Editorial: Ron Johnson's denials about Donald Trump's fake-elector plot don't add up.
First, Ron Johnson denied he knew about an offer from his top aide to deliver phony electoral votes for Donald Trump — denied he had anything to do with it. The next day, he said Trump's lawyer in Wisconsin asked him to deliver a document regarding "Wisconsin electors" to Vice President Mike Pence but said he didn't know what that meant.
The more we learn about the role Wisconsin’s senior senator played in the days leading up to the insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021, the more things don’t add up.
And the more it looks like Johnson or his team may have aided a Trump administration conspiracy to overturn the lawful election of Joe Biden.
A top Pence aide says he has no reason to believe Johnson was involved directly in an attempt to pass fake electors to Pence. But the Justice Department should launch an investigation into the phony elector scheme, including what Johnson and his staff knew and what they did in the lead-up to the Jan. 6 joint session of Congress.
The latest revelations are stunning:
Just minutes before Congress was to meet to certify Joe Biden’s win over President Donald Trump, Johnson’s top aide, Sean Riley, texted a staffer for then Vice President Mike Pence: "Johnson needs to hand something to VPOTUS please advise." This happened just before Pence prepared to preside over the official certification of Biden’s victory.
It was 12:37 p.m. and the joint session of Congress was scheduled to begin at 1 p.m. What could be so urgent at that late hour?
An “alternate slate of electors for MI and WI ...” Riley replied.
The fake electors were part of a plan to give Pence cover to not certify Biden's election by either illegally accepting the fake votes ginned up by Trump or by claiming the election results were so murky they had to be sent back to the states to decide.
Trump's team hoped that once the matter was returned to Wisconsin, Michigan, Arizona, Georgia and other key battleground states won by Biden, Trump could pressure Republican-controlled state legislatures to overturn the citizens' decision and select false electors from his own party. The hearings of the bipartisan congressional committee looking into the attack on the Capitol that afternoon have brought this Trump conspiracy into the open for all to see.
The alternate elector slates were part of a scheme advanced by Trump and his personal attorneys, John Eastman and Rudy Giuliani, to steal the presidency on the false claim — with NO evidence to support it — that the election was fraudulent. In reality, Trump lost the 2020 election by more than 7 million votes and in the Electoral College by 306 to 232. Trump lost recounts in Wisconsin and dozens of lawsuits around the country challenging the results.
Chris Hodgson, Pence’s legislative liaison, texted back to Riley: “Do not give that to him.”
Pence did his duty that day, refusing to intervene and insisting that congressional certification take place just hours after a violent mob of insurrectionists, egged on by Trump, stormed the Capitol, with some of them vowing to hang the vice president. They came within 40 feet of Pence at one point, the hearings revealed.
It was one of saddest chapters ever for American democracy.
After the texts were revealed, Johnson claimed to have no knowledge of his chief of staff's request that he hand-deliver fake electors from Wisconsin and Michigan to Pence. He called it a "nonstory," saying he was "basically unaware" of the effort.
Then he changed his story. By Thursday of last week, Johnson was saying he had coordinated with a Wisconsin attorney to pass along the information and that the documents came from Republican U.S. Rep. Mike Kelly of Pennsylvania — which Kelly's office said was "patently false."
Here’s what we know:
After the election, even after it was clear Trump had lost, Johnson fanned the flames of the election deniers. Johnson acknowledged that Biden had won but then chaired a bitterly divided hearing while he still was a Senate committee chairman in December, 2020, allowing witnesses to spew unsubstantiated claims of fraud and irregularities that had already been knocked down repeatedly in courts.
Just two days before the Jan. 6 debacle, Johnson and other GOP senators heard from MyPillow chief executive Mike Lindell, a leading proponent of false election conspiracies who urged Trump to use every tool at his disposal to retain power.
In the lead-up to the certification vote, Johnson signed onto a plan with other GOP senators to object to the Electoral College results.
As the electoral count started on Jan. 6, Johnson formally objected to electors from Arizona, another state where Republicans control the Legislature and Biden’s margin of victory was slender. A short time later, a violent mob stirred up by Trump and led by white supremacist groups attacked the nation's Capitol with the goal of stopping the electoral vote certification. At first, it appeared to work. Proceedings were halted as members of Congress and Pence were whisked to safety.
After the National Guard and police officers regained control of the Capitol from the insurrectionists, Johnson, perhaps momentarily sobered by the violence that had just occurred, changed his plans and voted to recognize the legitimate electors chosen by the people of Arizona.
Ever since, Johnson has downplayed what happened on a day when several people died, many more were injured, including 140 police officers, and our democracy suffered a gut punch with ramifications we’re only now beginning to understand.
Johnson has said the violence at the Capitol “didn’t seem like an armed insurrection to me.” Tell that to Capitol Police Officer Caroline Edwards, who described in a committee hearing how she suffered a concussion while trying to hold the rioters back. “I was slipping in people’s blood. I was catching people as they fell. It was carnage.” She recalled seeing Officer Brian Sicknick, who died the next day, turn ghostly white after being sprayed with chemicals. She and others described the scene as a battlefield, which was apparent to anyone watching the scene on live television.
Johnson also claimed that the Trump supporters who rioted and ransacked the building didn’t worry him because “those were people who love this country, that truly respect law enforcement.” He might have been concerned, he added, if the rioters had been supporters of the Black Lives Matter movement. That’s textbook racism. Our senators represent all Wisconsin citizens, not just white Trump supporters.
Whether it be promoting disproven treatments for COVID-19, visiting Moscow on the Fourth of July, or blaming global warming on sunspots, Johnson’s judgment has been suspect for years.
Despite Johnson’s attempts to deflect attention, what happened on Jan. 6, 2021, was a very big deal — a day when our 246-year experiment in citizen government was put at risk by the narcissistic, power-hungry egotist in the White House.
Johnson has proven by his past actions that he isn't fit to be a U.S. senator. This latest episode only makes that more clear. The citizens of Wisconsin, regardless of party, should vote him out of office in November.
Federal law enforcement officers, who are assigned to defend the Constitution, should get to the bottom of the effort to unlawfully create phony electors in Wisconsin and other battleground states.
And they need to look into whether Johnson played any role to overrule the citizens' votes and overturn the last presidential election.
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