Sen. Ron Johnson, in an interview Sunday morning, said he is the victim of a media "smear job" in connection with claims made by the committee investigating Jan. 6 and that the investigation into President Joe Biden's son has been blocked because of media bias.
"This has been a complete smear job against me," the Wisconsin Republican told NBC's "Meet the Press" host Chuck Todd after he was asked about allegations that he considered helping send a slate of alternative electors to then-Vice President Mike Pence concerning the 2020 election.
"Chuck, you started this questioning falsely. You falsely accused me of getting those — and I never took possession. I never had them. OK?" Johnson said.
He said that on that day, he had been contacted "by the attorney of the president of the United States."
"He had something he wanted to deliver to the vice president, could I arrange it ... I had no idea what they wanted to contact or what they wanted to hand to the president or the vice president," said Johnson. "Within an hour, we found out the vice president wasn't accepting anything, end of the story. Nothing was delivered. I had no idea what I was being contacted to deliver, and we never delivered it."
Johnson on Sunday also discussed the assignment of a special counsel to investigate the classified documents found in locations connected to Biden. He said that, in general, he's not a "real fan" of special counsels, as he thinks Congress should have access to all information and do oversight.
But, he added, "Congress never gets access to the information. And by the time we do get access to the information, if we do, it's all old news and the political figures aren't held accountable."
Todd then asked Johnson if the same holds if the Justice Department decides that it isn't going to prosecute a crime, meaning he'd want information released to damage a person politically who was investigated.
"A lot of political wrongdoing does not necessarily result in a crime, but it's still wrong and the public needs to understand exactly what happened," said Johnson. "Look at the 51 intelligence operatives that issued a letter saying that the Hunter Biden computer was — had all the earmarks of a Russian information operation. That letter was an information operation. What happened? The FBI had access to Hunter Biden's computer in December 2019."
He added that he and Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, were conducting their investigation during the pandemic, "not the easiest thing to do," but as a result, "we were smeared."
"All that information was censored and suppressed. And the FBI, in their actions, impacted the election to a far greater extent than anything that Russia or China ever could have hoped to have accomplished. These are facts, and that's all I'm interested in," he said.
He also accused Todd of inviting him onto the program to argue with him, rather than to allow him to "lay out the facts" that he and Grassley uncovered, as well as what was documented on Hunter Biden's laptop. Todd replied that he could "talk about media bias all you want" in his "partisan cable cocoon."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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