Ron Johnson reveals power to tell real Trump supporters from ‘plain clothes militia’ behind Jan. 6 – By Mark Sumner (Daily Kos) / Feb 23 2021
It’s not unusual for any Senate hearing, no matter what the topic, to include some questions that attempt to get the witnesses to agree on political points. After all … Senate. But it is pretty unusual for a senator to use the questioning of witnesses by a rare joint Senate committee as an opportunity to go completely off the rails by pushing a conspiracy theory authored by an anti-Muslim hate group as a means of pushing the idea that the entire assault on the U.S. Capitol was a “false flag” operation.
On Tuesday, as the Senate’s investigation into the events of the Jan. 6 insurrection got underway, the irony of Sen. Cancún Cruz and Sen. Heil Hawley getting their chance to question law enforcement officials—rather than being across the table from them in small, brightly lit rooms—was sad. Cruz, sporting a fresh burn from his time in the media spotlight, restricted his questions to the purely reasonable. Hawley also started off in the land of reality, but couldn’t restrain himself from spending his last minute attacking Nancy Pelosi and retired Gen. Russel Honoré.
Still, nothing that they did held a candle (or a tiki torch) to the actions of Sen. Ron Johnson. Because rather than ask law enforcement about any of the events on Jan. 6, Johnson told them what happened. And what happened, according to the man who is honest-to-God sitting in Russ Feingold’s old chair, was that the Capitol was overcome by “fake Trump protesters” as the police incited a riot by good people.
Where most hearings involving witnesses generally include the idea of asking those witnesses questions, Johnson was having none of that. Oh, he said he had questions. So many questions. Only he was going to submit those in writing on another day.
