Ron Johnson’s New Conspiracy Theory

Ron Johnson. Photo by Gage Skidmore from Peoria, AZ, United States of America / Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Among the enemies President Donald Trump wants investigated and/or punished is former Department of Justice special counsel Jack Smith, who twice indicted Trump. Wisconsin U.S. Senator Ron Johnson is doing his very best to follow Trump’s bidding.

Smith investigated Trump for two potential crimes: trying to overthrow the 2020 presidential election; and possession of highly classified documents at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago social club following his presidency.

But as the New York Times has reported, Smith “appears unintimidated by the president’s demand that Republican lawmakers investigate him and that the Justice Department put him in prison….Smith has told people in his orbit that he welcomes the opportunity to present the public case against Mr. Trump denied to him by the Supreme Court decision asserting broad presidential immunity from prosecution and adverse rulings from a Trump-appointed judge on the federal bench in Florida.”

In a statement reported by Politico, Lanny Breuer, a lawyer for Smith, offered an open invitation to Republicans to question Smith: “As we informed congressional leaders last week, Jack is happy to discuss his work as Special Counsel and answer any questions at a public hearing just like every other Special Counsel investigating a president before him has done… We hope the House and Senate Judiciary Committees will agree so the American people can hear directly from him. Name the time and place. Jack will be there.”

But “some Republicans have privately expressed concern that Mr. Trump’s quest for vengeance could backfire by giving a credible anticorruption investigator” like Smith “an open mic,” the Times reported. So they are doing everything they can to prevent an open hearing.

With that in mind, the Republican-controlled House Judiciary Committee chaired by Ohio representative Jim Jordan has summoned Smith to testify behind closed doors about what Republicans on the panel called “partisan and politically motivated prosecutions” of Trump. Smith had hopes the Senate would give him an open hearing but that appears unlikely, due to the machinations of Ron Johnson and Senate Judiciary Committee chairman, Iowa Senator Charles E. Grassley.

“Johnson, a Wisconsin Republican close to Mr. Trump” and Grassley “have told colleagues they want to move more deliberately out of concern that rushing into a hearing would play into Mr. Smith’s hands, according to aides,” the Times reported. “The smarter play, they have said, is to intensify the effort by Republican representatives on Capitol Hill, the White House, the Justice Department and the F.B.I. to unearth, release and publicize internal documents that would prove Mr. Smith had engaged in a politically motivated witch hunt.”

In short they can cherry pick selective information to make Smith look bad, as “Republicans have unfettered access to Mr. Smith’s entire work archives; he does not.”

This campaign has already begun. On October 30 Johnson and Grassley issued a press release blasting Smith for his investigation codenamed “Arctic Frost,” which “sought testimony, communications, and records related to at least 430 Republican individuals.”

The “Arctic Frost” codename given the investigation by the FBI of course makes it sound ominous and Johnson takes that ball and runs with it. He makes it sound like 430 Republicans were under investigation, which was not the case. “People familiar with the inner workings” of Smith’s investigation said his team “was casting the widest possible net to collect information about potentially illegal actions taken by Mr. Trump and his team, not expanding the list of prosecutorial targets.” the Times reported. Smith was trying to prove that Trump was working to overthrow the 2020 election. That was complicated enough without adding hundreds more to prosecute.

Johnson has claimed this was a “Biden administration enemies list,” but there is no evidence Biden had any such list or any involvement with the investigation by Smith, or any communications about this with Attorney General Merrick Garland, who appointed Smith.

Johnson is clearly trying to raise the specter of President Richard Nixon and his infamous enemies list. Johnson has also claimed the investigation was “far more egregious” than Watergate, which is laughable. Watergate was a break-in and burglary which resulted in jail time for its perpetrators and charges of a coverup against Nixon. Arctic frost was a legal case where indictments were obtained and evidence was presented to federal courts.

Johnson, it should be noted, does not have clean hands in the attempt to overthrow the 2020 election. “Former Republican Party of Wisconsin Chair Andrew Hitt told a congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack that Johnson called him, suggesting in December 2020 that GOP-led state legislatures could override voters and pick presidential electors themselves,” as Wisconsin Public Radio reported. Johnson’s office was also involved in a failed attempt to deliver slates of false electors from Wisconsin and Michigan to Vice President Mike Pence, whom Trump hoped would refuse to certify the presidential election.

In short, Smith’s investigation had good reason to subpoena Johnson’s phone records. But the Senator is simply shocked to see this.

“It should shock, it should outrage every American,” Johnson told Fox Business news. “Honestly, by now, it should be obvious to every American that it’s not the Republicans that are a threat to our democracy. It’s President Obama, it’s President Biden, it’s the radical leftists that have served and support them.”

What does Barack Obama have to do with any of this? Johnson didn’t bother to provide any evidence of that either.