Pennsylvania state senator sues critics of his book about World War I hero Sergeant York

HARRISBURG — A Pennsylvania state senator and former Republican candidate for governor whose support of Donald Trump brought him to the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 is suing a Canadian university and nearly two dozen academics for criticizing him and his research on World War I hero Sergeant Alvin York.

Senator Doug Mastriano’s defamation, extortion and antitrust lawsuit, filed in western Oklahoma federal court, seeks at least $10 million in damages from defendants, including history professors and the University of New Brunswick.

The motion to dismiss, filed Thursday by one of the defendants, argued that the case violates an Oklahoma law prohibiting lawsuits that seek to stifle public debate, that it contains a defamation claim that is not legally enforceable and that Mastriano is trying to stretch antitrust and racketeering laws “beyond limits to silence critics of his scientific work.”

Critical reaction to his research claims from World War I history experts and York — as well as from a Canadian university faculty member about how he was awarded the degree — was the subject of a March 2021 Associated Press article. Mastriano, backed by former President Trump, lost the Pennsylvania governor’s race the following year to Democrat Josh Shapiro by nearly 15 percentage points.

York was awarded the Medal of Honor for leading American 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 heroism earned Gary Cooper an Oscar for Best Actor, and the story has been commemorated in comics.

Mastriano is represented by Emmitsburg, Maryland, attorney Dan Cox, a Republican who lost the 2022 Maryland gubernatorial election and spent most of 2023 as Mastriano’s state Senate chief of staff for $46 an hour. Cox and Mastriano did not respond to messages seeking comment.

In seeking dismissal of the case, University of New Brunswick administrators and staff called it “a dispute over academic protocol that should have been resolved by an education committee but instead was portrayed as an international conspiracy.” They argued that Mastriano’s allegation that he was personally harmed is not the type of competitive harm required to bring an antitrust claim.

Mastriano, the university defendants said, “did not make the precise allegations he alleged were false and defamatory regarding the statements” they allegedly made. They called the lawsuit “vague, general, and completely incomprehensible.”

University representatives and lawyers did not respond to requests for comment.

In response, Mastriano argued in a written statement that he “does not have to recite the defamation verbatim, thus becoming his own disseminator of that which is false, in order to successfully pursue his defamation rights.”

The lawsuit, filed in May, describes Mastriano as “the victim of a multi-year fraud and antitrust enterprise that sought to steal, exploit, and then subvert his work, taking away his equity and market,” which has cost Mastriano millions in “tourism events, approved museum artifacts, book, media, television, and film deals.” It says his publisher has “significantly curtailed publications” and put a hold on possible second editions of his books.

He claims he was blocked from getting university job offers, that his book sales plummeted and that the criticism affected his short-lived interest in running for the Republican Party nomination for the U.S. Senate in 2024. As a result, he says, he endured “sleepless nights, physical illness, and extreme emotional pain and suffering.”

The lawsuit says Mastriano “has been deemed 100 percent disabled by the Veterans Administration (VA),” but the retired colonel did not explain how his service in the U.S. military “took such a heavy toll on 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, months before the 2022 Pennsylvania gubernatorial election, made public Mastriano’s dissertation based on his research on York.

Another defendant is James Gregory, who, as a student and researcher of World War I history at the University of Oklahoma and York, filed a complaint of academic fraud against Mastriano at the University of New Brunswick. Gregory is currently the director of the William A. Brookshire LSU Military Museum in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

“Mastriano claims that voters ‘linked’ Gregory’s criticism of Mastriano’s scholarship to their decisions not to vote for him on several occasions,” Gregory argued in his motion to dismiss. “This is not an antitrust violation — it’s democracy.”

The University of New Brunswick investigated the events surrounding the decision to award Mastriano a doctorate in 2013 for his research at York, appointing a commission of inquiry whose work was conducted out of public view. Mastriano sued three people he said made up the commission, and they also argued in court that the case should be dismissed.

Mastriano said he was in regular contact with Trump in the months after Trump lost the 2020 election and sought to overturn the results. Mastriano was scheduled to speak on the steps of the U.S. Capitol in the early afternoon of Jan. 6 and organized buses for 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.