A documentary featuring Doug Mastriano was screened in a church. Now people are filing IRS complaints.

Pastor John March suspected he had little to worry about when a man claiming to be from the “Pennsylvania International Revenue Service” left a message with questions about a documentary his Camp Hill church screened Saturday that featured Doug Mastriano, the Republican nominee for governor.

March, it turns out, also has little to be worried about when it comes to the real Internal Revenue Service and the screening of The Return of the American Patriot.

The call was a hoax. And the IRS seems unlikely to act on a flurry of real complaints being filed by people who think the screening for 1,200 Mastriano supporters at Christ Community Church violated a seven-decades-old ban on political activity by churches with tax-exempt status.

March said his church rented space for the screening, as it has in the past for other events, and set ground rules ahead of time to stop politicking. Attendees were not allowed to wear Mastriano campaign gear, and a man driving a pickup truck hauling a trailer with a Mastriano for governor sign was asked to park off the church property.

Mastriano, a state senator from Franklin County, spoke before the film to a smaller crowd who paid a premium, thanking the church for its “courage” after two other planned venues canceled screenings.

He lapsed into campaign talking points — complaining about trans women playing sports and books available in public schools that depict sex — before catching himself.

“Anyway, I’m not talking politics,” Mastriano said in a video posted to his Facebook page. “Let’s talk reality. No politics!”

» READ MORE: A ‘blockbuster’ movie about Doug Mastriano is ready to premiere — if a theater will show it

An ABC27 report about the event showed the crowd chanting “Doug for gov” when he appeared in the main hall before the screening.

Jan Jarrett of Mechanicsburg said she was one of the people who filed IRS complaints, though she doubts that will accomplish much.

“There were other people who filed the same thing,” she said. “It was widely shared on social media.”

March said the effort “almost seems scripted” because many of the IRS complaints he has heard about used very similar language. He said his congregation leans conservative and most likely supports Mastriano over the Democratic nominee, state Attorney General Josh Shapiro.

Filmmaker Steve Turley, a Mastriano fan who spoke at his campaign announcement in January, issued a plea for contributions to his production company this week, complaining that the “woke mob” is trying to “cancel the church.” Turley offered to add the names of contributors who gave $50 or more to the film’s credits. He issued a separate plea for donations to Mastriano’s campaign.

Laura Solomon runs an Ardmore law firm that represents nonprofit, charitable, and other tax-exempt organizations. She said the screening, along with Mastriano’s presence, “potentially jeopardizes the church’s tax-exempt status.”

But, she added, the IRS is “woefully underfunded” and unlikely to take enforcement action. Religious groups, Solomon said, have increasingly pushed back on the IRS regulation, making the political ban a political issue itself.

Clout wondered how many complaints the IRS receives each year about churches engaging in prohibited political activity and how those cases are adjudicated. An IRS spokesperson said the agency “does not track” complaints and could not say.

The photos conjure a sense of political intrigue — State Rep. Amen Brown, a West Philly Democrat chatting in a restaurant Friday with Mehmet Oz, the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate.

Oz told Clout he was checking in with voters and didn’t know Brown was a Democrat. Brown said he bumped into Oz while taking his children to the Center City restaurant for treats.

And Brown accused City Councilmember Helen Gym, who was in the restaurant at the time, of taking the pictures that circulated in the city’s political community. He also said Gym told Oz, who has faced accusations of being a carpetbagger who only moved to Pennsylvania to run for Senate, that he should “go back to Jersey” when he passed her while leaving the restaurant.

A spokesperson for Gym said Brown spoke to Oz for about an hour in what did not appear to be happenstance and suggested Brown focus instead on getting out the vote for the Democratic Senate nominee, Lt. Gov. John Fetterman.

Brown scoffed at the notion that he had a clandestine meeting with the Republican nominee and said the conversation was not as long as Gym said. His children posed for photos with Oz, and he introduced himself as a state legislator, he said.

“Who the hell would take their children to a private meeting, especially in a public place?” Brown said. “I ain’t sloppy.”

Oz, who told Clout he is encouraging the Republican Party to reach out to conservative Democrats and independents, said he just wants to hear what voters were thinking.

“I want to get smarter about the practicable realities of dealing with issues in Philadelphia, especially crime,” he said.

Brown, now seeking a second term, angered progressives as a rookie by introducing legislation for new mandatory-minimum jail sentences for some gun crimes. And he voted against the creation of a committee to investigate Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner, the first step in a Republican push to impeach the prosecutor, but then accepted an appointment on that committee last week.

Clout provides often irreverent news and analysis about people, power, and politics.