This GOP state Senator and potential 2022 gubernatorial candidate is speaking out against the push for a “forensic audit” of the 2020 election results in Pennsylvania.

State Sen. Dan Laughlin (R-Erie) penned an op-ed on Thursday slamming the effort pushed by allies of former President Donald Trump in Pennsylvania by calling it “absent of credible evidence of fraud” and saying it will “only further the paranoid atmospherics, poisoning both parties.” 

“The current attempt to discredit the 2020 election results runs headlong into an unmistakable truth. While Donald Trump narrowly lost Pennsylvania, the same ballots secured Republican control of the State Senate and House, sent several incumbent Democrats packing, and did so amid record turnout and an expanded voting franchise,” Laughlin wrote. 

“For the first time in 60 years, Pennsylvanians elected Republicans to the post of state treasurer and auditor general and came within reach of ousting a Democratic attorney general,” he continued. “That’s not a sign of a stolen election.”

“Donald Trump lost Pennsylvania because Donald Trump received fewer votes,” Laughlin wrote. “Republicans won the state House and Senate because we had a better message.”

Laughlin continues in the op-ed to criticize the “forensic audit” in Arizona, promotes positions he believes that Republicans or Democrats could support, blasts Gov. Tom Wolf’s administration, and touts “leaders like Hugh Scott, Bill Scranton, Tom Ridge and Pat Toomey.”

In early June, three GOP state lawmakers, including state Sen. Doug Mastriano (R-Franklin), who is a potential candidate for governor, visited Arizona to view how they’re conducting a “forensic audit” of the 2020 election. 

A few days later, Trump issued a statement lauding those lawmakers for supporting an audit of the results in the Keystone State and applied pressure to two other GOP leaders in the state Senate to greenlight the operation.

Trump re-upped those calls just 10 days later in June, while also singling out Senate President Pro Tempore Jake Corman (R-Centre) and state Sen. David Argall (R-Schuylkill), who is the Chair of the Senate State Government Committee, and accused them of being “Radical Left Democrat.”

Argall has since issued his support for a “forensic election audit” in the state, while it remains unclear if Corman would back the effort. 

In early July, Mastriano sent letters to Philadelphia, Tioga, and York counties requesting election equipment needed for a “forensic investigation.”

Tioga and York counties have since responded by saying that they will not cooperate with the request for the election equipment and Reuters reports that Philadelphia is “also expected to reject Mastriano’s request.”