Photo: Ron Johnson for Senate - Flickr
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Ron Johnson
January 6, 2021 was supposed to be a big day for Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson.
Johnson had already announced he would join other rightwing Republican senators in throwing out all the legitimate presidential votes cast in Wisconsin and six other states won by President Biden because Republicans in those states submitted counterfeit documents to the government fraudulently claiming to be “duly elected and qualified” electors casting those states’ electoral votes for Donald Trump.
Now Johnson had a major role to play in Trump’s diabolical scheme to destroy American democracy once and for all by simply ignoring election results and allowing Trump to remain as president after he lost the election. Johnson’s assignment was to personally deliver to Vice President Mike Pence 26 fraudulent electoral votes from Wisconsin and Michigan for Trump even though Biden won both states.
Plot Against America
The brazen, anti-American plot was concocted by Trump and a goofball law professor named John Eastman. Eastman claimed overthrowing the election was easy. All Pence had to do while presiding over Congress and counting the votes was either throw out the electoral votes in states Biden won where Republicans submitted fake electoral votes for Trump or return the conflicting slates of electors to Republican legislatures in those states to decide which votes they liked better.
Golly, which votes would Republicans choose—the legitimate ones Biden actually won in those states or the fraudulent ones for Trump? The reason Republicans corruptly gerrymandered those legislatures was to win elections.
Trump’s plot was foiled when the previously servile Pence refused to violate the Constitution to steal the election for Trump. In a rage, Trump sent his heavily armed mob of supporters to violently attack Pence and Congress creating the bloodiest day of domestic terrorism in American history. Johnson was left holding his sad, little bag of fraudulent electoral votes.
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Who, Me?
Johnson immediately began pretending he wasn’t part of the planned insurrection. Never mind just four days earlier Johnson enthusiastically joined the 10 most extreme rightwing Republican election deniers in the Senate to demand Congress delay certification of Biden’s election, get this, because of “unprecedented allegations of voter fraud.”
They didn’t mention they were the ones who had helped spread Trump’s unprecedented lies about voter fraud or that Trump’s lies were thrown out of more than 60 courts including his radical new Supreme Court because Trump has never produced a shred of evidence to support his lies.
Congress reconvened late at night on Jan. 6 to complete its certification of Biden’s victory after the rioting by Trump’s vile supporters. Johnson quickly abandoned his announced plans to throw out Biden’s election victory in Wisconsin and in other states where Republicans tried to cast fraudulent electoral votes for Trump.
Johnson voted to certify the electoral votes Biden won in Arizona and Pennsylvania, the only two states Republicans challenged. Congressmen Scott Fitzgerald and Tom Tiffany were the state’s only politicians voting to throw out the election results in those states. They said they would have done the same in Wisconsin if it had come up for a vote. Voters in their districts who want their votes to be counted should remember that in November.
It's My Staff’s Fault!
Johnson had to come up with a brand-new series of lies after the House Jan. 6 Committee publicized Pence’s refusal to accept the fraudulent state electoral votes from Johnson. Johnson kept jumbling together lies that conflicted with other lies. Ultimately, he blamed the whole incident on staff.
That wasn’t very smart either because it called attention to his chief of staff Sean Riley connecting Johnson even more directly to Trump’s planning of the assault on the Capitol. Riley had worked for Johnson since 2015 as a legislative aide rising to chief counsel from 2018-2020. Riley was gone for a year before rejoining Johnson as chief of staff just a few days before Jan. 6.
Guess where Riley had been? He was special assistant for legislative affairs to Trump throughout the election year and during Trump’s increasingly lawless campaign to prevent certification of Biden’s election victory. Riley rejoined Johnson just in time to help Johnson lend a hand with the violent insurrection.
It was just the latest embarrassment for Wisconsin from their constantly lying two-term Republican senator who has become a Washington joke. Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank began a round-up of recent lies by suggesting Johnson might be overindulging in the large-animal deworming medication he recommends instead of lifesaving covid vaccinations. Johnson also claimed the unvaccinated were being thrown “basically into internment camps.”
Johnson spread so many of Vladimir Putin’s lies about fictional Biden family crimes in Ukraine on Trump’s behalf the FBI warned Johnson Russian military intelligence was feeding him disinformation.
It’s long past time for voters to end their national embarrassment by replacing the state’s worst Republican senator since Joe McCarthy with a senator they know won’t ever threaten to throw out their votes.
That’s Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, the rising Democratic star set to win Tuesday’s primary after winning endorsements from all three other top candidates who withdrew from the race. Wisconsin should have two U.S. senators, Barnes and Tammy Baldwin, fighting to protect our democracy instead of destroying it.
