Behind the fascist scenes
By 
The Philadelphia Inquirer was able to obtain the emails sent between various MAGA Republican public officials in Pennsylvania because one filed a frivolous lawsuit against a newspaper:
Emails among Pennsylvania state representatives and senators are generally not considered public record under the state’s Right-to-Know law. These communications recently surfaced as a result of a defamation lawsuit that State Sen. Dan Laughlin filed last year against the Erie Reader and one of its contributing editors over an opinion piece.
By suing the weekly newspaper, Laughlin, an Erie County Republican,opened the door to legal discovery — and depositions — that unearthed otherwise confidential communications.
In addition to a couple of Mastriano emails referencing his conversations with Trump, other emails point to disagreements within the GOP about challenging the results of the election.
We see again a familiar dynamic in which less-insane Republicans are willing to criticize authoritarian tacits in private but not in public:
For instance, Laughlin privately scoffed at a lawsuit filed by Republican U.S. Rep. Mike Kelly, one of Trump’s top supporters, seeking to disenfranchise about 2.6 million voters by throwing out every mail-in ballot in Pennsylvania.
“We’re not saying a word on this crap,” Laughlin wrote from his iPhone on Dec. 8, 2020. “Mike Kelly is hurting our party right now.”
Kelly’s legal challenge was unanimously rejected by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. The U.S. Supreme Court later unanimously declined to hear the case on appeal.
Laughlin’s email made for an awkward moment last month in Pittsburgh, when Kelly was deposed by a lawyer representing the Erie Reader, according to a deposition transcript reviewed by The Inquirer.
“Do you know what he means when he says ‘this crap’?” the lawyer asked Kelly, who responded: “No, I don’t … Nobody’s ever said this to me in person. I don’t know. I’ve never seen this e-mail before right now.”
Kelly, who said he has a cordial relationship with Laughlin and has campaigned with him, raised doubts about whether Laughlin had actually written the emails.
“I know what’s written here, but I don’t know that this is — he’s never said this to me directly,” Kelly said, according to the transcript.
The punchline is when pundits then blame Democrats for MAGA cranks winning Pennsylvania primaries.
At least some people get it:
The new emails also include a sampling of the backlash Laughlin received from constituents for supporting the Texas lawsuit.
“You should be ashamed,” one man wrote. “Think about what you did. You are clearly a sad Trump suck up as well as an idiot.”