Tag: Sen. Johnson

GOP duo moves ahead with Biden investigation

The Hill logoA pair of influential GOP Senate chairmen are plowing ahead with a wide-ranging probe related to the Bidens and Ukraine, sparking a new round of tensions..

With the months-long impeachment fight in the rearview mirror, Republicans are hoping to speed up their investigation, which has included document requests related to work done by former Vice President Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden for Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company.

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), one of the two GOP chairmen involved in the investigation, said he hoped the end of the impeachment trial would break the “logjam” on their requests for information. Continue reading.

Now Senate Republicans Resume Probe Of…Clinton Emails

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) turned his attention back to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s years-old emails this week, the same day he voted to acquit Donald Trump on two articles of impeachment.

On Wednesday, Johnson sent a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo demanding more information about a 2019 State Department investigation that exonerated Clinton of wrongdoing.

In his letter, Johnson, who was first elected in 2010, said he had been investigating Clinton’s emails for almost five years and was determined to continue that work. Continue reading.

Sen. Johnson says whistleblower’s sources ‘exposed things that didn’t need to be exposed’

Washington Post logoSen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) said Sunday that the Trump administration officials who provided information to the anonymous whistleblower about the president’s efforts to pressure Ukraine “exposed things that didn’t need to be exposed.”

“This would have been far better off if we would’ve just taken care of this behind the scenes,” Johnson said in an interview on NBC News’s “Meet the Press.” “We have two branches of government. Most people, most people wanted to support Ukraine. We were trying to convince President Trump.”

Johnson’s comments come days after the first public hearings in the impeachment inquiry. Democrats are seeking to prove that Trump leveraged military assistance and an Oval Office meeting in exchange for investigations into former vice president Joe Biden and a debunked theory concerning purported Ukrainian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

View the complete November 17 article by Felicia Sonmez, Karoun Demirjian and Douglas MacMillan on The Washington Post website here.

GOP Sens. Ron Johnson and Marsha Blackburn are tied to Russian money and Trump conspiracy theories. They’re not alone

AlterNet logoNancy Pelosi has announced that the House will finally hold a formal vote dictating the rules for the impeachment inquiry, six weeks after it was launched by a whistleblower’s complaint mysteriously withheld from Congress. And on Tuesday, Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman backed up both the initial whistleblower and U.S. diplomat Bill Taylor by testifying that he too was concerned about the Trump administration’s push to use congressionally-allocated military aid to Ukraine to coerce an investigation into Joe Biden.

Congressional Republicans have long since stopped defending Trump on the merits since shortly after the White House released a transcript of a July call between President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Instead, they’ve sought refuge in increasingly meaningless process arguments. So of course Pelosi agreeing to a formal vote on the rules of impeachment hasn’t stopped Republican complaints about the process. The goalposts will shift once again. No matter what the Democrats agree to, Republicans will complain about procedural unfairness and also refuse to concede the inquiry is legitimate. But how much of Republicans’ unwillingness to hold Trump accountable for his self-dealing is because they’re in on it?

On Monday the Washington Post published an interview with a Ukrainian diplomat who claimed to have met with Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., this summer to discuss the baseless conspiracy theory promoted by President Trump that Ukrainian officials had interfered in the 2016 election on behalf of Hillary Clinton.

View the complete October 30 article by Sophia Tesfaye from Salon on the AlterNet website here.

Republican humiliates himself at Senate hearing as his attempt to nail Instagram for liberal bias falls flat

AlterNet logoSen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) on Tuesday fell flat on his face when he tried to get technology experts to admit that major social media platforms were biased against conservatives.

While talking with assorted experts on artificial intelligence and algorithms, Johnson said that he had his staff members go to Politico’s Instagram account and record what other recommendations the app gave to them after following it.

According to Johnson, the vast majority of recommendations that came back were for news websites like the Washington Post or progressive outlets like Huffington Post, and none were for right-wing websites such as Breitbart.

View the complete June 25 article by Brad Reed from Raw Story on the AlterNet website here.

Senators unveil new plan to counter Vladimir Putin’s energy influence in Eastern Europe

Chris Murphy and Ron Johnson leading bipartisan effort to improve energy infrastructure

Bipartisan lawmakers are unveiling Thursday the latest Capitol Hill effort to counter Vladimir Putin’s energy activities in Eastern Europe.

This time, a contingent of senators led by Democratic Sen. Christopher S. Murphy of Connecticut and Republican Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin is introducing a bill that would authorize as much as $1 billion in financing for the next few years for energy sector projects in Europe.

That includes natural gas and electricity infrastructure. It is in an effort to counter Russia’s role as a dominant provider of energy in Eastern Europe.

View the complete March 7 article by Niels Lesniewski on The Roll Call website here.

‘Unconscionable’: GOP Senate Homeland Security chair torches Trump’s Syria policy

Sen. Ron Johnson was one of 43 Senate Republicans to back a bipartisan measure Thursday that rebuked the president’s Syria policy. Credit: Win McNamee, Getty Images

The Republican chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee on Sunday torched the Trump administration’s plans for a complete withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria, saying the exodus of American soldiers from the region would be “tragic” and “unconscionable.”

“ISIS was able to rise from the thoroughly defeated ashes of al-Qaida in Iraq, and I don’t want to be making the same statement six months from now that we bugged out of Syria unwisely and that ISIS has re-emerged from the defeated ashes of ISIS in Syria,” Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin told host Chris Wallace on “Fox News Sunday.”

“I think it would just be tragic if we bugged out, left the Kurds who, by and large, have done the fighting and have defeated the ISIS caliphate, the territorial caliphate and ISIS, if we just abandoned them to the mercies — and I use that term loosely — of Russia and Iran and, possibly, Turkey,” Johnson said. “It would just be unconscionable.”

View the complete February 3 article by Quint Forgey on the Politico website here.

GOP Senator Critical of Report on Trump Involvement in FBI Project

The following article by Niels Lesniewski was posted on the Roll Call website August 28, 2018:

Democrats continue to question real estate, ethics of president‘s involvement in site planning

Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., has questions about the scope of the GSA inspector general’s review of the FBI headquarters project. Credit: Bill Clark, CQ Roll Call file photo

Sen. Ron Johnson has questions about the process and methodology employed by an inspector general in reviewing President Donald Trump’s involvement in the FBI headquarters project.

The Wisconsin Republican outlined a series of questions about the scope of the General Services Administration review.

The GSA IG’s office released a report Monday that was critical of Administrator Emily Murphy, citing potentially misleading omissions in congressional testimony about the scope of the GSA’s meetings with senior White House officials and the president.

View the complete article here.

Trump declares newly released FBI texts “BOMBSHELLS,” though the picture they paint is murky

The following article by Matt Zapotosky and Karoun Demirjian was posted on the Washington Post website February 7, 2018:

Senate Homeland Security Chair Johnson (R-Wis.) initiated a fresh round of attacks on two FBI officials investigating Clinton and Trump, releasing hundreds of pages of texts between them and a report he said raises questions about how the FBI handled its most high-profile probes of political figures. Credit: Jacquelyn Martin/AP

Senate Homeland Security Chairman Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) initiated a fresh round of attacks Wednesday on two of the FBI officials involved in investigating Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, releasing hundreds of pages of texts between the pair and a report that raises questions about how the bureau has handled its most high-profile probes of political figures.

Though many of the messages already had been made public, President Trump quickly seized on their release, writing on Twitter, “NEW FBI TEXTS ARE BOMBSHELLS!”

Collectively, the texts show the two officials disliked Trump and feared what he might do as president, and they freely intermingled talk of politics with talk of work. But the pair also seemed to harbor animosity for many other politicians, including Democrats, and even co-workers. Continue reading “Trump declares newly released FBI texts “BOMBSHELLS,” though the picture they paint is murky”

GOP lawmaker uses fuzzy math to make case for small-business tax cuts

The following article by Nicole Lewis was posted on the Washington Post website November 27, 2017:

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) argues cutting taxes for small businesses would bolster the economy. But it’s not that simple. (Meg Kelly/The Washington Post)

“We are $20 trillion in debt. The projected deficit over the next 30 years is over $100 trillion. Maybe as much as $129 trillion. From my standpoint, it’s not time to cut individual tax rates. What it’s time to do is make American businesses competitive globally so our economy can grow. And again, the stat that I just told you about. . . . Revenues increased to the federal government by $1.2 trillion per year even with the meager economic growth we’ve had since 2009.”

— Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), remarks during an appearance on CNN’s “New Day,” Nov. 16, 2017

Johnson has expressed opposition to the GOP tax plan approved by the Senate Finance Committee by arguing that it does not provide enough of a tax reduction for small businesses compared with big corporations. Cutting the tax rate for these businesses, Johnson argues, would boost the economy, thus increasing the amount of revenue collected by the federal government. Continue reading “GOP lawmaker uses fuzzy math to make case for small-business tax cuts”