Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.) and two other Republican members of Wisconsin’s Congressional delegation — Reps. Tom Tiffany and Scott Fitzgerald — have been hit with a federal lawsuit claiming they are guilty of insurrection against the United States because of their participation in the push to overturn Joe Biden’s presidential election victory. Both Tiffany and Fitzgerald were among the substantial numbers of House Republicans who voted against certifying Biden’s electoral votes from Arizona and Pennsylvania, while Johnson has repeatedly provided support to the false notion that the last presidential election process was questionable to a substantial extent. The insurrection claims made against Johnson and the others in this lawsuit would place them directly at odds with a portion of the Constitution that blocks individuals who have participated in such action from serving in Congress.
Plaintiffs — including 10 Wisconsin citizens whose efforts are being funded by the liberal Minocqua Brewing Company Super PAC — insist that Johnson, Tiffany, and Fitzgerald are “no longer qualified” to pursue re-election to Congress. After uncertainty about what he’d actually be doing, Johnson has announced that he is pursuing another term; he’s slated to be on the ballot this fall, and since members of the House are re-elected every two years, Tiffany and Fitzgerald will be there too. As for the insurrection allegations, Johnson originally indicated that he’d be supporting objections to Biden electoral votes, but he eventually just voted to accept them after the Capitol violence early last year. Johnson, in his then-role as chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, hosted a hearing after the 2020 election to go over flimsy claims about the process. There, Johnson claimed that “lax enforcement, denying effective bipartisan observation of the complete election process, and failure to be fully transparent or conduct reasonable audits has led to heightened suspicion.” These claims about the process aren’t reflective of reality.
As for the new lawsuit, it insists: “The falsehoods of Johnson, Fitzgerald, and Tiffany about the integrity of Wisconsin’s election procedures began even before citizens were allowed to cast their ballots in the 2020 Presidential Election and continued long after their lies were disproven… The Defendants, along with hundreds or even thousands of President Trump’s surrogates, and most prominently President Trump himself, repeatedly proclaimed lies about the election and its results, and those lies increased in frequency and intensity as January 6, 2021 approached.” Notably, Fitzgerald also apparently helped with securing accommodations at the Wisconsin state Capitol for the Trump-backing Republicans who met there after the election to prepare essentially falsified electoral votes for Trump. (Biden won Wisconsin.) The multi-state fake electoral vote scheme has been under examination by state authorities, the House committee investigating the Capitol riot, and Department of Justice officials.
