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Platner's Guru Daniel Moraff Asked Me to Lie for Him (I Didn't)
https://paydayreport.com/platners-guru-daniel-moraff-asked-me-to-lie-for-him-i-didnt/
In the news about Graham Platner, one name keeps coming up that is familiar to those of us in Pittsburgh: Daniel Moraff. The Wall Street Journal labeled Moraff “The ‘Mad Scientist’ Behind Graham Platner’s Scandal-Plagued Rise.” Moraff recruited Platner after seeing a video of him advocating for Frenchman Bay. Moraff told The Wall Street Journal that he spent only a few days vetting Platner, but was convinced that he was the guy they needed after seeing only a video of him.
I first got to know Moraff when he worked on Summer Lee’s first campaign for state representative. Later, he was dismissed from Summer’s campaign for reasons that were never entirely clear to me, and it remains a subject of debate here. I didn’t know Moraff well, but would occasionally see him around town. We weren’t close friends, but when we ran into each other, we would often talk politics and share a few laughs. As a journalist, I saw him as a source, not a friend.
In September of 2022, I was down in Rio de Janeiro when I received a message from Moraff saying he needed to speak to me urgently. I tried to blow him off because I was deep into covering the election of President Lula and didn’t have time. In November, after Lula’s election, he contacted me again, and I agreed to talk to him. What happened next shocked me and raised questions about what may have happened in his work for Platner.
Moraff told me he was recruiting Bryan Pietzrak, a General Electric locomotive factory worker and UE member, to run for Congress in Erie. He said he wanted Pietrzak to run as an independent. While researching Pietrzak, Moraff found anti-Trump quotes he had given Payday and asked me to delete them. In October of 2020, Pietrzak spoke at a Biden rally at Carrie Furnaces in Rankin, PA, where he blasted Trump at length. “No union member should vote for Trump,” Pietzrak told Payday Report in October of 2020.
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