Ron Johnson Brands Colleague a Liar, Airs Election Conspiracies in Unhinged Senate Hearing

Arya Hodjat
Greg Nash/Reuters
Greg Nash/Reuters

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), chair of the Senate Homeland Security committee, aired legally debunked theories of election fraud and accused his Democratic counterpart of lying during a bizarre Senate hearing on Wednesday.

“Joe Biden won our state by 20,000 votes,” Johnson told Trump’s top Wisconsin lawyer, Jim Troupis, during an exchange about a court case that the state’s majority-Republican Supreme Court rejected. “You’re talking about over 200,000 votes that are outside our law, that if the law had been followed, probably should not have been counted.”

Johnson’s position, though still shared by the president, is growing increasingly unpopular within his own party. Outgoing Attorney General William Barr stated earlier this month that the Justice Department found no evidence of widespread election fraud. Earlier this week, several Senate Republicans—including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY)—acknowledged Biden as president-elect for the first time.

Sen. Gary Peters (D-MI), the committee’s ranking member, referenced foreign interference in the 2016 presidential election prompting Johnson, who is up for re-election in 2022, to claim that Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign and Democrats were the true “purveyors” of Russian propaganda.

He cited accusations made by Democratic senators that he was spreading Russian disinformation during the committee’s investigation of Hunter Biden.

“That’s where the false information, the lies... are coming from,” Johnson said. “I can’t sit by here and listen to this.”

His rant prompted Peters to inject. “Mr. Johnson, I’ve got to respond to that,” he said.

“Try,” Johnson interjected. “You lied repeatedly in the press that I was spreading Russian disinformation and that was an outright lie and I told you to stop lying and you continued to do it.”

“Mr. Chairman, this is not about airing your grievances, I don’t know what rabbit hole you’re running down right now,” Peters said, before being interjected by Johnson, who banged his gavel. “This is terrible what you’re doing to this committee.”

Johnson turned the floor to Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), who went on to claim the election was “stolen” and falsely state that courts had rejected Trump’s suits for technical, rather than factual, grounds.

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