- Former DC police officer Michael Fanone is backing Pennsylvania Democrat John Fetterman for Senate.
- Fanone accused Republican candidate Dr. Mehmet Oz of filling his campaign with "election deniers."
On television, celebrity doctor Mehmet Oz has portrayed himself as someone who will stand up for law and order — and to extremists on both sides of the aisle.
But the Republican candidate for Senate in Pennsylvania, who rallied this past weekend with former President Donald Trump, has also staffed his campaign with people who fought to overturn the 2020 election, Rolling Stone reported last month. Oz's election night party will also be hosted at an athletic club in the Philadelphia suburbs whose owner, a major Republican donor, paid to bus people to Washington, DC, on January 6.
Former Washington Metropolitan Police Department Officer Michael Fanone says that makes him unfit for office.
"Oz has filled his campaign ranks with election deniers and even participants in the January 6th attack on our Capitol," Michael Fanone said in a video released Monday by the campaign of Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, a Democrat. "Oz is not the independent voice he claims to be. He is a mouthpiece for Donald Trump and his hate-filled, violent rhetoric. Pennsylvanians deserve a representative committed to our democratic process and one who respects the rule of law."
Fanone was working the day of the January 6, 2021 insurrection, when pro-Trump rioters stormed the US Capitol to block the certification of President Joe Biden's victory in the 2020 election. He was beaten by a mob of rioters and suffered both a concussion and a heart attack. He resigned from the police force in December 2021.
As reported by Rolling Stone, an Oz campaign coordinator, Lee Snover, admitted that on January 6 she went as far as "the Capitol steps." Oz adviser Josh Bashline also attended the "Stop the Steal" rally in Washington that day.
The Oz campaign did not respond to a request for comment. In the past, the campaign has not responded to requests for clarification on the candidate's view of the 2020 election: In April, Oz said "we cannot move on" from the election, which Trump has falsely claimed was stolen, but in September said he "would not have objected" to certifying the results, CBS News reported.
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