2020 presidential election — from those political foes. And when asked by members of the Erie news media to address his past statements on the election and his office's recently alleged role in a false elector scheme aimed at overturning the election, the six-term congressman deflected and denied.

"We're at a point in this country where people are losing their faith and confidence and trust in our system," Kelly told the media Friday morning. "And when people can print whatever they print, whenever they want to print it and it be a blatant, outright lie, and then sit back to see how you're going respond to it, my response to it is they don't deserve a response."

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Kelly calls Wertz article false

Kelly had already issued an unsolicited response and requested the media's presence Friday morning at his Erie campaign office to further denounce a recent column in the Erie Reader written by Erie County Democratic Party Chairman Jim Wertz, who is a contributing editor to the free alternative newspaper and news website.

Wertz, in the article "Erie At Large: A Congressman and a State Senator Walk Into a Bar," addressed — in his words — how Kelly and state Sen. Dan Laughlin, R-49th Dist., Erie, "both found their way onto Donald Trump's pardon request list for their roles in attempting to overturn election results in 2020."

In the opinion piece, Wertz explains how on Jan. 11, 2021, Alabama Rep. Mo Brooks emailed Molly Michael, former President Donald Trump's then-executive assistant, asking Trump to issue general "all-purpose" pardons to any lawmaker who either opposed the certification of the Electoral College votes from Pennsylvania or Arizona or who signed an amicus brief in an election-related lawsuit filed by Texas against several states, including Pennsylvania.

That would include Kelly and Laughlin, even though their names or the names of others aren't specifically stated in Brooks' pardon request.

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The Texas lawsuit aimed to challenge the 2020 presidential election results in key battleground states because, the suit alleged, they violated the U.S. Constitution by making changes to election law through non-legislative means.

That's where Laughlin comes in. Though Laughlin supported Act 77 of 2019, the bipartisan election reform bill that allowed Pennsylvanians to cast no-excuse, mail-in ballots, he joined other state GOP lawmakers in signing what's known as a friend-of-the-court brief, or amicus curiae, in the Texas lawsuit. The brief asked the U.S. Supreme Court to also rule on the role Gov. Tom Wolf's administration and the Pennsylvania Supreme Court played when they extended by three days the deadline for county boards of elections to receive mail-in ballots in order for them to be counted. They argued that the Wolf administration and the state high court had usurped the authority of the GOP-controlled General Assembly.

At the time, Laughlin said he was not claiming there was fraud in the election and was not attempting to overturn the results by signing the document.

Kelly, as it has been widely reported, filed lawsuits against Act 77, saying that permitting no-excuse, mail-in voting required lawmakers to change the state's constitution, which did not happen. It was among the reasons Kelly objected to the certification of Pennsylvania's Electoral College votes, which gave President Joe Biden enough votes to defeat Trump.

Brooks' letter was sent five days after Congress certified the election results, the same day scores of Trump supporters violently forced their way into the U.S. Capitol in an effort to disrupt the proceedings.

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Wertz defends his claims

A statement from Kelly's office sent to the media early Friday said Kelly never asked Trump for a pardon. He had no reason to, the statement said. Kelly noted that he's considering filing a lawsuit against the Erie Reader.

But instead of stating what was inaccurate about Wertz's column, he said it was the job of the local media to vet the article.

"The chairman of the Democrat party in Erie is the author of a blatant lie. And you want me to reply to it? Shame on it. Shame on it."

"Didn't you call the press conference?" the Erie Times-News asked.

Wertz issued a statement in response to Kelly's remarks and then called a news conference of his own Friday at Democratic headquarters. Defending his column, Wertz called it "well-researched" and said he took care to include links to source information in the online version.

"Mike Kelly said this morning that he never requested a pardon in an attempt to refute what I had written in the Erie Reader," Wertz said, with fellow Democrats standing behind him. "The problem with that statement is that I never said in this article that Mike Kelly requested a pardon. It appears that he failed to actually read the article."

Kelly wanted Dan Pastore, the Fairview businessman who won the May 17 Democratic primary for an opportunity to face Kelly in November, to refute Wertz's piece.

"At the end of the day, the truth should count and character should count," Kelly said. "And so if I have an opponent (Pastore) that sits back and doesn't respond to it and says, 'oh, I think that's OK, because it's a piece of attacking, they're attacking my opponent' ... are you kidding me?"

But when the Erie Times-News questioned Kelly about his own past statements about the 2020 election, the car dealership owner wouldn't directly answer.

Asked if he still believed that the election was stolen from Trump, Kelly responded, "Well, we're already what, almost two years into this administration? So I think that's past tense. There's no use discussing it today. Nothing's going to change today. I stated my opinions back when it took place."

Kelly, however, brought it up about two months ago.

At a rally with Trump in support of GOP Senate candidate Mehmet Oz on May 6, Kelly called the 2020 presidential election "the greatest steal in American history," but there is no evidence that the election was stolen or that there was widespread fraud.

Kelly has not been swayed by the findings of the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection and Trump's efforts to overturn the election. That's because Kelly hasn't paid attention to the hearings, he said.

"It's a sham," he said.

The hearings have included the testimony of former Trump administration officials, including former Attorney General William Barr, who have said under oath that they saw no evidence of election fraud.

Kelly would, later in Friday's news conference, say that the basis for his objection to certify Pennsylvania's Electoral College vote was because he believed Act 77 was unconstitutional. Kelly did not bring a lawsuit against Act 77 until after the general election, though. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear his lawsuit.

Fake electors claims

Kelly on Friday also said he was unaware of reports that have shed more light on his office's alleged role in a scheme to introduce slates of fake electors from key battleground states to Vice President Mike Pence during the election proceedings. The House select committee investigating the events of Jan. 6 has made the scheme part of its focus of the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

As Politico, The Hill and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel have reported, a Trump campaign official, Mike Roman, allegedly asked Kelly's then-Chief of Staff Matt Stroia to get slates of electors for Wisconsin and Michigan to Sen. Ron Johnson's office. Stroia, as Politico reported, asked another Kelly staffer, who also no longer works for the congressman, to take the paperwork to Johnson's chief of staff.

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Despite Kelly's office claiming to have conducted an internal investigation into the matter, Kelly himself said he was not aware of reports of Stroia's alleged role. Kelly said he had not discussed the matter with his current Chief of Staff Tim Butler, who was quoted in Politico:

“Matthew got the information,” Butler, said in an interview with the publication, reported on July 15. “There was another staffer here in the office who was asked to physically walk it over. And it’s just those two individuals that were involved.”

A 'non-event'

Kelly called the alleged exchange a "non-event" because the slates were never given to Pence.

When first asked about the issue at his news conference, Kelly's first response was, "We've already responded to it."

"Not to us," a reporter from Erie News Now replied.

Kelly has also not accepted interview requests in recent weeks on the matter from the Erie Times-News.

Kelly said the Democrats and Pastore should focus on high inflation, record-high gas prices and the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan this past August, among other issues.

"All this action is about distraction," he said, challenging Pastore to condemn Wertz's remarks.

Pastore issued a challenge of his own Friday. In a statement, he called on Kelly to release phone records, emails, text messages between Kelly and his staff and anyone who served in the Trump Administration or his reelection campaign, and the "various groups that organized rallies that falsely claimed the 2020 election was stolen" between Election Day and the Jan. 6 insurrection.

“If Mike Kelly won’t take this simple step to be transparent, there is absolutely no reason to believe anything he says," Pastore said in the statement.

Contact reporter Matthew Rink at mrink@timesnews.com or on Twitter at @ETNRink.

This article originally appeared on Erie Times-News: Rep. Mike Kelly speaks in Erie about claims of pardons and fake electors