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It was just last year when the public learned about Sen. Ron Johnson’s role in trying to deliver fake elector materials to then-Vice President Mike Pence on Jan. 6, 2021. The Wisconsin Republican stumbled badly when trying to explain what happened — many of us won’t soon forget how embarrassing it was to see him pretend to be on the phone when pressed for answers — but roughly 50.5% of voters in the Badger State re-elected the incumbent anyway.
As it turns out, the senator is still struggling with the issue. The Daily Beast reported overnight:
When asked Monday about Republicans in Wisconsin having falsely claimed to be electors for Donald Trump in the 2020 election, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) claimed that Democrats have done the same “repeatedly in all kinds of different states” — yet failed to provide even one example, telling CNN’s Kaitlan Collins merely to “check the books.”
Let’s back up for a minute, because the broader context actually made the hapless senator look quite a bit worse.
Three years ago, a group of Wisconsin Republicans created forged election materials, pretending to be “duly elected and qualified electors.” They and their cohorts in other states then sent the forged documents to, among others, the U.S. Senate and the U.S. Archivist, as if the fake materials were legitimate. They were not.
Once the scheme was exposed, some actual electors in Wisconsin sued the illegitimate electors, and the civil case was resolved last week. As part of the settlement, the fake electors acknowledged that President Joe Biden won the state, agreed to assist prosecutors, and sent a statement to government offices saying that their actions were “part of an attempt to improperly overturn the 2020 presidential election results.”
When Johnson appeared on CNN about 12 hours ago, the interview with Kaitlan Collins wasn’t specifically about this subject, but given the recent developments in his home state, the host wrapped up the segment by asking for his reaction to the court settlement.
The senator began by insisting that there were “all kinds of irregularities” in Wisconsin’s 2020 elections — a highly dubious claim for which there is no evidence — before claiming that his party’s fake electors did nothing “untoward.” Johnson added that Democrats have “repeatedly” done the same thing “in all kinds of different states.”
In other words, the Republican started with a conspiracy theory, added that the people who already admitted they acted improperly did nothing wrong, and concluded that Democrats engaged in fake-elector schemes of their own.
For good measure, Johnson characterized his state’s fake electors from 2020 as victims, calling the court settlement a “travesty,” and calling them “poor individuals” who were mistreated by mean ol’ Democrats who “view politics as a blood-sport.”
The GOP lawmaker then again added, “These folks did nothing different than what many Democrats have done in many states throughout history.”
Asked to back that up, the senator said, “I didn’t come prepared, to give you the exact states. But it’s happened. It’s happened repeatedly. It has happened repeatedly. Just go check the books.”
When Collins asked, “Which books?” he couldn’t answer with any specificity.
That’s because there are no such books. Johnson, who’s struggled for years with strange nonsense about the 2020 race and his weird conspiracy theories, still doesn’t have any idea what he’s talking about.
Indeed, the reason he struggled to come up with examples of Democrats pushing fake electors with fraudulent documents is because Democrats haven’t done what Johnson accused them of doing. Republicans will sometimes point to Hawaii’s electors from the 1960 election, but the closer one looks at the relevant details, the more the parallels fall apart.
Johnson may not realize how deeply confused he is, but he appeared hopelessly lost last night because he was (a) trying to dismiss wrongdoing that perpetrators have already acknowledged; and (b) trying to accuse Democrats of engaging in misconduct that didn’t happen in reality.