Embattled Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson is saying things out loud and in public again, which is always a very dangerous thing for the Republican to do. Speaking Tuesday morning at the Milwaukee Rotary Club, Johnson told the crowd that the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol was not an “armed insurrection.”
Note Johnson’s parsing there, where he references a hearing where he asked an FBI official how many firearms had been confiscated at the Capitol on Jan. 6. That was on March 3, 2021. Jill Sandborn, assistant director of the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division, said that to her knowledge, “we have not recovered any on that day from any other arrests at the scene at this point,” Sanborn said. “But I don’t want to speak on behalf of Metro and Capitol Police.”
Since March 3, 2021, we’ve learned a lot more about that. Like the fact that Christopher Michael Alberts was, in fact, arrested by the D.C. police on Jan. 6 for carrying a pistol without a license, possession of a firearm on Capital grounds, and other charges, and was charged the day after the riot in U.S. District Court. Since then, the Jan. 6 committee has released audio of police radio transmissions from Jan. 6: “Three men walking down the street in fatigues carrying AR-15s… at 14th and Independence,” one officer reported. “White male… stock of an AR-15,” another officer reported. “Green fatigues… Glock-style pistols in their waistband.” Yet another radioed “Elevated threat in the trees… American flag face mask… weapon on the right-side hip.”
But since the month after the attack, Johnson has been stubbornly insisting the insurrection wasn’t armed, that it wasn’t that violent, that it wasn’t that dangerous.
Let’s get Mandela Barnes to the Senate, and kick Ron Johnson to the curb.
That’s despite the bombshell testimony from Cassidy Hutchinson, a top aide to Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, that the Secret Service knew there were armed people at the rally ahead of the attack, and warned Trump. “I don’t f-ing care that they have weapons,” Trump said, per Hutchinson. “They’re not here to hurt me … Take the f-ing mags away… Let my people in, they can march to the Capitol from here.”
So, yeah, that would be an armed insurrection, even if you don’t inaccurately define “armed” as just firearms, as Johnson does. However clever he thinks he is with his flag pole quip, the insurrectionists came prepared to do bodily harm.“(C)ommon things were used as weapons, like a baseball bat, a hockey stick, a rebar, a flagpole—including the American flag—pepper spray, bear spray,” US Capitol Police Sgt. Aquilino Gonell testified to the committee in July. The rioters also had knives and stun guns, stolen police riot shields, and a lot more, as detailed in this thread.
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Johnson’s been repeating the lie that the insurrection was not armed and implying it was therefore not violent or no worse than Black Lives Matter protests, since a month after the attack. In February, 2021 he told conservative talk radio show host Jay Weber “This didn’t seem like an armed insurrection to me.”
“I mean ‘armed,’ when you hear ‘armed,’ don’t you think of firearms? Here’s the questions I would have liked to ask. How many firearms were confiscated? How many shots were fired? I’m only aware of one and I’ll defend that law enforcement officer for taking that shot. It was a tragedy, OK? But I think there was only one.”
A spokesperson responded to a media question about Johnson’s latest bullshit, arguing that Johnson was taken “completely, 100% out of context” because, before that, he said, “I condemn all violence. I condemn all riots.” Sure. But Johnson changed that context when he suggested that the Capitol attack wasn’t all that violent because there weren’t firearms. Which is also a lie.
The spokesperson added, obnoxiously, “When protesters during January 6 used a flag pole, all of a sudden the types of objects they’d [Black Lives Matter protesters] been using all summer were now considered part of an ‘armed’ insurrection. He is in no way condoning this action. He’s commenting on the hypocrisy of the situation.” He is also perpetuating the lie that the insurrection wasn’t violent and wasn’t serious.
Nonetheless, when it comes to his own involvement in the would-be coup, Johnson knows it’s serious enough he’s got to try to cover his ass. And his story there has been, let’s say, evolving. He’s gone from saying, “I had nothing to do with 6 January,” to explaining that he only spent “a couple seconds” trying to get a slate of fake electors to Vice President Mike Pence. “I had nothing to do with the alternate slate,” Johnson said. “I had no idea that anybody was going to ask me to deliver those. My involvement in the attempt to deliver spanned the course of a couple seconds.”
Now he’s admitting that he exchanged text messages with one of Trump’s attorneys both before and after trying unsuccessfully to put that fake electors slate in Pence’s hands. Now, he says, “the entire episode lasted about an hour,” and “You can’t even call it participation, I wrote a couple texts.” He’s been maintaining that he had no idea what was in the package he was supposed to be handing off to Pence, just that Trump’s attorney wanted him to do it. “What would you do if you got a text from the attorney for the president of the United States?” Johnson said. “You respond to it.”
Johnson should be investigated fully for his role in the attempted coup. He probably won’t be. He should be expelled from the Senate along with all the other co-conspirators. None of them, including Johnson, will be kicked out by their colleagues.
So it’s up to us. Let’s get this guy out of there.
Trump and his followers proved on Jan. 6 how dangerously close they came to overturning our democracy. Help cancel Republican voter suppression with the power of your pen by clicking here and signing up to volunteer with Vote Forward, writing personalized letters to targeted voters urging them to exercise their right to vote this year.
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