HARRISBURG, Pennsylvania (AP) — A Pennsylvania state senator and former Republican gubernatorial candidate whose support for Donald Trump propelled him to the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 has sued a Canadian university and nearly two dozen academics for criticizing him and his research on World War II hero Sergeant Alvin York.
In his defamation, organized crime and antitrust lawsuit filed in federal court in western Oklahoma, Senator Doug Mastriano is seeking at least $10 million in damages from the defendants, which include history professors and the University of New Brunswick.
One of the defendants filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit on Thursday, arguing that the suit violates an Oklahoma state law prohibiting lawsuits seeking to stifle public debate, raises a legally untenable defamation claim, and says Mastriano is attempting to “stretch antitrust and racketeering laws beyond recognition to silence critics of his scientific work.”
Against his research statements, experts on World War I history and York – and a faculty member at the Canadian university on the awarding of his degree – voiced a reaction that appeared in an Associated Press article in March 2021. Mastriano, with the support of former President Trump, lost the Pennsylvania gubernatorial election the following year by nearly 15 percentage points to Democrat Josh Shapiro.
York was awarded the Medal of Honor for leading U.S. soldiers behind German lines in France during World War I to stop machine gun fire. More than 20 German soldiers were killed and 132 captured. A film about York’s exploits won Gary Cooper an Oscar for best actor, and the story was immortalized in comic books.
Mastriano is represented by Republican attorney Dan Cox of Emmitsburg, Maryland. Cox lost Maryland’s gubernatorial election in 2022 and spent most of 2023 as Mastriano’s chief of staff in the state Senate, making $46 an hour. Cox and Mastriano did not respond to messages seeking comment.
In their motion to dismiss the lawsuit, University of New Brunswick administrators and staff described it as “a dispute over academic protocol that should have been resolved by an education committee but was instead trumped up as an international conspiracy.” They argued that Mastriano’s claim that he was personally harmed was not the kind of anti-competitive harm required for an antitrust lawsuit.
Mastriano, the university defendants say, “does not specifically state what he claims is false and defamatory about the alleged statements.” They called the lawsuit “vague, inferential, and completely incomprehensible.”
University representatives and lawyers did not respond to requests for comment.
In response, Mastriano argued in a lawsuit that he “does not have to repeat the defamation word for word and thereby become a disseminator of falsehoods himself in order to effectively assert a defamation claim.”
The lawsuit, filed in May, describes Mastriano as “a victim of a multi-year criminal and antitrust enterprise that sought to steal, use and then expose his work in order to deprive him of capital and market,” which cost Mastriano millions in “tourism-related events, recognized museum pieces, book, media, television and film deals.” He says his publisher has “severely reduced publications” and halted potential second printings of his books.
He claims he was denied university positions, his book sales declined, and the criticism affected his short-lived interest in running for the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate in 2024. As a result, he says, he has endured “sleepless nights, physical illness, and extreme emotional pain and suffering.”
The lawsuit states that Mastriano was “rated 100 percent disabled by the VA,” but the retired colonel does not explain how his service in the U.S. Army “severely affected” him.
He sued University of New Brunswick President Paul Mazerolle and Professor David MaGee, the university’s vice president for research, as well as Professor Drew Rendall, who published Mastriano’s dissertation based on his research on York just months before Pennsylvania’s 2022 gubernatorial election.
Another defendant is James Gregory, a graduate student at the University of Oklahoma and researcher of World War I and York history who filed a complaint of academic fraud against Mastriano at the University of New Brunswick. Gregory is now director of the William A. Brookshire LSU Military Museum in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
“Mastriano claims that voters have linked Gregory’s criticism of Mastriano’s scholarship to their decision not to vote for him on multiple occasions,” Gregory argued in the motion to dismiss. “That is not an antitrust violation – it is democracy.”
The University of New Brunswick is currently reviewing the events surrounding its decision to award Mastriano a doctorate in 2013 for his York research and set up a commission of inquiry that worked away from the public eye. Mastriano sued three people he said made up the commission, and they argued in court that the case should be dismissed.
Mastriano said he was in regular contact with Trump in the months following his defeat in the 2020 election, trying to overturn the outcome. Mastriano was scheduled to speak on the steps of the U.S. Capitol in the early afternoon of Jan. 6 and had organized charter buses to Trump’s speech. He was also photographed in the crowd outside the Capitol. Mastriano has maintained he broke no laws and has not been charged.
