Doug Mastriano

Mastriano won the state senate seat for the 33rd District the following year in a special election.

In 2022, he won the Republican nomination for governor and lost to Democrat Josh Shapiro in the general election.

Mastriano is a prominent figure in fundamentalist Christian nationalism and has called the separation of church and state a myth.

He has made social media posts referencing QAnon and has spoken at events that promoted QAnon and 9/11 conspiracy theories.

Douglas Vincent Mastriano (born January 2, 1964) is an American far-right politician and retired military officer who has served in the Pennsylvania Senate since 2019, representing the 33rd district.

A member of the Republican Party, he was also the party's nominee in the 2022 Pennsylvania gubernatorial election.

Mastriano was born in New Brunswick, New Jersey, on January 2, 1964, the son of Italian Americans Richard L. and Janice C. (Bono) Mastriano.

Raised in Hightstown, New Jersey, he graduated from Hightstown High School in 1982.

He was a member of the Boy Scouts of America and obtained the rank of Eagle Scout.

He then attended Mercer County Community College, where he was a member of Psi Beta and Phi Theta Kappa.

Mastriano himself has said that he did not grow up in a "strong Christian family", but was led to embrace religion as a teenager by an "on-fire youth pastor" after being invited to a youth group called "The Way".

Born in New Jersey, Mastriano served in the United States Army from 1986 to 2017 and attained the rank of colonel.

In 1986, Mastriano received a bachelor's degree in history from Eastern College.

While at Eastern, he participated in the Reserve Officers' Training Corps.

Mastriano was deployed to Iraq for Operation Desert Storm in 1991.

Mastriano received a master's degree in strategic intelligence from the Joint Intelligence College in 1992.

He served at the DLIFLC in Monterey, California, as the company commander of Alpha company from 1995 to 1996.

Mastriano then was in Washington, DC, in the 3rd Infantry Division and US Army Europe.

His education also includes a master's degree in airpower theory from the Air University in 2001.

In 2002, he received a master's degree in military operational art and science from the Air University's School of Advanced Air and Space Studies.

He received a master's degree in strategic studies from the United States Army War College in 2010.

He ended his military career as a faculty instructor in the Department of Military Strategy at the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, during 2012–2017, and retired in 2017 at the rank of colonel.

In 2013, Mastriano completed a Ph.D. in history from the University of New Brunswick.

During his 2022 run for Governor of Pennsylvania, formal complaints were made to the University of New Brunswick (UNB) about potential academic fraud contained in his book published about Alvin York.

As Mastriano's book on York was heavily based on his Ph.D. thesis, this eventually prompted the university to launch an investigation to determine if his history Ph.D. awarded in 2013 was fraudulent.

The complaint cited 213 allegations of potential academic misconduct contained in Mastriano's doctoral thesis.

Regarding the incident, Jeffrey Brown, a UNB associate professor who was listed on Mastriano's doctoral dissertation, said that "[Mastriano] was awarded a Ph.D. on very shaky grounds."

Brown also said that Mastriano's work was "dishonest, sloppy, ... and indifferent to facts that contradicted his claims".

James Gregory, an educator and a history PhD candidate, has found more than 150 problems with Mastriano's doctoral thesis and has said it amounts to "academic fraud".

Mastriano claimed that the accusations were made due to his political beliefs, stating that he "did have concerns that some of the left-leaning professors there would hold [his] politics or [his] military background against [him].” In May 2023, the University of New Brunswick appointed three professors from other institutions to review Mastriano's dissertation for academic fraud. The committee's final report was not made public.

After college, Mastriano was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the United States Army and assigned to the Military Intelligence Corps.

After initial training, he started his career in Nuremberg, Germany, with the 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment in the area of the West German borders with East Germany and Czechoslovakia.

Mastriano also spent four years at the NATO Land Headquarters in Heidelberg, Germany.

He ran for U.S. Congress in Pennsylvania's 13th congressional district in 2018, where he finished fourth in the primary.

While a Major at Air University, Mastriano wrote a thesis titled "The Civilian Putsch of 2018: Debunking the Myth of a Civil-Military Leadership Rift".

In the thesis, Mastriano writes from a perspective of a colonel, like himself, who is forced to hide out in a cave because a politically correct leader has taken over America and killed millions.

On February 13, 2018, at the Otterbein Church in Waynesboro, Pennsylvania, Mastriano announced his candidacy for U.S. representative for PA's 9th congressional district, a seat being vacated by the retiring congressman Bill Shuster.

An election denier and self-professed close ally of former president Donald Trump, Mastriano received national attention for his efforts to overturn the 2020 United States presidential election.

He attended Trump's January 6 rally in Washington, D.C., prior to Trump supporters' storming of the United States Capitol, and was seen on video passing through Capitol Police barriers after they had been breached by others in the crowd.

Mastriano was subpoenaed by the United States House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack in February 2022, but stopped cooperating with the Select Committee the following August.