ERIE, Pa. (AP) — A group of Pennsylvania nuns says a conservative political organizer posted “false and misleading information” about them by claiming no one lives at their home in Erie and making vague threats to consult his lawyers about them.
The Benedictine Sisters of Erie put out a news release this week in response to the post by Cliff Maloney that said someone working with him had knocked on the door of their monastery “and NO ONE lives there.”
They certainly do, according to the religious group.
“We want to call Cliff Maloney to account for his blatantly false post that accuses our sisters of fraud,” they said. “We do live at Mount Saint Benedict Monastery and a simple web search would alert him to our active presence in a number of ministries in Erie.”
Maloney’s group, PA Chase, pays people to knock on doors in an effort to drive up Republican turnout and use of mail-in ballots. Messages seeking comment were left on Friday for Maloney and for Citizens Alliance Pennsylvania, a Lemoyne-based conservative group connected to PA Chase.
The nuns say they, too, have been consulting lawyers and want "to be on public record as having called out this fraud so that if the outcome of next month’s election is contested in Pennsylvania our integrity will not be called into question.”
Names of 53 nuns were posted online, but the nuns say there are currently 55 of them living there, and that three of the 53 on the video of names that Maloney put on X no longer live there.
Maloney later posted on X that if the nuns are legal voters “then I encourage them to participate in their right to vote,” adding that “right now, we've got our legal team continuing to analyze the situation.”
Sister Linda Romey, who coordinates the nuns' communications and development efforts, said Friday: “I mean, there's nothing to analyze." And with news crews filming them in recent days, she said “there's plenty of proof that we're here.”
Romey said the nuns feel Maloney violated their privacy.
“They immediately post something without a simple question being asked,” Romey said.
The nuns' moment in the political spotlight drew a phone call from Al Schmidt, who as secretary of state is Pennsylvania's highest ranking elections official. Schmidt posted on X on Thursday that he spoke with the monastery's prioress “to thank her for standing up to election disinformation.”
The Associated Press
