Yesterday the House January 6 Select Committee dropped Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson in the coup soup with these texts between his top aide Sean Riley and Vice President Mike Pence’s legislative director Chris Hodgson.
“Johnson needs to hand something to VPOTUS, please advise,” wrote Riley at 12:37 p.m. on January 6, 2021, as Congress had convened to certify Joe Biden’s electoral vote win.
“What is it?” Hodgson asked.
“Alternate slate of electors for MI and WI because archivist didn’t receive them,” Johnson’s aide responded.
As Politico’s Kyle Cheney notes, that was bullshit. The National Archives had received all seven slates of fake electors from the swing states Biden won weeks before, but probably didn’t pass them on to Pence because they were totally bogus and not certified by the appropriate state officials. Johnson was trying to help their little coup plot along by putting the cosplay elector slates in Pence’s hand directly.
In the event, Pence’s people gave Johnson the brush off.
“Do not give that to him,” Hodgson shot back immediately.
So, no harm, no foul, right? Nothing to see here, just a Republican senator directly involved in the potentially criminal plot to submit fraudulent electors and obstruct the orderly transition of power. Move along, people!
Alexa Henning is Johnson’s spox, and she’d like us all to accept that her boss had nothing to do with the fake electoral certificates he tried to pass to the vice president. “The senator had no involvement in the creation of an alternate slate of electors and had no foreknowledge that it was going to be delivered to our office. This was a staff to staff exchange. […] The Vice President’s office said not to give it to him and we did not. There was no further action taken. End of story.” They tried to mount a coup, it didn’t work out, end of story.
So where did the fraudulent electoral certificates for Michigan and Wisconsin come from? Well, it’s kind of a funny story!
“We didn’t know — literally don’t — it was a staff to staff — somebody from the House, some staff intern, you know, said we got to, the vice president needs this or whatever. I wasn’t involved,” Senator Johnson told CNN’s Manu Raju after another reporter busted him pretending to talk to a locked phone. “I don’t know what they said. But … somebody from the House delivered to a staff member in my office. My chief of staff called the vice president, ‘Hey, we got this.’ And the vice president said, ‘Don’t deliver it,’ and we didn’t.”
The fugazi documents just materialized out of thin air from “somebody” in the House. Coulda been an intern. Or maybe the stork delivered them. Have any of you gumshoes considered the possibility that Santa Claus dropped them down the chimney?
Does the senator have any curiosity about the origin of these immaculately conceived documents? He does not!
“There’s no conspiracy here. This is a complete non-story, guys. Complete non-story,” he repeated, as if it was a magical incantation that wards off reporters and stops them asking any more pesky question, adding several times for good measure that the mysterious exchange was “Staff to staff!”
But soon enough he fell back on GOP platitudes.
“Listen, if this were a real committee, they’d be asking why wasn’t the Capitol secured. You know, who was in charge of that security? This is a total partisan witch hunt” — DRINK! — “and I was not involved in this at all.”
Cool, cool. Say it under oath, fella.
Follow Liz Dye on Twitter!
Click the widget to keep your Wonkette ad-free and feisty. And if you’re ordering from Amazon, use this link, because reasons.
