As Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin nears the completion of an investigation on Joe Biden he has claimed "would certainly help" Donald Trump, he remains bullish about its prospects for influencing the upcoming election. “What our investigations are uncovering, I think, will reveal this is not somebody we should be electing president of the United States,” Johnson told a local Wisconsin TV station Tuesday of Biden, according to the Daily Beast.
Johnson currently has two probes going: one into Biden's diplomacy in Ukraine as vice president and one into the work of Obama officials during the transition period to Trump's presidency. The fact that they are politically motivated is patently obvious. Not only is Johnson openly declaring they'll hobble Biden's chances of winning in November, he also officially launched the Biden/Ukraine probe shortly after Biden decisively won South Carolina earlier this year, cementing him as the frontrunner to win the Democratic nomination. What an extraordinary coincidence.
With the release of Johnson's first report imminent, the Daily Beast decided to take an extensive look at the origins of Johnson's Biden/Ukraine probe, and they're as seedy as we all suspected. Though Johnson has repeatedly denied that sources for investigation include pro-Russian Ukrainians peddling Russian disinformation, the parallels between the theories he's advancing and the propaganda being peddled by Russian intelligence agents are unmistakable.
One pivotal figure is Andriy Derkach, who was recently tagged by the U.S. Treasury Department as an "active Russian agent for over a decade." Johnson has denied getting information for his supposed investigation directly from Derkach, but Derkach has developed conduits for pushing information among Trump allies, such as Trump's personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani. Derkach also has ties to a self-described source of the Johnson investigation, former Ukrainian diplomat Andrii Telizhenko.
U.S. intelligence services have had their eyes on Derkach since the spring of 2019, when they started circulating reports that named him in new Russian efforts to disrupt the 2020 U.S. elections. Around that same time, Derkach upped his activity, reaching out to Giuliani and other U.S. officials. Giuliani intended to meet with Derkach in May 2019 in Ukraine but ultimately met with Telizhenko, effectively a Derkach carve out, that same month in New York. The increasing communication between Derkach and Trump allies corresponded with the smear campaign targeting former U.S. Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, who was ultimately hung out to dry by the State Department leadership and recalled from her post. Derkach has told both Politico and the Washington post that he's sent materials to Johnson and GOP Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa to aid their Biden/Ukraine probe.
It's not that Johnson hasn't been warned that nearly everything he's claiming has its roots in a Russian propaganda campaign. Though Johnson has declined to say whether he has been briefed by U.S. intelligence officials about the threat of pro-Russian Ukrainians to the election, Politico reported in December 2019 that then-Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr of North Carolina had warned Johnson that his investigation could be benefitting Russia.
But Johnson clearly doesn't care.
“The nature of the Trump inner circle—whether that’s the president himself, people in or out of the administration, on Capitol Hill, or Rudy Giuliani—is that because of their views towards the intelligence community, if you come to them and say this guy might be an asset of so and so, it just makes it more likely that they double down on the relationship. That’s how toxic things are now,” one Republican close to the administration told the Daily Beast.
The notion that these Trump allies simply don't trust the U.S. intelligence community is a charitable explanation. The other explanation, which hasn't been proven but is certainly worthy of consideration, is that U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson is a Russian asset himself. If he isn't, he has certainly behaved like one.
That's clearly the frustration that spilled on to the Senate floor from Senate Democrats Wednesday when they introduced a resolution calling for the cessation of any Senate activities furthering the dissemination of Russian disinformation.
“Members of the Senate,” said Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, “have been presented with specific warnings about these Kremlin-backed conspiracies and lies, again and again, including in classified settings.”
Nevertheless, Republican Sen. Ron Johnson persists.