On Tuesday, Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson—the chair of the Senate Homeland Security Committee—went full black helicopter when he announced that there was a secret cult within the FBI which had been conspiring against Donald Trump.
Johnson: A secret society. We have an informant that’s talking about a group that’s holding meetings off-site. There’s so much smoke here.
Fox: A secret society? Secret meetings off-site of the Justice Department?
Johnson: Correct.
Fox: And you have an informant saying that?
Johnson: Yes.
Fox: Is there anything more about that?
Johnson: No, we have to dig into it.
Like everything else in Republican land, Johnson connected his statement to the mash notes exchanged between FBI agent Peter Strzok and lawyer Lisa Page — the documents which have replaced pizza menus as the top means for locating underground lairs of Democratic operatives. Strzok and Page should be congratulated, as it seems that they were not only in charge of Mueller’s investigation, but the Clinton email investigation. They’re so powerful that Fox declared their text exchange evidence of “a coup in America” and one Fox guest speculated Strzok plotted an assassination attempt against Trump.
Compared to the other statements, Johnson’s FBI cult claims are … right in line with the level of crazy being spread by Republicans. On Wednesday, when Johnson had a chance to “correct” his statements on Fox, he didn’t exactly make things better by blaming his crazy on his informant.
“I have heard, from someone who has talked to our committee, that there is a group of individuals within the FBI that were holding secret off-site meetings. … I’m just connecting the dots. “
The dots … connect the Gumdrop Mountains to the Peppermint Forest if you’re playing Candy Land. Which seems to be right where Sen. Johnson is at this point.
What’s Johnson’s previous record in crazy predictions? It’s pretty good.
[Johnson] … said Obamacare would destroy "our last shred of freedom" because "if the federal government can actually force an American to engage in a particular form of commerce—buy healthcare so they can regulate it, that’s the final shred of freedom." That's right: Not speech. Not religion. Not even the Second Amendment. It is the freedom to not buy insurance—a freedom not available to people who drive cars—that stands between us and totalitarianism.
And here’s the super fun part. Did Johnson’s informant ever say there was a secret society? Did that informant even say that anyone at the FBI had done anything wrong?
That’s a lot less clear than it may seem.
A careful parsing of Johnson’s statements shows that the unknown witness before the Senate committee who Johnson is citing only said that a group of FBI or DOJ officials held meetings off-site. Which could have been … anything, right up to and including meetings held at the Trump International Hotel. Or meetings with CIA officials. These meetings could have had any number of reasons, almost all of them non-nefarious.
On the other hand, Strzok apparently mentioned something in one of his messages that used the term “secret society.”
Gowdy referred to a message between Page and Strzok sent the day after the election. “Perhaps this is the first meeting of the secret society,” the message says.
The dots that Johnson both drew and followed chased a joke made between two people having an affair, to a completely unconnected statement made by a witness and … poof! An FBI cult holding meetings in some shadowy location, plotting Trump’s demise.
And in news that will shock no one, Limbaugh is fully on board the hunt for secret pizza-loving, UN white helmet-wearing FEMA invaders.
“I’m not surprised there’s a secret society within the establishment that was designed to get rid of Trump, to deny Trump the election,” he said. “Hillary Clinton losing threw the biggest wrench in these people’s plans, and they had the fear. They were aware she could lose. But now we’ve got a secret society—DOJ, FBI, intelligence community—some of it directly in touch with the Obama White House. No doubt in my mind.”
Do they have robes? Are there pentagrams? And just where is this “Obama White House.” Because I’d like to go … I’m serious about that last part.
Surely Johnson can find some more dots to follow. Though he will have to make time around his new investigation, which is … looking at Hillary Clinton’s emails.