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- Sen. Ron Johnson virtually attended a meeting to discuss delaying the certification of the 2020 election.
- The meeting was hosted by MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell and was attended by approximately two dozen people.
- Johnson voted to certify the election despite originally saying he wouldn’t.
Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin virtually attended a January 4, 2021, meeting hosted by MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, The Washington Post reported last week.
Two days before the January 6 Capitol riot, a group met at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, DC. Lindell told The Post the meeting was convened to talk over potentially delaying President Joe Biden’s election certification.
There, roughly two-dozen attendees saw presentations about unfounded claims of election fraud — including false claims of international interference — The Post reported, citing attendees.
In an interview last week with Wisconsin radio station WTMG, Johnson said of the meeting that he didn’t “believe that (delaying the certification of the election) was ever discussed. They were talking about what machines might have done.”
Johnson previously held a hearing on December 16, 2020, about the election, when he was chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.
In addition to Johnson, who video-conferenced in, Sen. Cynthia M. Lummis of Wyoming and Sen. Kevin Cramer of North Dakota attended the meeting in person.
“They wanted to get the machines,” Cramer told The Post, saying that of international interference in the election they heard a “lot of theories but not a lot of evidence.”
Lindell told The Post he did not recall talking about wanting access to voting machines.
“I called the meeting, a few people came in and did a presentation on what they had for election fraud. And that was it,” Lindell, a Trump loyalist who has been a key player in pushing unproven election fraud claims, told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
Johnson originally said he was going to vote against certifying the 2020 election, however, he and Cramer ultimately voted to certify the results. (Lummis was one of several senators to vote against certification.)
However, following the January 6, 2021, riot, Johnson characterized the events — which resulted in five deaths and hundreds of injuries — as a “peaceful protest.”
The Post also reported that Johnson’s office received a memo that pushed for former President Donald Trump to use the National Security Agency and the Defense Department to “run targeted inquires of NSA raw signals” to sift through communications in an effort to prove foreign interference in the election.
“Staff received the memo on January 13 and took no further action,” a spokesperson from Johnson’s office told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. “The request from the Washington Post was the senator’s first knowledge of this memo, he has not seen it.”
Tom Nelson, who is a candidate for US Senate and the county executive of Outagamie County, Wisconsin, urged the House select committee investigating the January 6 attack to subpoena Johnson.
Nelson said in a letter to the committee that “reports about using NSA resources provide all the more reason to place him under oath and ask him what he knew and when he knew it.”
Representatives for Johnson and Lindell did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment.
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