Tag: Senate GOP Sen. Ron Johnson

Sen. Ron Johnson plays down Capitol riots: ‘This didn’t seem like an armed insurrection to me’

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As a pro-Trump mob stormed the U.S. Capitol last month, rioters battered police with a multitude of weapons: metal flagpoles, baseball bats, wrenches and clubs. Many soaked police in caustic bear spray. One officer died in the Jan. 6 melee along with four civilians.

But Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) on Monday argued that it’s wrong to describe the group as “armed” and accused Democrats of “selectively” editing videos to exaggerate the threat posed by a mob that came within feet of Vice President Mike Pence and other elected officials.

“This didn’t seem like an armed insurrection to me,” Johnson said on WISN. “When you hear the word ‘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?” Continue reading.

Besieged on all sides, Ron Johnson says his probe ‘would certainly’ help Trump win reelection

A spokesman for Biden says “that Ron Johnson’s disgraceful conduct is the definition of malfeasance.”

Sen. Ron Johnson this week said his probe of Obama-era intelligence agencies would help President Donald Trump win reelection, igniting fury from Democrats who say it was an explicit admission he’s using his committee to damage Joe Biden’s candidacy for president.

“The more that we expose of the corruption of the transition process between Obama and Trump, the more we expose of the corruption within those agencies, I would think it would certainly help Donald Trump win reelection and certainly be pretty good, I would say, evidence about not voting for Vice President Biden,” Johnson said in a little-noticed Tuesday interview with Minneapolis-based radio hosts Jon Justice and Drew Lee.

Democrats compared the remark to comments made in 2015 by House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy, who boasted that the Republican-led Benghazi investigation was successful because it had helped tank Hillary Clinton’s poll numbers. Facing sharp criticism, McCarthy later walked back those comments. Continue reading.