WASHINGTON — After initially claiming to be “essentially unaware” of an attempt by his staff to deliver false presidential election documents to Vice President Mike Pence, U.S. Senator Ron Johnson said on Thursday that he had coordinated with a lawyer from Wisconsin to pass such information and alleged a Pennsylvania congressman brought slates of false voters to his office — a claim that was immediately disputed.
Evidence presented this week by the US House Committee Investigation into the January 6 attack on the US Capitol showed that Johnson’s chief of staff attempted to deliver the false presidential voter lists of the two states for former President Donald Trump to Pence on the morning of the US Capitol uprising. , but was rejected by Pence’s assistant.
Johnson initially told reporters this week that he did not know where the documents came from and that his staff was trying to forward them to Pence.
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But he said in a Thursday interview on WIBA-AM that he had since discovered the documents came from Pennsylvania U.S. Representative Mike Kelly, acknowledging that he had coordinated by text that morning with Dane County attorney Jim Troupis and his chief of staff. Pence a document describing Troupis regarding “Wisconsin voters”.
Kelly’s office immediately pushed back Johnson’s allegation, saying, “Senator Johnson’s statements about Representative Kelly are manifestly false.”
“Mr. Kelly has not spoken to Senator Johnson for the better part of a decade, and he has no knowledge of the claims Mr. Johnson is making regarding the 2020 election.”
On Thursday, Johnson said that on the morning of Jan. 6, 2021, Troupis contacted him by text to send a “Wisconsin voters” document to Pence.
Johnson said he then texted the attorney to his chief of staff to consider the request. He said he didn’t know what the document was or what it wanted to accomplish.
In a story by Conservative reporter John Solomon and shared by Johnson on Thursday, Solomon reported that Kelly had also called Troupis to get election documents to Pence through Johnson that morning.
Troupis, a Dane County attorney who represented Trump in recounts of liberal Dane and Milwaukee counties and tried to throw away tens of thousands of ballots to undo Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election, did not immediately respond to an email from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel asking for comment.
In Solomon’s story of the events, a Trump campaign official asked Kelly to get an “alternative slate” of voters for Pence. Kelly then called Troupis, who then texted Johnson, according to the story.
In response to Kelly’s rebuke of Johnson’s claims, Johnson spokesperson Alexa Henning told Journal Sentinel Johnson “never said he spoke to Representative Kelly and John Solomon’s reporting does not say he spoke to him.”
“It is John Solomon’s independent reporting that Judge Troupis has spoken with Representative Kelly,” Henning said.
Ten Republicans meeting at the Wisconsin State Capitol on Dec. 14, 2020, signed paperwork falsely claiming to be presidential elections for Trump and sent those documents to the U.S. Archives and Congress.
The Republicans claimed they filed the paperwork in case Trump’s loss was reversed. Former Wisconsin Republican Party chairman Andrew Hitt told the Jan. 6 committee that he would not have supported the use of the paperwork to illegally nullify the election.
Henning said earlier this week that Johnson was “not involved in the creation of an alternate voter list and that he was not aware in advance that it would be delivered to our office”.
“This was a staff to staff exchange,” Henning wrote in a tweet. “His new chief of staff contacted the vice president’s office. The vice president’s office told him not to give it to him and we didn’t. No further action was taken. End of story.”
Contact Molly Beck and Lawrence Andrea at: [email protected] and [email protected]†
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This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Johnson Now Says He Coordinated Efforts To Transfer False Voter Lists