Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin has received some unwanted fame after being outed yesterday as a bit player in the attempt to steal the 2020 presidential election. His role was to deliver to Vice President Pence envelopes with the ballots of fake electors from Wisconsin and Michigan. One of his staffers, Chris Riley, texted an aide to the vice president just after noon on January 6, before the count started, telling him that "Johnson needs to hand something to VPOTUS please advise." When he told the aide that the "something" was an alternate (i.e., fraudulent) slate of electors, the aide told Mr. Riley not to give the envelope to the vice president. Asked for comment, Senator Johnson said merely that he had "no idea" who had delivered the fraudulent ballots to his office, leaving the inference that his office attempted to deliver the ballots to Mr. Pence as an incidental sort of constituent service and not as any part of a scheme to steal the election.
Senator Johnson has not posted anything yet on his official Facebook page about the spotlight that the January 6 committee cast yesterday on his role as a minor political bagman, but his constituents aren't waiting for him to respond. They've flooded his recent posts on the Keystone XL pipeline and the danger of vaccinating babies against Covid with comments on his newfound national notoriety.
The pithiest comment about the Wisconsin portion of the plot came from the executive director of the Wisconsin republican party, who on January 4 texted someone the message "Freaking Trump idiots want someone to fly original elector papers to the senate President. They're going to call one of us to tell us just what the hell is going on." We'll learn more when the hearings resume tomorrow.