Sen. Ron Johnson's claim he knew
nothing about a fake electors plot isn't believable
Text messages show that
Johnson and his staff were told explicitly about the plot to deliver the fake
electoral votes to Washington.
June 7, 2024, 5:00 AM CDT
By Charles Sykes
Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., reacted
angrily to the news that Wisconsin’s attorney general, Josh Kaul, had filed criminal charges against three associates of
former President Donald Trump for their alleged roles in the fake elector
scheme. “Now Democrats are weaponizing Wisconsin’s judiciary,” Johnson posted on X. “Apparently conservative lawyers
advising clients is illegal under Democrat tyranny. Democrats are turning
America into a banana republic.”
Johnson has reason to sweat this one,
because the criminal case is likely to bring renewed attention to his role in
the attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
Johnson has reason to sweat this one,
because the criminal case is likely to bring renewed attention to his role in
the attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election and his shifting and
inconsistent explanations. On Jan. 6, 2021, Johnson and his staff tried to hand
fake electoral certificates to Vice President Mike Pence, but they were
rebuffed. Johnson initially claimed he didn’t know about the plot, but recent documents — including text messages — show
that Johnson and his staff were told explicitly about the plot to deliver the
fake electoral votes.
On Tuesday, Wisconsin’s Department of
Justice brought felony forgery charges against one of the architects of the
plan, Kenneth Chesebro. That attorney already pleaded guilty in Georgia to
participating in the illegal attempt in that state to overturn the election.
Wisconsin prosecutors also charged Trump aide Mike Roman and attorney Jim Troupis, who represented Trump in Wisconsin
during the 2020 election. Wisconsin is the fifth state to bring criminal charges in
connection with the conspiracy to overturn Trump’s defeat.
The evidence supporting the Wisconsin
charges is especially robust, given the volume of communications — text
messages, emails, photos, videos and social media posts — that were gathered as
part of an earlier civil lawsuit that unearthed more than 1,400
pages of documents related to the conspiracy. (That case was settled after the
fake electors admitted they had signed a document that was “used as part of an
attempt to improperly overturn the 2020 presidential election results.”)
Wisconsin’s criminal case is also
bolstered by the apparent cooperation of the former state GOP chairman, Andrew
Hitt, who signed the forged electoral certificates as the “chairperson,
Electoral College of Wisconsin.” In interviews with CBS’s “60 Minutes,” Hitt
expressed regret and claimed he was intimidated and “tricked” into signing the
false documents.
All of this creates an awkward
situation for Wisconsin’s senior senator.
According to this week’s indictment,
after a meeting at the Wisconsin Capitol on Dec. 14, 2020, where Trump electors
signed the fake certificates, Chesebro and Troupis arranged for the
documents to be flown to Washington by a young GOP volunteer. According to the
charging document, the young aide sent a Jan. 5 text message saying “5 mins
until I make the drop” and added, “I feel like a drug dealer.”
She later told “60
Minutes” that when she handed the certificates to Chesebro, the
attorney took “a dramatic step back and looked at me and said, ‘You might have
just made history.’”
This is where Johnson comes in.
Wisconsin’s criminal case is also
bolstered by the apparent cooperation of the former state GOP chairman, Andrew
Hitt, who signed the forged electoral certificates as the “chairperson,
Electoral College of Wisconsin.”
According to the House Jan. 6
committee, Johnson connected Troupis with his
chief of staff, Sean Riley, who texted Pence staff member Chris Hodgson at
12:37 p.m. on Jan. 6, saying, “Johnson needs to hand something to VPOTUS please
advise.”
Hodgson responded: “What is it?”
Riley told Hodgson that they hoped to
deliver an “alternate slate of electors for MI and WI because archivist didn’t
receive them.”
Pence’s aide pushed back, texting
Riley, “Do not give them to him.”
Johnson initially said he was
“basically unaware” of what was going on, dismissing the attempted handoff of
the fake certificates as a “staff-to-staff exchange.” Later, however, he
admitted that his staff had been in touch with Rep. Mike Kelly, R-Pa., “about
how Kelly’s office could get us the electors because they had it.”
Even so, he continued to insist that
he “had no idea that there was an alternate slate of electors.” Referring to
Troupis, Johnson said, “He was asking me to deliver some documents.” He said he
didn’t know the document Troupis wanted him to hand off was a fake slate of
Trump electors from his home state. What did he think the document could have
been, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel asked. Responded Johnson: “I couldn’t have
cared less. I’m asked by the attorney for the president of the United States to
deliver something to the vice president on that day.”
But documents released as part of the
civil lawsuit in March seemed to blow a hole in Johnson’s story. In a Dec. 8,
2020, email to Chesebro, Troupis wrote that he “spoke with Senator Johnson late
last night about the Pence angle at the end.” Troupis wrote, “Just wanted to
take his temperature.”
“The Pence angle” is an apparent
reference to the “angle” at the center of the attempted coup, Trump’s plan to
have the vice president refuse to count the legitimate votes.
The documents also show that Troupis
texted Johnson personally on Jan. 6, explicitly mentioning the electors: “We need
to get a document on the Wisconsin electors to you for the VP immediately.” He
added, “Is there a staff person I can talk to immediately.”
Documents released as part of the
civil lawsuit in March seemed to blow a hole in Johnson’s story.
That same day, Troupis texted
Chesebro, confirming that he had been “on the phone with Mike Roman and Senator
Johnson’s COS to get an original copy of Wi slate to VP.”
As attorney Jay Kuo notes, “It would be extremely unusual for a
senator’s chief of staff to be arranging such a high level handoff of something
as important as Wisconsin’s false electoral college certification without the
senator himself being fully in the know and involved.”
Which is perhaps why Johnson
protests so much. The new documents shred his tortured explanations, and the
new criminal charges guarantee that he will face more questions — a lot more
questions — about what he knew and when he knew it.