Doug Mastriano prayed for Trump to ‘seize the power’ before Capitol attack

A week before the Capitol attack, on a video call organised by a member of a Christian nationalist group, a Pennsylvania state senator who is the Republican candidate for governor in the battleground state prayed that supporters of Donald Trump would “seize the power” on 6 January 2021.

Doug Mastriano attended the pro-Trump rally in Washington that day, after which supporters, told by Trump to “fight like hell” to overturn his election defeat, stormed Congress in an attempt to stop certification of Joe Biden’s victory.

The riot was linked to nine deaths, including suicides in the aftermath of the attack among law enforcement.

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Mastriano denies crossing police lines at the Capitol and affiliations with Christian nationalist groups. He is now one of a number of Republican candidates for state positions with sway over elections who support Trump’s lie that his 2020 defeat was the result of voter fraud.

Two months from election day, the polling website fivethirtyeight.com puts Mastriano just shy of seven points behind his Democratic opponent.

Mastriano’s 6 January prayer, first reported by Rolling Stone on Friday, was delivered during a Zoom call, titled Global Prayer for Election Integrity, organised by what the magazine called “a prominent figure in the far-right New Apostolic Restoration movement”.

As defined by Rolling Stone, “Christian nationalism is a central tenet of … NAR [which] emerge[ed] from charismatic Christianity (think: Pentecostalism) and is anchored in the belief that we are living in an age of new apostles and prophets, who receive direct revelations from the holy spirit.

“NAR adherents hold that the end times are fast approaching and their calling is to hasten the second coming of Christ by re-fashioning the modern world in a biblical manner.”

Mastriano is a US army veteran who once dressed up as a Confederate soldier. In his prayer, he listed historical events including the battle of Gettysburg in 1863 and the crash of United Airlines Flight 93, the plane which came down in a field in Pennsylvania on 9/11, after passengers attacked their hijackers.

He said: “In 2001, while our nation was attacked by terrorists, a strong Christian man from Paramus, New Jersey, Todd Beamer, said, ‘Let’s roll.’

“God I ask you that you help us roll in these dark times, that we fear not the darkness, that we will seize our Esther and Gideon moments. That … when you say, ‘Who shall I send?’ we will say, ‘Send me and not him or her’, we will take responsibility for our republic and not waver in these days that try our souls.

“We’re surrounded by wickedness and fear and dithering and inaction. But that’s not our problem. Our problem is following your lead.”

In the weeks before the Capitol attack, Mastriano was involved in failed attempts to overturn Trump’s defeat in Pennsylvania, the announcement of which confirmed Biden’s electoral college win.

On the Zoom call, Mastriano displayed what he said were “letters that President Trump asked me this morning to send to [Senate Republican leader] Mitch McConnell and [House leader] Kevin McCarthy, outlining the fraud in Pennsylvania, and this will embolden them to stand firm and disregard what has happened in Pennsylvania until they have an investigation”.

He also said: “We think about our elected officials in Pennsylvania who’ve been weak and feckless and we’ve handed over our power to a governor” – Tom Wolf, a Democrat – “who disregards the freedoms of this republic.

“I pray that we’ll take responsibility, we’ll seize the power that we had given to us by the constitution, and as well by you providentially. I pray for the leaders and also in the federal government, God, on the sixth of January that they will rise up with boldness.”

After the Capitol riot, when Congress reconvened, McCarthy was one of 138 Republican congressmen and nine senators who voted to object to results in Pennsylvania or Arizona or both.