As he left the Capitol on Tuesday, January 6, after the shocking news about the behaviour of his staffers at the committee meeting that day, it looked like Senator Ron Johnson faked a phone call so he wouldn’t have to talk to reporters.
During a committee hearing on January 6, Johnson was surprised to be accused of being involved in the fake elector scandal involving Donald Trump.
But when reporters found the Republican senator hours later on Capitol Hill, he said he was on the phone, and the story took a funny turn.
At first, when reporters asked Johnson a question, he said, “I’m on the phone right now.” NBC News’ Frank Thorp replied, “No, you’re not. I’m looking at your phone. What’s on your screen is clear to me.”
Senator: Arrested or Not, Fake Phone Call Facts About Ron Johnson
Ron Johnson has not been taken into custody. When reporters tried to talk to Johnson about the information from the committee, he was already on his way out of the Capitol building.
The proof included text messages that Johnson’s chief of staff, Sean Riley, sent to a Pence staffer on January 6, 2021, after the Capitol riot stopped Joe Biden from being officially named the winner of the 2020 election.
Riley wrote to Pence adviser Chris Hodgson and said he wanted to give Pence a list of fake electors who were ready to reject Biden’s win and vote for Trump. Hodgson said that he couldn’t do it.
What are January 6 problems, and why do they happen?
The House Select Committee looking into January 6 found that Johnson’s chief of staff, Sean Riley, texted Mike Pence’s legislative director in late 2020 about sending a different slate of electors from Wisconsin and Michigan to overturn Joe Biden’s wins in those states.
Johnson has tried to distance himself from the incident. Most recently, he said that Riley was only introduced to a lawyer who was working on Donald Trump’s campaign to invalidate votes in the state.
Ron said on Friday that his supposed part in trying to get fake electors to Pence was a “two-minute role.”
On Thursday, he supposedly got a message about it while he was on a conservative radio station. Still, he said he only knew of a document that had a loose connection to “Wisconsin electors.”
Is Ron Johnson lying or just bad at his job?
Rep. Ron Kind ripped into Wisconsin Republican Sen. Ron Johnson on Friday and asked for an investigation into his ties to the fake 2020 electors in the state.
WXOW 19 News says that Kind, a Democrat who represents Wisconsin’s 3rd Congressional District, was sceptical of Johnson’s claims and said that the senator was either “lying” or “incompetent.”
Kind also said that Johnson might be making things up to avoid facing serious charges that could keep him from being elected to public office. He also asked for an investigation into what Johnson knew.