PENNSYLVANIA — A new report from WESA reveals that just two weeks after telling Pennsylvania reporters that he didn’t want to relitigate past results, Sean Parnell went on a conservative podcast and said he supported a ‘forensic audit’ of the 2020 election — this is the latest demonstration that Parnell will say whatever he thinks will help his political ambitions as the Republicans’ U.S. Senate primary intensifies.
Republican Sean Parnell hopes to win the U.S. Senate race in 2022, but it’s not clear whether he believes Pennsylvanians should trust the outcome of the last major election. Just a few weeks after saying he didn’t want to relitigate past results, he said on a conservative podcast that he supported a “forensic audit” of the 2020 election in Pennsylvania.
When Parnell announced his Senate campaign, he was asked by reporters if he believed the 2020 election was stolen, and said he didn’t “want to relitigate 2020. We did everything we could, we fought our hearts out, and at the end of the day, Joe Biden’s sitting in the White House. So right now I’m laser-focused on winning Pennsylvania in 2022.”
But less than two weeks later, Parnell was a guest on Steve Bannon’s podcast, where he spoke warmly of a controversial Republican-driven review of ballots in Arizona, and backed a “forensic audit” of the 2020 election in Pennsylvania.
***
There is no evidence of any widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election, and the Arizona audit has been denounced even by some Republicans. It is also not clear how an audit of 2016 would have precluded investigations into Russian influence, which focused on attempts to shape public opinion through hacking Democratic Party computers and other efforts.
***
“Clearly failed congressional candidate Sean Parnell can’t move past the 2020 election and respect that the people of Pennsylvania didn’t want him to represent them,” said state party communications advisor Jack Doyle said in a statement Tuesday. “This Republican primary is already filled with fringe conspiracies and MAGA purity tests instead of the issues that Pennsylvanians actually care about.”
###