The January 6th House Select Committee’s explosive public hearings are shaping up to be brutally damning for a slew of Republican lawmakers — and they REALLY don’t want to talk about it.
Wisconsin’s GOP Senator Ron Johnson has found himself at the epicenter of quite a bit of scandal surrounding the infamous, fatal January 6th Capitol insurrection. He’s become the pinpoint of specific interest after the House Committee’s hearings this week exposed text messages between one of Johnson’s staffers and an aide to now-former Vice President Mike Pence. The text message conversation in question took place just shortly after the certification of Joe Biden’s election win was brought to a screeching halt due to the violent rioting mob of MAGA supporters.
Johnson’s Chief of Staff Sean Riley sent a text message to Pence aide Chris Hodgson, stating that the GOP senator had an “alternate slate of electors” that were willing to support Donald Trump. Riley was asking that Pence look over the electors ahead of the certification that he would be presiding over that day.
“Johnson needs to hand something to VPOTUS please advise,” Riley wrote to Hodgson.
Pence’s aide wrote back, asking, “What is it?”
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“Alternate slate of electors for [Michigan] and [Wisconsin] because archivist didn’t receive them,” Riley explained in the texts.
Hodgson shot back, “Do not give that to him.” While it seems Johnson’s aide adhered to the Pence aide’s response about the electors, the topic was still brought up during this week’s public January 6th hearing, leading reporters to attempt to question the Republican senator regarding the messages following the bombshell revelation.
Both Frank Thorp of NBC News and Manu Raju of CNN tried to stop Senator Johnson and question him about the text message conversation as he left the Capitol following the hearing, but it seems Johnson was so desperate to get out of answering them that he actually faked being on a phone call — only to be humiliatingly called out by a reporter who spotted his phone screen.
“How much did you know about what your chief of staff was doing with the alternate slates of the electors?” Thorp questioned the GOP senator.
“I’m on the phone right now,” Johnson shot back, but the journalist was having no part of it, straight up calling Johnson out, “No, you’re not. I can see your phone. I can see your screen.”
“Senator, can you explain with your chief of staff was doing?” Raju added.
“Does your chief-of-staff still work for you, senator?” Thorp pressed.
Johnson then put his phone down, seemingly without hanging up his supposed phone call or even saying goodbye.
“This a complete non-story,” the senator shot at the reporters. “I don’t know what you’re even concerned about here.” Johnson then went on to claim that he didn’t even know about the text messages, calling it a “staff to staff exchange.”
“I was basically, you know, unaware of it,” Johnson claimed, before admitting that his office had been given the alternate slate of electors, but he was unaware of who sent them.
“I had no involvement in an alternate slate of electors,” Johnson claimed.
“I was aware that we got something delivered that wanted to be delivered to the VP, I mean guys this, this took place in, I don’t know, the span of a few minutes. And the story ended. There’s nothing to this,” Thorp reports the senator stating. “I knew we got something that wanted to be delivered to the Vice President, that’s it. There’s no story here.”
You can watch the hilarious clip right here:
Here’s the full video of Sen Ron Johnson on the alternate slates of electors his office tried to deliver to VP Pence on Jan6: pic.twitter.com/58moFAMOq7
— Frank Thorp V (@frankthorp) June 21, 2022
Featured image via screen capture
