Johnson, Ron Sen

===SEE TWOprimary 419 many tags Butina russia trip, horo...1119 bak 8 22 endit1johnson went on codel, not the nra trip

Sen. Ron Johnson WI took out feingold in tea party wave?

=foley & lardner cleta mitchell trump gA phone call?<a href="https://www.alternet.org/2021/01/ron-johnson/">https://www.alternet.org/2021/01/ron-johnson/</a>
Ron Johnson of Wisconsin is among the Republican senators who, unlike Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, has vowed to <a href="https://www.politico.com/interactives/2021/biden-election-certification-vote-count/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="color: rgb(11, 13, 101); text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">contest the Electoral College results</a> when the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives meet for a joint session of Congress on Wednesday, January 6. Wisconsin was among the states that President-elect Joe Biden won in the 2020 presidential election, and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's editorial board slams Johnson for failing to respect the will of Wisconsin voters in a <a href="https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/solutions/2021/01/05/ron-johnsons-dangerous-shilling-trump-makes-him-unfit-senate/4138135001/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="color: rgb(11, 13, 101); text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">scathing editorial</a> published on January 5."The arrogance of Ron Johnson is breathtaking," the Journal Sentinel declares. "Johnson and 12 other Republican senators say they will challenge the tabulation of Electoral College votes in Congress on Wednesday in a dangerous political stunt that will accomplish nothing but may burnish their image with those who would choose outgoing President Donald Trump over democracy. Johnson and his shameful friends are planning to support Trump as he directly opposes the will of the people." [twt]the editorial board stresses that although Biden will remain president-elect regardless of the "stunt" from Johnson and other GOP senators, that doesn't make it any less shameless."In the end, the results of the presidential election will not change: Joe Biden will still have beaten Trump by 7 million votes and won 306 electoral votes to Trump's 232," the Journal Sentinel says. "But Johnson's stunt will do harm to our democracy."The Journal Sentinel continues, "What precedent is being set here? What happens the next time a party — either party — loses the presidency narrowly while controlling both houses of Congress? Will those politicians do what Johnson and his hyperpartisan mob are doing? Will they make up lies about the election, cry voter fraud, complain about voting machines, election officials and any other ghost they can conjure?"The editorial board goes on to say that politically, Johnson should pay a price for his attack on U.S. democracy."Johnson's disgraceful display should not go unpunished," the Journal Sentinel tells readers. "While there is no way to recall a sitting senator — and censure or expulsion, though deserved, is unlikely given the politics of the moment — we urge voters to remember what Johnson has done. Hold him accountable. Demand that qualified challengers, Republican and Democrat alike, run against him if he has the audacity to break another promise and try for a third term in 2022."<div class="around-the-web" style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="from-your-siteheadline" style="color: rgb(31, 31, 31); font-weight: 700; text-transform: uppercase;">FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES</div><ul class="around-the-weblist" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; display: inline-block; width: 589.446px; list-style: none;"><li class="from-your-siteitem"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/ron-johnson-and-chuck-grassley-drop-their-biden-bombshell-and-its-an-absolute-dud/" class="from-your-sitelink" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="color: rgb(28, 28, 28); text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s; font-weight: lighter; line-height: normal; display: inline-block; margin-top: 10px;">Ron Johnson and Chuck Grassley drop their Biden bombshell ... ›</a></li><li class="from-your-siteitem"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/12/anti-vaxxer/" class="from-your-sitelink" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="color: rgb(28, 28, 28); text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s; font-weight: lighter; line-height: normal; display: inline-block; margin-top: 10px;">Sen. Ron Johnson invites AIDS-denying anti-vaxxer to testify on ... ›</a></li><li class="from-your-siteitem"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/10/gop-sens-ron-johnson-and-marsha-blackburn-are-tied-to-russian-money-and-trump-conspiracy-theories-theyre-not-alone/" class="from-your-sitelink" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="color: rgb(28, 28, 28); text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s; font-weight: lighter; line-height: normal; display: inline-block; margin-top: 10px;">GOP Sens. Ron Johnson and Marsha Blackburn are tied to Russian ... ›</a></li></ul><div class="around-the-webheadline" style="color: rgb(31, 31, 31); font-weight: 700; text-transform: uppercase; margin-top: 10px;">RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB</div><ul class="around-the-weblist" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; display: inline-block; width: 589.446px; list-style: none;"><li class="around-the-webitem"><a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/meet-the-press/sen-ron-johnson-claims-effort-object-biden-victory-part-transparency-n1252686" class="around-the-weblink" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="color: rgb(28, 28, 28); text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s; font-weight: lighter; line-height: normal; display: inline-block; margin-top: 10px;">Sen. Ron Johnson claims effort to object to Biden victory is part of ... ›</a></li><li class="around-the-webitem"><a href="https://thebulwark.com/my-call-with-ron-johnson-he-knows-biden-won-but-wont-admit-it/" class="around-the-weblink" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="color: rgb(28, 28, 28); text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s; font-weight: lighter; line-height: normal; display: inline-block; margin-top: 10px;">My Call With Ron Johnson: He Knows Biden Won But Won't Admit It ... ›</a></li><li class="around-the-webitem"><a href="https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020/10/03/u-s-sen-ron-johnson-wisconsin-tests-positive-covid-19/3607521001/" class="around-the-weblink" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="color: rgb(28, 28, 28); text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s; font-weight: lighter; line-height: normal; display: inline-block; margin-top: 10px;">U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin tests positive for COVID-19 ›</a></li></ul></div>  =--> IMPEACH<a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/democrats-say-the-gops-attempt-to-smear-biden-accidentally-exposed-a-trump-officials-corrupt-scheme/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/democrats-say-the-gops-attempt-to-smear-biden-accidentally-exposed-a-trump-officials-corrupt-scheme/</a>igor salon
the <a href="https://www.salon.com/2020/09/23/political-hit-job-gops-biden-report-littered-with-debunked-claims-and-russian-disinformation/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Republican report</a> aimed at raising questions about the dealings of Democratic nominee Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden in Ukraine appears to have accidentally implicated former Energy Secretary <a href="https://www.salon.com/2019/10/07/energy-secretary-rick-perry-denies-pressing-ukraine-on-energy-company-says-hes-not-resigning/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Rick Perry in an energy scheme in the foreign nation</a>, according to the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee.Republicans led by Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., released their <a href="https://www.salon.com/2020/09/23/political-hit-job-gops-biden-report-littered-with-debunked-claims-and-russian-disinformation/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">much-hyped report</a> on Hunter Biden’s role at the Ukrainian energy firm Burisma on Wednesday. However, it found no evidence of actual wrongdoing and relied largely on <a href="https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/christopherm51/hunter-biden-ukraine-report-republicans" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">debunked claims</a>, <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2020/09/23/gop-senators-anti-biden-report-420362" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">old statements</a> and narratives pushed as part of a <a href="https://www.salon.com/2020/09/23/political-hit-job-gops-biden-report-littered-with-debunked-claims-and-russian-disinformation/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Russian disinformation campaign</a>.But the report did find new evidence related to Perry’s actions in Ukraine while he served in President Donald Trump’s Cabinet.Amos Hochstein, a member of the supervisory board at the state-owned Ukrainian energy firm Naftogaz, told lawmakers that Perry “inappropriately pressured the Ukrainian government” to place Texas oil executive Robert Bensh on the board of the company while officials at the Department of Energy pressured the government to sign a deal with a “private business entity connected to Mr. Bensh,” according to a <a href="https://twitter.com/RonWyden/status/1308861317076443136" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">letter Wyden sent to Department of Energy Inspector General Teri Donaldson</a>.perry also pressured the Ukrainian government to place one of his longtime campaign supporters, Michael Bleyzer, on the board during a trip to Ukraine for President Volodymyr Zelensky’s inauguration in 2019, Wyden wrote. Bleyzer and his partner were later awarded a drilling contract in the country.“Mr. Bleyzer’s contract that he was awarded was despite the fact that he was not the highest bidder in the process,” Hochstein told lawmakers. “Other . . . bids were higher, and therefore, Ukraine chose a bid that paid itself less.”The heads of the state-owned Naftogaz conglomerate have since <a href="https://time.com/5750669/exclusive-lawsuit-raises-questions-about-rick-perrys-role-in-ukraine-energy-sector/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">filed a lawsuit</a> seeking to overturn the contract, arguing that the Ukrainian government acted “illegally and with bias” in agreeing to the deal, Wyden noted.“Witness testimony in this investigation has directly implicated former Secretary Rick Perry in alleged wrongdoing, and the department more broadly, in a scheme to undermine anti-corruption efforts that were implemented by Ukraine in partnership with the international community,” Wyden wrote.Politico <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2019/10/05/rick-perry-ukraine-trump-030230" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">reported last year</a> that Perry — who along with then-Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland and Ukraine envoy Kurt Volker were the <a href="https://www.salon.com/2019/11/19/even-the-republican-witnesses-make-donald-trump-look-like-a-depraved-criminal/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">“three amigos” who pushed a shadow foreign policy</a> in Ukraine — played an active role in the <a href="https://www.salon.com/2020/01/17/lev-parnas-implicates-rick-perry-in-ukraine-scandal-as-he-clears-joe-biden-of-wrongdoing/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Trump administration’s pressure on Zelensky</a>, which ultimately led to thepresident’s impeachment.ProPublica <a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/rick-perrys-ukrainian-dream" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">reported earlier this month</a> that Perry repeatedly pushed deals that “were potentially worth billions of dollars to Perry’s friends and political donors” and could “stand to benefit” the secretary himself. Two of the deals, including one worth $20 billion, went to the Texas firm Energy Transfer. Perry served on the company’s board before and after his stint at the Energy Department and bought shares now worth about $800,000 three months after leaving his post, according to the report.Ethics experts told the outlet that Perry’s efforts were violations of federal regulations. His actions also caught the attention of federal prosecutors, though he is reportedly not the target of any investigations.The interview with Hochstein was part of the Senate Republicans’ investigation into whether Hunter Biden’s position at Burisma affected U.S. foreign policy. The report asserted that his position was “problematic and did interfere in the efficient execution of policy with respect to Ukraine.” However, it <a href="https://www.salon.com/2020/09/23/political-hit-job-gops-biden-report-littered-with-debunked-claims-and-russian-disinformation/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">did not include any new evidence</a> suggesting his role affected the Obama administration’s policy. It also acknowledged that “the extent to which Hunter Biden’s role on Burisma’s board affected U.S. policy toward Ukraine is not clear.”Wyden, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/senate-gop-report-calls-hunter-bidens-board-position-problematic-but-offers-few-specific-examples-it-changed-obama-administration-policy/2020/09/23/4b66d41e-fd44-11ea-9ceb-061d646d9c67_story.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">said the probe pushed</a> “Russian disinformation.” He further described it as “an attempted political hit job facilitated by the State Department.”A Finance Committee aide told <a href="https://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/wyden-ronjohn-stumbled-upon-evidence-of-trump-corruption-in-ukraine-probe" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Talking Points Memo</a> that finding new evidence against the Trump administration “was certainly not Republicans’ goal.”“While Republicans’ Ukraine investigation showed Vice President Biden did nothing wrong,” the aide said, “it succeeded in implicating former Secretary Perry in a corrupt scheme to pressure the Ukrainian government to change the board of Naftogaz.”==an 920<div class="header-list-style" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; color: rgb(49, 49, 49); background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><h2 class="entry-title grid-title" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" open="Open" sans="Sans" sans-serif="sans-serif" letter-spacing="letter-spacing" px="px">r<a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/ron-johnson-and-chuck-grassley-drop-their-biden-bombshell-and-its-an-absolute-dud/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; color: rgb(136, 136, 136); transition: all 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer; letter-spacing: 0px;">on Johnson and Chuck Grassley drop their Biden bombshell — and it’s an absolute dud</a></h2><div class="grid-post-box-meta" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 12px 0px 0px; padding: 0px;"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/author/mark-sumner/" title="Posts by Mark Sumner" class="author url fn" rel="author" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; color: rgb(49, 49, 49); transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Mark Sumner</a> / <a href="https://www.alternet.org/author/daily-kos/" title="Posts by Daily Kos" class="author url fn" rel="author" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; color: rgb(49, 49, 49); transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Daily Kos</a>September 23, 2020</div></div><div class="item-content entry-content" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 18px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; color: rgb(49, 49, 49); background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">For months, Republican Senator Ron Johnson has promised to deliver a body blow to Joe Biden. Like the report being put together by William Barr and John Durham, this was one…</div><div>=</div><div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/history-repeating-trump-is-openly-pushing-russian-propaganda-against-biden">https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/history-repeating-trump-is-openly-pushing-russian-propaganda-against-biden</a></div><div>
</div><div>no lnx</div><div>
</div><div><div>Cody Fenwick August 18, 2020</div><div>
</div><div>Though former Special Counsel Robert Mueller did not establish that Donald Trump or members of his campaign conspired with the Kremlin in 2016 to influence the election, he famously concluded:</div><div>
</div><div>The presidential campaign of Donald J. Trump (“Trump Campaign” or “Campaign”) showed interest in WikiLeaks’s releases of documents and welcomed their potential to damage candidate Clinton.</div><div>
</div><div>…</div><div>
</div><div>[The] investigation established that the Russian government perceived it would benefit from a Trump presidency and worked to secure that outcome, and that the Campaign expected it would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts…</div><div>
</div><div>And this is, undoubtedly, happening again. Despite everything that happened in 2016, the chaos and scandal it unleashed, and all we’ve learned about the Russian efforts to interfere an American Democracy since then, Trump is welcoming Russia’s help once again.</div><div>
</div><div>On Sunday, Trump shared a tweet that included audio that U.S. intelligence has determined to be Russian propaganda.</div><div>
</div><div>As CNN reported:</div><div>
</div><div>Late Sunday, Trump amplified a tweet that contained audiotapes of a 2016 conversation between Biden and then-Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko — material that was released earlier this year by Andriy Derkach, a Ukrainian lawmaker named by the US intelligence community in its August 7 statement about Russia’s disinformation campaign against Biden. US authorities labeled Derkach’s efforts as disinformation because they are intentionally designed to spread false or misleading information about Biden.</div><div>
</div><div>By retweeting material that the US government has already labeled as propaganda — and doing so with the 2020 Democratic National Convention kicking off on Monday — Trump demonstrated once again that he is willing to capitalize on foreign election meddling for his own political gain.</div><div>
</div><div>The conversation does not actually implicate Biden in any wrongdoing. A voice, purportedly Poroshenko, seems to cast doubt on the claim that the prosecutor Biden pushed out of a top position in Ukraine while he was vice president was corrupt. However, it was the official position of the U.S. government that the prosecutor was corrupt, and his removal was a goal shared by international allies. Additionally, Poroshenko has dismissed the recordings as fake.</div><div>
</div><div>The AP reported:</div><div>
</div><div>By amplifying the recording to his more than 85 million Twitter followers, Trump underscored the ease with which pro-Russian narratives can seep into American public discourse ahead of the 2020 election despite being flagged by intelligence officials as the product of a concerted Russian effort.</div><div>
</div><div>Russia has also published disinformation under the guise of legitimate news stories, U.S. officials say, reflecting something of a shift in tactics from 2016, when Russia relied on a social media campaign to sow discord and also orchestrated the release of stolen Democratic emails.</div><div>
</div><div>To be clear: Trump has undoubtedly been briefed on what’s going on. So either he knows what he’s doing or is barely paying attention enough to care.</div><div>
</div><div>And he’s not the only one. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) has been warned that the investigation he’s leading into Biden’s past is tainted with Russian disinformation. But he has dismissed these concerns. And despite the obviously opportunistic nature of the inquiry — Republicans had no interest in Biden’s actions in Ukraine until he became a candidate for president — he is shamelessly ramping it up. And he has openly admitted that the section of he could use the portion of his probe focused on Trump’s “Obamagate” conspiracy theory to have an impact on the election.</div><div>
</div><div>“The more that we expose of the corruption of the transition process between Obama and Trump, the more we expose of the corruption within those agencies, I would think it would certainly help Donald Trump win reelection and certainly be pretty good, I would say, evidence about not voting for Vice President Biden,” Johnson said in a recent interview, as Politico reported.</div><div>
</div><div>More broadly, the GOP has, again and again, rejected Democratic efforts to secure our elections and to forestall further foreign intervention in our politics. While not as overt as Trump and Johnson, the party as a whole has — tacitly or otherwise — become comfortable with letting Russia help the president. What was scandalous in 2016 has now become commonplace.</div></div><div></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">active measures russia</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/democrats-raise-alarms-about-the-trump-administration-concealing-threats-to-the-2020-election/">https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/democrats-raise-alarms-about-the-trump-administration-concealing-threats-to-the-2020-election/</a></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">no lnx</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Democrats raise alarms about the Trump administration concealing threats to the 2020 election</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Written by Kerry Eleveld / Daily Kos August 7, 2020</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Congressional Democrats are sounding the alarm bells about 2016 redux playing out in this year’s election with extensive foreign interference while American voters are left in the dark.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Shortly before a closed-door intelligence briefing for senators on Tuesday, Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut called the classified documents he had reviewed as “chilling.”</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">“Declassify this information,” he urged in a tweet. “Americans deserve & need to know about ongoing foreign interference (even sabotage) in our election system.”</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div>Now three of his Democratic colleagues have written to FBI Director Chris Wray, urging him to go public with the attacks being leveled at U.S. elections by foreign actors. The Democrats—Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey, the ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee; Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin of Illinois; and Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island, ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee—seem particularly concerned about foreign disinformation being targeted at Congress, laundered by certain members, and then disseminated to the public with the apparent imprimatur of a U.S. lawmaker. Specifically, Democrats believe they are seeing that play out with a probe GOP Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin is currently leading into Joe Biden’s Ukraine diplomacy while he was vice president.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">“Senator Schumer and Speaker Pelosi noted in their July 13th letter to you that ‘Congress appears to be the target of a concerted foreign interference campaign, which seeks to launder and amplify disinformation in order to influence congressional activity, public debate, and the presidential election in November,’” the senators wrote to Wray, in a letter obtained by Politico. “We attended classified briefings from the intelligence community and FBI over the past week and our concerns with respect to this targeting have only grown.”</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="">Pelosi and Schumer attached an addendum to their mid-July letter singling out Johnson’s inquiry as a vehicle for the spread of Russian disinformation.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The briefings have detailed malign actions taken by both Russia and China. Politico reports that in one briefing, William Evanina, director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, admitted under pressure from Pelosi that Russia is specifically trying to help Trump get reelected while politically damaging Biden.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="">The briefings have also singled out Ukrainian individuals by name such as Andrii Telizhenko and Andrii Derkach who have made dubious claims about both the Democratic National Committee and Joe Biden. Both men also say they have turned over information to Sen. Johnson’s investigators.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The letter from Menendez, Durbin, and Reed pressed Wray to brief all senators on the information so they would be aware of foreign efforts to manipulate them. “Members must understand the risks inherent in accepting information generated by foreign sources, especially those committees currently conducting investigations,” they wrote.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Johnson remains obstinate about such warnings, saying Democrats’ objections only lead him to believe he’s on the right track. Johnson, who gave Trump cover on his initial effort to illegally fabricate a Ukrainian investigation, seems dead set on delivering Trump the corrupt Ukraine probe that was scuttled last year by a whistleblower complaint. Apparently, voting to acquit Trump of soliciting foreign help in his reelection wasn’t enough for Johnson. Now he’s recreating the bogus investigation that even Ukrainian officials refused to conduct.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">It should be incumbent on the FBI to make crystal clear to the American people who’s trying to manipulate this election and how they are trying to do so. Nothing less than the integrity of U.S. elections and the future of the republic are at stake.</div></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">=</div>=<div class="header-list-style" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; color: rgb(49, 49, 49); background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><h2 class="entry-title grid-title" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" open="Open" sans="Sans" sans-serif="sans-serif" letter-spacing="letter-spacing" px="px"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/07/gop-chairman-wont-confirm-or-deny-receiving-biden-materials-from-foreign-sources-even-as-ukrainians-say-theyre-passing-him-dirt/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; color: rgb(49, 49, 49); transition: all 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer; letter-spacing: 0px;">GOP chairman won’t confirm or deny receiving Biden ‘materials’ from foreign sources — even as Ukrainians say they’re passing him dirt</a></h2><div class="grid-post-box-meta" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 12px 0px 0px; padding: 0px;"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/author/matthew-chapman/" title="Posts by Matthew Chapman" class="author url fn" rel="author" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; color: rgb(49, 49, 49); transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Matthew Chapman</a> / <a href="https://www.alternet.org/author/raw-story/" title="Posts by Raw Story" class="author url fn" rel="author" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; color: rgb(49, 49, 49); transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Raw Story</a> July 22, 2020</div></div><div class="item-content entry-content" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 18px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; color: rgb(49, 49, 49); background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">On Wednesday, NBC News reported that Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Ron Johnson (R-WI), who is currently running a probe into the financial dealings of former Vice President Joe Biden’s family in…</div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/07/democrats-warn-the-fbi-that-a-gop-senator-is-laundering-a-foreign-operation-to-attack-biden-report/">https://www.alternet.org/2020/07/democrats-warn-the-fbi-that-a-gop-senator-is-laundering-a-foreign-operation-to-attack-biden-report/</a>On  Monday, Politico <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2020/07/20/democrats-fbi-briefing-foreign-interference-campaign-373134" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">reported</a> that Democratic congressional leaders have sent a <a href="https://intelligence.house.gov/uploadedfiles/20200713_big_4_letter_to_fbi_director_wray-defensive_briefing_signed.pdf" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">letter</a> to FBI Director Christopher Wray demanding a briefing on foreign efforts to target members of Congress as part of an influence campaign.“Among the Democrats’ concerns is that a Senate investigation being led by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) has become a vehicle for ‘laundering’ a foreign influence campaign to damage Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, according to two people familiar with the demand,” reported Natasha Bertrand. “Though the letter did not mention the Johnson investigation, it included a classified addendum that the two sources say identified the probe as one of the sources of their concern.”The letter was signed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA), and Senate Intelligence Committee ranking member Mark Warner (D-VA).Johnson, who chairs the Senate Homeland Security Committee, opened the investigation ostensibly to audit the origins of the Russia investigation in the previous administration. But even some Republicans have <a href="https://www.rawstory.com/2020/06/republicans-worried-ron-johnsons-investigation-of-obama-officials-will-blow-up-in-their-faces-report/" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">raised concerns</a> that the overly political nature of the probe will backfire on them.<div>=</div>=<div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/obamas-office-slams-two-gop-senators-for-promoting-russian-disinformation-in-letter-to-national-archives/">https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/obamas-office-slams-two-gop-senators-for-promoting-russian-disinformation-in-letter-to-national-archives/</a></div><div>
</div><div><div>no lnx doc</div><div>Alex Henderson May 6, 2020</div><div>
</div><div>Former President Barack Obama generally kept a low profile during the Ukraine scandal and the impeachment trial of President Donald Trump, preferring to let other prominent Democrats such as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff do the talking. But according to BuzzFeed News reporter Emma Loop, Obama’s office — in a March 13 letter — slammed Republican senators for trying to link Ukraine and former Vice President Joe Biden to interference in the United States’ 2016 presidential election.</div><div>
</div><div>A far-right conspiracy theory claims that it was the Ukrainian government, not the Russian government and President Vladimir Putin, that interfered in the 2016 election — and that Ukraine interfered on behalf of Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. That debunked claim, according to former special counsel Robert Mueller, has no validity. But many Trump supporters have promoted that conspiracy theory anyway, as have Putin allies in the Russian media. And in November 2019, two Republican senators (Chuck Grassley and Ron Johnson) tried to link the Obama Administration, including Biden, to the Ukrainian government.</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>Emma Loop</div><div>@LoopEmma</div><div>Scoop: In a letter to the National Archives, former president Barack Obama blasted the Senate GOP investigation into Joe Biden and alleged Ukrainian election interference, calling it an effort to "to give credence to a Russian disinformation campaign."https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/emmaloop/obama-records-biden-ukraine-russian-disinformation …</div><div>
</div><div>View image on TwitterView image on Twitter</div><div>
</div><div>Loop reports that Grassley and Johnson “have been investigating matters related to Democrats and Ukraine since the fall, when Trump was impeached for his interactions with Ukraine. Grassley and Johnson…. asked the National Archives for records on meetings between the Obama Administration and Ukrainian officials, as well meetings between Obama officials and Alexandra Chalupa, the Democratic operative at the heart of the debunked Ukrainian election interference narrative.”</div><div>
</div><div>In a March 13 letter — which was addressed to David S. Ferreiro of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) in Washington, D.C. — the office of Barack Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama asserted that a November 19, 2019 records request from Grassley and Johnson was “not a proper use of” NARA’s resources.</div><div>
</div><div>Anita Decker Breckenridge, a records specialist in the Obamas’ office, told Ferreiro, “The request for early release of presidential records in order to give credence to a Russian disinformation campaign —  one that has already been thoroughly investigated by a bipartisan congressional committee — is without precedent…. This use of the special access process serves no legitimate purpose.”</div><div>
</div><div>Breckinridge, who sent copies of the letter to Johnson and Grassley, went on to say that “in the interest of countering the misinformation campaign underlying this request,” the Obamas’ office was “prepared” to give “access to the records” that were requested — and added, “In doing so, we emphasize that abuse of the special access process strikes at the heart of presidential confidentiality interests and undermines the statutory framework and norms that govern access to presidential records.”</div></div><div>=</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">no lnx</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Republicans are willing to accept millions dying because they have ’embraced’ Trump’s death cult: conservative columnist</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Written by Tom Boggioni / Raw Story March 24, 2020</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">In a blistering column for the Daily Beast, conservative Matt Lewis ripped into the Republican Party for demonstrating it really does stand for putting profits before people if its response to the coronavirus pandemic is any indication.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">According to the author of “Too Dumb to Fail: How the GOP Went from the Party of Reagan to the Party of Trump,” the GOP has joined the president’s “death cult.”</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Starting with a blunt, “In the last 24 hours, it has become clear that, despite warnings from experts like Dr. Fauci, Donald Trump is willing to sacrifice lives to try and save the economy and his chances for re-election,” Lewis suggested Republicans are not only backing the president — they’re proudly and publically embracing it.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Pointing to Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) proclaiming, “We don’t shut down our economy because tens of thousands of people die on the highways. It’s a risk we accept so we can move about. We don’t shut down our economies because tens of thousands of people die from the common flu,” the columnist expressed his disgust by writing, “I’m pretty sure Johnson just said he was comfortable with millions of Americans dying of coronavirus—so long as it doesn’t disrupt economic activity.”</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">“This logic is spreading among Republicans,” he continued. “Consider the comments Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick made Monday night on Fox News: ‘No one reached out to me and said as a senior citizen, are you willing to take a chance on your survival in exchange for keeping the America that all America loves for your children and grandchildren. And if that’s the exchange, I’m all in.’”</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">“I’m old enough to remember when conservatives worried that Obamacare rationing would lead to “death panels” whereby older patients would be deemed too sick and expensive to help,” he wrote. “After all, why throw good money after bad? A few short years later, and it is Republicans who are making a shockingly similar rationalization.”</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Stating, “This is a weird turn of events for the party of life,” Lewis lamented, “We have skipped over that nuanced discussion and gone straight to Republicans rationalizing the idea that we can just wipe out a million or so people to fix the economy.”</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">“Ultimately, we have a political party that has shown its true colors. Look no further than its standard-bearer. Consider his selfish motivations and petty behavior. Consider his long-held worldview that sees some people as genetic winners and some people as losers,” he explained. ” This is a man who responded to a pandemic by thinking, ‘How can I be on TV more?’ It’s truly depraved.”</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">“If human life and GDP become mutually exclusive for a pandemic-stricken America, which one do you think he’s going to choose? I think we already know the answer to that one,” he concluded.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">[more]</div>also ?Fox News’ Tucker Carlson goes off on GOP senator caught dumping stocks — says he must explain or resign
<a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/03/fox-news-tucker-carlson-goes-off-on-gop-senator-caught-dumping-stocks-says-he-must-explain-or-resign/">https://www.alternet.org/2020/03/fox-news-tucker-carlson-goes-off-on-gop-senator-caught-dumping-stocks-says-he-must-explain-or-resign/</a><div>
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">=</div>=<div>https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/10/08/gop-theory-that-ukraine-set-up-trump/</div><div>
</div><div><div>no lnx</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>Fact Checker</div><div>Analysis</div><div>The GOP theory that Ukraine ‘set up’ Trump</div><div>
</div><div>Glenn Kessler </div><div>October 8, 2019 </div><div>
</div><div>“That’s the piece of the puzzle I’m here to report today, that unlike the narrative of the press, that President Trump wants to dig up dirt on his 2020 opponent, what he wants is he wants an accounting of what happened in 2016. Who set him up? Did things spring from Ukraine? There’s a good piece we got an Oversight [Committee] letter on from Politico in 2017. Let me quote the article. It says: ‘Ukrainian government officials tried to help Hillary Clinton and undermine Trump.’ They did so by disseminating documents ‘implicating a top Trump aide in corruption,’ suggesting they were investigating the matter. Ukrainian officials also reportedly ‘helped Clinton allies research damaging information on Trump and his advisers.’ There is potential interference in the 2016 election. That’s what Trump wants to get to the bottom of, but the press doesn’t want to.”</div><div>
</div><div>— Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), during an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Oct. 6, 2019</div><div>
</div><div>Never mind that the rough transcript released by the White House of the July 25 call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky shows that Trump said, “There’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great.”</div><div>
</div><div>Johnson says that what Trump really wanted to find out from Ukrainian officials is what happened in 2016. “Who set him up?” he asked. “Did things spring from Ukraine?”</div><div>
</div><div>In the course of the July 25 conversation, Trump did say: “I would like you to do us a favor though because our country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it. I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine, they say Crowdstrike… I guess you have one of your wealthy people… The server, they say Ukraine has it.” (The ellipses are in the transcript, and it’s unclear if something has been edited out.)</div><div>
</div><div>Johnson, in his television interview, did not mention CrowdStrike but quoted from a Politico article from 2017. So what’s going on? Here is an explanation of three theories promoted by Republicans to suggest that Trump was “set up” by Ukraine.</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>The Facts</div><div>
</div><div>First of all, the evidence so far indicates there is nothing that took place in Ukraine that even begins to compare to the Russian intervention in the 2016 election. Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III documented in great detail a top-down effort, initiated by Russian President Vladimir Putin, to illegally hack and release information in a deliberate attempt to meddle in the presidential election on behalf of Trump.</div><div>
</div><div>What we have in Ukraine, so far, is just flotsam and jetsam that does not add up to state-level efforts to change the course of history.</div><div>
</div><div>DNC staff member</div><div>
</div><div>The Politico article cited by Johnson says a Ukrainian American Democratic operative, Alexandra Chalupa, began looking into Trump campaign official Paul Manafort’s ties to Ukrainian politician Viktor Yanukovych, who served as president from 2010 until his ouster in 2014. Chalupa was hired as a consultant to the Democratic National Committee during the 2016 campaign to help mobilize ethnic communities. She left the DNC in July 2016, the DNC said.</div><div>
</div><div>She continued her research into Manafort on her own, sometimes with the help of Ukrainian Embassy officials, and she said she sometimes shared her findings with officials at the DNC and Clinton’s campaign. But former Clinton campaign officials said they never received information from Chalupa.</div><div>
</div><div>The exact role of embassy officials is unclear. Chalupa told Politico that officials at the Ukrainian Embassy were helpful in providing “guidance” in response to her questions and that the embassy also worked with reporters researching Trump, Manafort and Russia. A top embassy official denied working with reporters or with Chalupa on issues related to Trump or Manafort, but a former embassy officer said he was instructed to help Chalupa with her research.</div><div>
</div><div>DNC officials denied that they coordinated with Chalupa on opposition research. She was not a researcher for the DNC, and the DNC did not incorporate her findings about Manafort, Politico reported. DNC officials told Politico that the Democratic Party had been looking into Trump and his ties to Russia long before Chalupa alerted them.</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>Chalupa disputed the framing of the Politico story in a Facebook post. “During the 2016 US election, I was a part time consultant for the DNC running an ethnic engagement program,” she said in a lengthy statement to CNN. “I was not an opposition researcher for the DNC, and the DNC never asked me to go to the Ukrainian Embassy to collect information.”</div><div>
</div><div>Chalupa may have worked with some embassy officials, but there’s no evidence that the DNC used information gathered by Chalupa or that the Ukrainians coordinated opposition research with the DNC.</div><div>
</div><div>The Politico article was published nearly two years ago, and it’s revealing that Johnson still is quoting from it. Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) wrote a letter to the Justice Department in 2017, and more recently Grassley and Johnson wrote a follow-up letter asking again for an investigation. A Johnson spokesman directed The Fact Checker to a cryptic statement by the Justice Department that a team is evaluating “the extent to which a number of countries, including Ukraine, played a role in the counterintelligence investigation directed at the Trump campaign during the 2016 election.”</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>Manafort ‘black ledger’</div><div>
</div><div>Manafort, briefly, was Trump’s campaign chairman in 2016. In August 2016, a Ukrainian government agency released ledgers that reportedly showed $12.7 million in cash payments from Yanukovych’s party that were earmarked for Manafort. Reports about these payments prompted Manafort to step down from his position in the Trump campaign, though the Mueller report says he continued to provide advice to campaign officials.</div><div>
</div><div>Serhiy Leshchenko, a Ukrainian lawmaker and former investigative journalist, and Artem Sytnyk, a director of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau, publicized these ledgers, which, according to Leshchenko, were found by an anonymous source in the burned-out ruins of the headquarters of Yanukovych’s party.</div><div>
</div><div>In December, a Kiev court said the decision to publish the documents amounted to interference in the U.S. presidential election — a conclusion that Leshchenko said was politically motivated and aimed at undermining Sytnyk. In July, the ruling was overturned by an appeals court. “The court concluded that all the charges against me were unfounded, and even obliged my opponents to reimburse me for $100 in legal costs,” Leshchenko wrote in The Washington Post.</div><div>
</div><div>“Corruption is harmful whether it takes place in America or Ukraine. My desire to expose Manafort’s doings was motivated by the desire for justice,” Leshchenko wrote. “Neither Hillary Clinton, nor Joe Biden, nor John Podesta, nor George Soros asked me to publish the information from the black ledger. I wanted to obtain accountability for the lobbyist whose client immersed Ukraine in a blood bath during the Revolution of Dignity and the subsequent war in eastern Ukraine, when Yanukovych called on Russia to send troops.” He added: “I have no doubt that Yanukovych paid Manafort for his services out of the funds he robbed from Ukrainian taxpayers.”</div><div>
</div><div>Glenn Beck on Oct. 3 promoted an audiotape, purportedly of Sytnyk bragging that he “helped Hillary’s campaign,” that was made public in March by Borislav Rosenblatt, a Ukrainian legislator behind the now-overturned lawsuit claiming election interference. But Rosenblatt had been investigated by Sytnyk’s anti-corruption bureau, suggesting he is not a credible source.</div><div>
</div><div>While some Republicans have suggested that the ledger was fake, Manafort’s defense lawyers did not make that argument as they unsuccessfully defended him on charges that included failing to report on his income taxes millions of dollars he had earned working for Yanukovych.</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>CrowdStrike</div><div>
</div><div>This is the strangest claim — that somehow a private company co-founded by a Ukrainian American had a role in starting the “Russian hoax.” It is based on virtually no evidence, yet it emerged from the president’s mouth during a phone conversation with his Ukrainian counterpart. “The server, they say Ukraine has it,” Trump told Zelensky.</div><div>
</div><div>Trump has been obsessed with the idea that the FBI never took physical possession of the servers at the DNC that were hacked. (Our database of Trump’s false and misleading claims shows he has brought this up more than 20 times.)</div><div>
</div><div>But the FBI felt it was not necessary to enter the DNC’s premises and take custody of the affected servers, as agents were able to obtain complete copies of forensic images made by CrowdStrike, which first identified that the DNC had been hacked by Russian operatives. Former FBI director James B. Comey testified that his staff told him this arrangement was an “appropriate substitute.”</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>CrowdStrike co-founder Dmitri Alperovitch is a Russia-born cyber and national security expert and a U.S. citizen; he is not Ukrainian. In any case, Mueller’s investigation confirmed CrowdStrike’s findings and even indicted 12 Russian intelligence officers in 2018 for their role in the breach.</div><div>
</div><div>Thomas P. Bossert, who served as Trump’s first homeland security adviser, said Sept. 29 that the president has been repeatedly told that the story has been “completely debunked,” yet Trump continues to embrace it. “The DNC server and that conspiracy theory has got to go,” Bossert said on ABC’s “This Week.” “If he continues to focus on that white whale, it’s going to bring him down.”</div><div>
</div><div>The Bottom Line</div><div>
</div><div>The CrowdStrike allegation is crazy stuff, dismissed by even Trump’s own aides. So let’s ignore that.</div><div>
</div><div>The story of Chalupa’s work at the DNC has not advanced since 2017, and it’s pretty thin beer, especially when compared with state-ordered hacking by Russia. She may or may not have worked with embassy officials, and the DNC did not use her research. The impact, if any, seems minimal.</div><div>
</div><div>The release of the “black ledger” — via a Ukrainian state agency and legislator — did result in Manafort’s removal from the campaign and prompted questions about Trump and Russia. (Trump might have avoided some of these questions if he had done some due diligence and not hired Manafort in the first place, given Manafort’s deep ties to Russian figures.) But the legal ruling in Ukraine that this was election inference has been overturned. And again, people appear to have acted out of individual motivations, not at the behest of the head of state.</div><div>
</div><div>We’ll see what, if anything, the Justice Department investigation uncovers. But there’s little to suggest this is a fruitful avenue for inquiry.</div></div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/10/gop-sens-ron-johnson-and-marsha-blackburn-are-tied-to-russian-money-and-trump-conspiracy-theories-theyre-not-alone/">https://www.alternet.org/2019/10/gop-sens-ron-johnson-and-marsha-blackburn-are-tied-to-russian-money-and-trump-conspiracy-theories-theyre-not-alone/</a>no lnx
GOP Sens. Ron Johnson and Marsha Blackburn are tied to Russian money and Trump conspiracy theories. They’re not alone
Written by Sophia Tesfaye / Salon October 30, 2019Nancy Pelosi has announced that the House will finally hold a formal vote dictating the rules for the impeachment inquiry, six weeks after it was launched by a whistleblower’s complaint mysteriously withheld from Congress. And on Tuesday, Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman backed up both the initial whistleblower and U.S. diplomat Bill Taylor by testifying that he too was concerned about the Trump administration’s push to use congressionally-allocated military aid to Ukraine to coerce an investigation into Joe Biden.
Congressional Republicans have long since stopped defending Trump on the merits since shortly after the White House released a transcript of a July call between President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Instead, they’ve sought refuge in increasingly meaningless process arguments. So of course Pelosi agreeing to a formal vote on the rules of impeachment hasn’t stopped Republican complaints about the process. The goalposts will shift once again. No matter what the Democrats agree to, Republicans will complain about procedural unfairness and also refuse to concede the inquiry is legitimate. But how much of Republicans’ unwillingness to hold Trump accountable for his self-dealing is because they’re in on it?
On Monday the Washington Post published an interview with a Ukrainian diplomat who claimed to have met with Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., this summer to discuss the baseless conspiracy theory promoted by President Trump that Ukrainian officials had interfered in the 2016 election on behalf of Hillary Clinton.
Johnson reportedly met with Ukrainian diplomat Andrii Telizhenko for at least 30 minutes on Capitol Hill in July, and Telizhenko then met with Johnson’s Senate staff for five additional hours. According to the report, “the discussions focused in part on ‘the DNC issue’ — a reference to his unsubstantiated claim that the Democratic National Committee worked with the Ukrainian government in 2016 to gather incriminating information about then-Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort. Telizhenko said he could not recall the date of the meeting, but a review of his Facebook page revealed a photo of him and Johnson posted on July 11.”
Johnson is a vocal Trump defender who has hounded the inspector general of the intelligence community about investigating media leaks regarding the Ukraine call. He has previously admitted that he was told by Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, that Ukraine needed to “get to the bottom of what happened in 2016” in order to receive military aid.As Johnson told the Wall Street Journal earlier this month, after Sondland told him that, he was assured “if President Trump has that confidence” that the Ukrainians would do his bidding, “then he’ll release the military spending.” Now, as the Post points out, Johnson’s “knowledge of key events” in the case may “complicate his role as a juror in a trial by the Senate.”
Recall that when Johnson was asked about his defense of Trump’s actions, he snapped at the simple question from NBC News’ Chuck Todd and spun out the same deep state conspiracy theory pushed by the likes of Fox News’ Sean Hannity.
Beyond his apparent involvement in Trump’s Ukraine dealings, Johnson is alleged to have benefited from campaign money illegally funneled from Russia via shell corporations owned by the National Rifle Association, which helped him win his tight 2016 race in Wisconsin.
Political action committees for Republican Sens. Mitch McConnell, Marco Rubio and Lindsey Graham reportedly accepted $7.35 million in contributions from a Ukrainian-born oligarch with close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin during the 2016 election. McConnell and Graham are co-sponsors of a new resolution condemning the House impeachment inquiry. At least 50 Senate Republicans, several of whom have refused to publicly comment on the growing Ukraine scandal — citing a need to remain impartial for a likely Senate impeachment trial — have already signed onto that bill. The resolution is currently paused in the Senate Rules Committee until the House votes on impeachment rules later this week.
As House Democrats’ investigation has rapidly unveiled ever more damaging material regarding Trump’s Ukraine scandal, public support for impeachment has shot up. Reportedly nervous about his wall of defense in the Senate crumbling, the president recently hosted several GOP senators at the White House, including top Johnson, Graham, John Thune of South Dakota and John Kennedy of Louisiana, last week. A day earlier, Thune and Kennedy, had blocked a Democratic bill to provide funding for states to shore up election security. The next day, Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., quietly blocked three election-security bills for the second time this year.
“You know, it’s not a good sign if you’re doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result,” Blackburn said on the Senate floor late last week. She is among the Republican senators with close ties to a U.S.-sanctioned Russian politician who is accused of illegally channeling Russian funds through the NRA. Under Senate rules, any individual senator can block a vote on a bill.When Senate Republicans are not prematurely dismissing an impeachment inquiry on which they will probably have to render judgment, they continue to protect Trump’s refusal to clamp down on potential election interference. If Republican charges of a “kangaroo court” are anything, they are a classic case of projection: How can Senate Republicans possibly serve as impartial jurors in a trial of the president, when they are implicated in the same pattern of political malfeasance?
Sophia Tesfaye is Salon’s Deputy Politics Editor and resides in Washington, D.C. You can find her on Twitter at @SophiaTesfaye.no lnx
Republican humiliates himself at Senate hearing as his attempt to nail Instagram for liberal bias falls flat Republican humiliates himself at Senate hearing as his attempt to nail Instagram for liberal bias falls flat Image via Wikimedia Commons.written by Brad Reed / Raw Story June 25, 201930Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) on Tuesday fell flat on his face when he tried to get technology experts to admit that major social media platforms were biased against conservatives.While talking with assorted experts on artificial intelligence and algorithms, Johnson said that he had his staff members go to Politico’s Instagram account and record what other recommendations the app gave to them after following it.According to Johnson, the vast majority of recommendations that came back were for news websites like the Washington Post or progressive outlets like Huffington Post, and none were for right-wing websites such as Breitbart.Dr. Stephen Wolfram, the founder and chief executive officer of Wolfram Research, scoffed at Johnson’s claim of bias and said it was more likely that Instagram delivered liberal recommendations to Politico followers because those followers were more likely to follow neutral or progressive political news websites in the first place.“The thing that will happen is, if there’s no other information, it will tend to be just where the most content that people on the platform in general have clicked,” he said. “It may be a statement, in that case — I’m really speculating — that the users of that platform tend to like those things.”Johnson also complained that many conservative news groups were having their articles removed from social media feeds — but Ms. Rashida Richardson, the director of policy research at the AI Now Institute, said that research shows most of those removals came because those articles contained demonstrably false information.“That’s more of a content moderation issue,” she said.“OK, anyway,” Johnson replied.Watch the video below.<div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">=</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">NEW</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/04/the-bizarre-link-between-wisconsin-and-russia/">https://www.alternet.org/2019/04/the-bizarre-link-between-wisconsin-and-russia/</a></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">no lnx</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Daily Kos Staff / Daily Kos April 22, 2019</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The Mueller Report had plenty of information as to how Russians worked to subvert our elections and gained influence in our current US government. But what jumps out to me is how much of that story and related Russian affairs connected back to Wisconsin.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Our state appears in the Mueller Report as one of a handful in the Midwest that former Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort passed information about to a Russian intelligence agent. The report indicates that this was done to tell the Russians the best way to boost Trump’s chances in those states.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">View image on Twitter</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Bob Cesca</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">?</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">@bobcesca_go</div><div style=""> Jesus! Mueller: "Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Minnesota" were discussed between Manafort and GRU operative Kilimnik.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">7,595</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">9:01 AM - Apr 18, 2019</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="">And you may recall that Trump did surprisingly well in all of those states in November 2016. Funny, that.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">One of the biggest assists Trump got was in the form of a record investment by the National Rifle Association. Keep that NRA support in mind when you hear about this story from Friday night. </div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Maria Butina, who has admitted to working as a Russian agent to infiltrate an influential U.S. gun rights group and make inroads with conservative activists and Republicans, asked the court to sentence her to time served ahead of her April 26 sentencing, according to court documents.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Butina, 30, a former graduate student at American University who publicly advocated for gun rights, pleaded guilty in December to one count of conspiring to act as a foreign agent for Russia. She has remained in custody since her arrest in July 2018.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Prosecutors filed a memo on Friday ahead of this week’s sentencing. And check out this segment of that report, which might be familiar to you:</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="">Soon after [Butina] drafted the Diplomacy Project proposal, in April 2015, she traveled to the United States to attend the Gun Rights Organization (aka the NRA) annual meetings with the Russian Official, where she highlighted her experience as a gun-rights advocate in Russia and was introduced to influential members of Political Party 1, one of whom announced his Presidential campaign shortly thereafter.  Statement of Offense at 3.  She did so in furtherance of the conspiracy’s goal to establish the back channel of communication as laid out in the Diplomacy Project.  Id. at 3.  Butina attended this announcement event in July 2015 and, after being tasked by the Russian Official to do so, wrote a report to him in which she emphasized the fact that she was introduced to one of that candidate’s three advisors for matters concerning international politics.   A copy of the Twitter chats, along with the report, is attached hereto as Exhibit 4.   According to her notes from a meeting with then-Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak in May 2015, she said she would “send the name of the advisor [to the candidate whose announcement event she later attended] who can come to Moscow.”</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div>Looks like those Twitter chats will be released when the Butina file is redacted, likely after the sentencing happens on Friday.</div><div style="">
</div><div style="">But who was this candidate that Butina and Putin-appointed central banker Alexander Torshin met up with, and whose presidential announcement event did she go to in July 2015?</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">After Walker washed out of the 2016 election race, the sentencing memo describes how Butina organized a meeting with the NRA back home in Mother Russia.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">In December 2015, Butina invited powerful members of the Gun Rights Organization to Moscow as part of the conspiracy’s plan to establish the unofficial channel of communication. Statement of Offense at 3. She actively sought out meetings for this group with high-level Russian government officials, as arranged by the Russian Official.  Id.  As part of this endeavor, the defendant sought information from U.S. Person 1 about the degree of political influence held by the Gun Rights Organization members in the United States and stressed the need for a “political program” as part of the Gun Rights Organization trip to Moscow.  Id. at 3-4.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="">Following the Gun Rights Organization trip to Moscow, the defendant and the Russian Official discussed the need to “hold the spot” now that “everyone has realized that [the Gun Rights Organization] is a valuable contact,” and she noted that there will be “attempts to seize the  initiative.”  Exhibit 2. Butina has since confirmed that she was worried about others within the Russian government or a political group or activist noticing that the contacts she had built with the Gun Rights Organization were valuable and cutting her and the Russian Official out of the loop. Just days later, Butina noted to the Russian Official that they would “quietly press” or “put pressure on [members of the Gun Rights Organization] later.”</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Guess who was in Russia in December 2015?</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">View image on Twitter</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">David A. Clarke, Jr.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">@SheriffClarke</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> Red Square near the Kremlin with a Russian officer. Met earlier with Russian Foreign Minister who spoke on Mid East. </div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">1,078</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">11:42 AM - Dec 10, 2015</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div>Also don’t forget that a couple of Wisconsin politicians knew about these Russian efforts before the 2016 election, but hid it from unsuspecting Wisconsin voters.In late Summer 2016, President Obama organized a “Gang of 12” to let them know about potential Russian hacking and interference, and 2 of the members of that meeting were then-House Speaker Paul Ryan, and Senate Homeland Security Chair Ron Johnson. That meeting that was kept from public knowledge before the elections after complaints from Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="">I’ve referenced this Bruce Murphy article in Urban Milwaukee from January 2017 in the past, and that’s because it continues to link back to developments in the Trump-GOP-Russia connection. It also points to Johnson being complicit in keeping Wisconsinites from knowing about the Russian garbage that was being sent to their computers, and flat-out lying later on about what intelligence agencies told him.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="">Russia’s interference with the American elections fit the pattern of a country engaged in disinformation and destabilization efforts across the globe, as Johnson has described it. And Russia’s leader was someone Johnson already suspected of nefarious acts. Johnson had previously sponsored resolutions calling for a full investigation into the murder of a Russian political opposition leader and for an investigation of Russia’s attacks on the Ukraine.</div><div>
</div><div>Johnson, in short, had an opportunity to be a patriot and condemn the fact that Russia was now engaged in such activities in the United States. But he issued no resolutions — in fact, not one word — on Russian’s cyber attacks on America.</div><div>
</div><div>Worse, he has engaged in his own pattern of misinformation on the subject. After the CIA publicly released a report in January concluding that Russia meddled in the presidential election to help Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump win the election, Johnson issued a statement to the Wisconsin State Journal saying he would “would need more definitive information before drawing further conclusions.” Johnson did not reveal that he had been informed back in September this was happening.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Johnson went on to complain to CNBC that the CIA refused to brief him on Russian hacking, saying “I have not seen the evidence that it actually was Russia,” while failing to note the CIA report’s echoed the briefing he’d received from other intelligence leaders in September.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">In addition, Ron Johnson was 1 of several GOP Senators who decided last year’s US Independence Day was a great time…to visit the Russians.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div>Sounds like investigative media might want to ask some questions of these Sconnie Republicans, why many seem to have no problem hanging out with high-level Russian officials, and ask what’s being done to prevent Wisconsinites from being targeted and propagandized against in 2020. The (non)-answers they give might be quiteilluminating.</div><div>
</div><div>I’d also like to see Walker, Clarke, Paul Ryan, ex-Trump Chief of Staff Reince Priebus (named several times in the Mueller Report) and Ron Johnson go before Congress and answer some pointed questions in the coming months. They have a lot to answer for in how they’ve allowed our democracy to be threatened over the last few years, and why they don’t seem too willing to do much about it.</div></div><div>
</div><div>LNX below</div><div style="">=<div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">=</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/04/the-bizarre-link-between-wisconsin-and-russia/">https://www.alternet.org/2019/04/the-bizarre-link-between-wisconsin-and-russia/</a></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">no twt pix clarke w/ rooskie soldier</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style=""> Mueller Report had plenty of information as to how Russians worked to subvert our elections and gained influence in our current US government. But what jumps out to me is how much of that story and related Russian affairs connected back to Wisconsin.<div class="p1_23" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Our state appears in the Mueller Report as one of a handful in the Midwest that former Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort passed information about to a Russian intelligence agent. The report indicates that this was done to tell the Russians the best way to boost Trump’s chances in those states.[twt manafort briek kilimnick?]nd you may recall that Trump did surprisingly well in all of those states in November 2016. Funny, that.<div style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">One of the biggest assists Trump got was in the form of a record investment by the National Rifle Association. Keep that NRA support in mind when you hear about <a href="https://www.usnews.com/news/us/articles/2019-04-19/admitted-russian-agent-butina-asks-us-court-to-be-lenient" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">this story from Friday night. </a></div><div style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><div style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><blockquote style="background: rgb(245, 245, 245); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 10px 20px 10px 24px; position: relative; line-height: 1.7; overflow: hidden; border: none !important;">"Maria Butina, who has admitted to working as a Russian agent to infiltrate an influential U.S. gun rights group and make inroads with conservative activists and Republicans, asked the court to sentence her to time served ahead of her April 26 sentencing, according to court documents.<div class="p6_23" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><div class="alt_ad_block story-page-in-content-graph-5" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /></div></blockquote><blockquote style="background: rgb(245, 245, 245); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 10px 20px 10px 24px; position: relative; line-height: 1.7; overflow: hidden; border: none !important;">Butina, 30, a former graduate student at American University who publicly advocated for gun rights, pleaded guilty in December to one count of conspiring to act as a foreign agent for Russia. She has remained in custody since her arrest in July 2018.<div class="p7_23" style="font-style: italic; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /></blockquote><a href="https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/5972875/4-19-19-US-Sentencing-Memo-Butina.pdf" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Prosecutors filed a memo on Friday </a>ahead of this week’s sentencing. And check out this segment of that report, which might be familiar to you.<div class="p8_23" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Soon after [Butina] drafted the Diplomacy Project proposal, in April 2015, she traveled to the United States to attend the Gun Rights Organization (aka the NRA) annual meetings with the Russian Official, where she highlighted her experience as a gun-rights advocate in Russia and was introduced to influential members of Political Party 1, one of whom announced his Presidential campaign shortly thereafter.  Statement of Offense at 3.  She did so in furtherance of the conspiracy’s goal to establish the back channel of communication as laid out in the Diplomacy Project.  Id. at 3.  Butina attended this announcement event in July 2015 and, after being tasked by the Russian Official to do so, wrote a report to him in which she emphasized the fact that she was introduced to one of that candidate’s three advisors for matters concerning international politics.   A copy of the Twitter chats, along with the report, is attached hereto as Exhibit 4.   According to her notes from a meeting with then-Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak in May 2015, she said she would “send the name of the advisor [to the candidate whose announcement event she later attended] who can come to Moscow.”<div class="p9_23" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Looks like those Twitter chats will be released when the Butina file is redacted, likely after the sentencing happens on Friday.<div class="p10_23" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><div style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">But who was this candidate that Butina and Putin-appointed central banker Alexander Torshin met up with, and whose presidential announcement event did she go to in July 2015?<div class="p11_23" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">After Walker washed out of the 2016 election race, the sentencing memo describes how Butina organized a meeting with the NRA back home in Mother Russia.<div class="p12_23" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><blockquote style="background: rgb(245, 245, 245); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 10px 20px 10px 24px; position: relative; line-height: 1.7; overflow: hidden; border: none !important;"><div style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><blockquote style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 10px 20px 10px 24px; position: relative; line-height: 1.7; overflow: hidden; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border: none !important;">"In December 2015, Butina invited powerful members of the Gun Rights Organization to Moscow as part of the conspiracy’s plan to establish the unofficial channel of communication. Statement of Offense at 3. She actively sought out meetings for this group with high-level Russian government officials, as arranged by the Russian Official.  Id.  As part of this endeavor, the defendant sought information from U.S. Person 1 about the degree of political influence held by the Gun Rights Organization members in the United States and stressed the need for a “political program” as part of the Gun Rights Organization trip to Moscow.  Id. at 3-4.<div class="p13_23" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /></blockquote><blockquote style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 10px 20px 10px 24px; position: relative; line-height: 1.7; overflow: hidden; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border: none !important;">Following the Gun Rights Organization trip to Moscow, the defendant and the Russian Official discussed the need to “hold the spot” now that “everyone has realized that [the Gun Rights Organization] is a valuable contact,” and she noted that there will be “attempts to seize the  initiative.”  Exhibit 2. Butina has since confirmed that she was worried about others within the Russian government or a political group or activist noticing that the contacts she had built with the Gun Rights Organization were valuable and cutting her and the Russian Official out of the loop. Just days later, Butina noted to the Russian Official that they would “quietly press” or “put pressure on [members of the Gun Rights Organization] later.”<div class="p14_23" style="font-style: italic; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /></blockquote></div></blockquote><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Guess who was in Russia in December 2015?</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">[pix]</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">
</div><div style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Also don’t forget that a couple of Wisconsin politicians knew about these Russian efforts before the 2016 election, but hid it from unsuspecting Wisconsin voters. In late Summer 2016, President Obama organized a “Gang of 12” to let them know about potential Russian hacking and interference, and 2 of the members of that meeting were then-House Speaker Paul Ryan, and Senate Homeland Security Chair Ron Johnson. That meeting that was kept from public knowledge before the elections after complaints from Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell.</div><div class="p18_23" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">I’ve referenced <a href="https://urbanmilwaukee.com/2017/01/10/murphys-law-ron-johnson-asleep-on-russian-hacking/" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">this Bruce Murphy article in Urban Milwaukee from January 2017</a> in the past, and that’s because it continues to link back to developments in the Trump-GOP-Russia connection. It also points to Johnson being complicit in keeping Wisconsinites from knowing about the Russian garbage that was being sent to their computers, and flat-out lying later on about what intelligence agencies told him.<div class="p19_23" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><blockquote style="background: rgb(245, 245, 245); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 10px 20px 10px 24px; position: relative; line-height: 1.7; overflow: hidden; border: none !important;"><div style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Russia’s interference with the American elections fit the pattern of a country engaged in disinformation and destabilization efforts across the globe, as Johnson has described it. And Russia’s leader was someone Johnson already suspected of nefarious acts. Johnson had previously sponsored resolutions calling for a full investigation into the murder of a Russian political opposition leader and for an investigation of Russia’s attacks on the Ukraine.<div class="p20_23" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><div style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><div style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Johnson, in short, had an opportunity to be a patriot and condemn the fact that Russia was now engaged in such activities in the United States. But he issued no resolutions — in fact, not one word — on Russian’s cyber attacks on America.</div><div style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><div style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Worse, he has engaged in his own pattern of misinformation on the subject. After the CIA publicly released a report in January concluding that Russia meddled in the presidential election to help Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump win the election, Johnson issued a statement to the Wisconsin State Journal saying he would “would need more definitive information before drawing further conclusions.” Johnson did not reveal that he had been informed back in September this was happening.</div><div style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><div style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Johnson went on to complain to CNBC that the CIA refused to brief him on Russian hacking, saying “I have not seen the evidence that it actually was Russia,” while failing to note the CIA report’s echoed the briefing he’d received from other intelligence leaders in September.</div></div></div></div></div></div></blockquote>In addition, Ron Johnson was 1 of several GOP Senators who decided<a href="https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/politics/2018/07/05/johnson-urges-dialogue-russia-but-warns-against-midterms-interference/761043002/" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;"> last year’s US Independence Day was a great time…to visit the Russians.</a><div class="p21_23" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Sounds like investigative media might want to ask some questions of these Sconnie Republicans, why many seem to have no problem hanging out with high-level Russian officials, and ask what’s being done to prevent Wisconsinites from being targeted and propagandized against in 2020. The (non)-answers they give might be quite illuminating.<div class="p22_23" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">I’d also like to see Walker, Clarke, Paul Ryan, ex-Trump Chief of Staff Reince Priebus (named several times in the Mueller Report) and Ron Johnson go before Congress and answer some pointed questions in the coming months. They have a lot to answer for in how they’ve allowed our democracy to be threatened over the last few years, and why they don’t seem too willing to do much about it.</div></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">ref</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://urbanmilwaukee.com/2017/01/10/murphys-law-ron-johnson-asleep-on-russian-hacking/">https://urbanmilwaukee.com/2017/01/10/murphys-law-ron-johnson-asleep-on-russian-hacking/</a></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style=""><div class="entry" helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" vertical-align="vertical-align" baseline="baseline" color="color" rgb="rgb" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit;"><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">Yesterday, in an <a href="http://www.wpr.org/ron-johnson-says-he-takes-russian-hacking-threat-very-seriously" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; outline: 0px;">interview</a> with Wisconsin Public Radio, Sen. <a href="https://urbanmilwaukee.com/people/ron-johnson" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; outline: 0px;">Ron Johnson</a> made it clear he takes a very tough stand on Russia and its leader Vladimir Putin.<p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">“I’m very wary of Vladimir Putin,” Johnson said. “There have been close to 30 suspicious political assassinations since he has taken power.”<p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">As for Putin and Russian using cyber hacking to interfere with America’s elections, he declared, “I take it very seriously. As chair of European Subcommittee on Foreign Relations, we’ve held a number of hearings on Russia’s disinformation campaign and how they are trying to de-stabilize certainly Eastern European countries, but just their destabilization efforts around the world.”<p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">Indeed, Johnson had “heard firsthand of Russia’s efforts to destabilize and interfere in the internal affairs of its neighbors,” he <a href="http://host.madison.com/wsj/news/local/govt-and-politics/ron-johnson-not-sold-on-cia-conclusion-that-russia-tried/article_9fd3fee3-d864-59ca-98a7-1412930c1553.html" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; outline: 0px;">told</a> the <a href="https://urbanmilwaukee.com/businesses/wisconsin-state-journal" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; outline: 0px;">Wisconsin State Journal</a>.<p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;" />And yet back in mid-September when Johnson was informed by intelligence leaders of Russian hacking and was asked to join a bipartisan effort to warn Russia to desist, Johnson did nothing.To date no one in the Wisconsin media has even reported that Johnson attended this intelligence briefing, much less that he had no response to the information.The details of the mid-September meeting are in a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/obama-orders-review-of-russian-hacking-during-presidential-campaign/2016/12/09/31d6b300-be2a-11e6-94ac-3d324840106c_story.html?utm_term=.4d39e942aa50" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; outline: 0px;">story</a> by the Washington Post, which reported that President <a href="https://urbanmilwaukee.com/people/barack-obama" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; outline: 0px;">Barack Obama</a> had dispatched his counterterrorism and homeland security adviser, Lisa Monaco, FBI Director <a href="https://urbanmilwaukee.com/people/james-comey/" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; outline: 0px;">James B. Comey</a> and Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson “to make the pitch for a ‘show of solidarity and bipartisan unity’ against Russian interference in the election,” as a senior administration official told the Post.As chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, Johnson was one the so-called “Gang of 12,” the top 12 congressional leaders, who were invited to the meeting. (House Speaker <a href="https://urbanmilwaukee.com/people/paul-ryan" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; outline: 0px;">Paul Ryan</a> also <a href="https://urbanmilwaukee.com/2016/12/15/murphys-law-paul-ryans-patriotism-at-issue/" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; outline: 0px;">attended the meeting</a>.) Johnson later <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2016/12/ron-johnson-cia-briefing-russia-withheld-232731" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; outline: 0px;">confirmed to Politico</a> that he participated in the briefing.“In a secure room in the Capitol used for briefings involving classified information, administration officials broadly laid out the evidence U.S. spy agencies had collected, showing Russia’s role in cyber-intrusions in at least two states and in hacking the emails of the Democratic organizations and individuals,” the Post reported.<p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">“And they made a case for a united, bipartisan front in response to what one official described as ‘the threat posed by unprecedented meddling by a foreign power in our election process.’”<p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">But Republican leaders declined to join a bipartisan response to the information. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell “raised doubts about the underlying intelligence and made clear to the administration that he would consider any effort by the White House to challenge the Russians publicly an act of partisan politics,” the Post reports.<p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">Russia’s interference with the American elections fit the pattern of a country engaged in disinformation and destabilization efforts across the globe, as Johnson has described it. And Russia’s leader was someone Johnson already suspected of nefarious acts. Johnson had previously sponsored resolutions calling for a full investigation into the murder of a Russian political opposition leader and for an investigation of Russia’s attacks on the Ukraine.<p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">Johnson, in short, had an opportunity to be a patriot and condemn the fact that Russia was now engaged in such activities in the United States. But he issued no resolutions — in fact, not one word — on Russian’s cyber attacks on America.Worse, he has engaged in his own pattern of misinformation on the subject. After the CIA publicly released a report in January concluding that Russia meddled in the presidential election to help Republican presidential candidate <a href="https://urbanmilwaukee.com/people/donald-trump" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; outline: 0px;">Donald Trump</a> win the election, Johnson issued <a href="http://host.madison.com/wsj/news/local/govt-and-politics/ron-johnson-not-sold-on-cia-conclusion-that-russia-tried/article_9fd3fee3-d864-59ca-98a7-1412930c1553.html" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; outline: 0px;">a statement</a> to the Wisconsin State Journal saying he would “would need more definitive information before drawing further conclusions.” Johnson did not reveal that he had been informed back in September this was happening.<p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;" /><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">Johnson went on to complain to CNBC that the CIA refused to brief him on Russian hacking, saying “I have not seen the evidence that it actually was Russia,” while failing to note the CIA report’s echoed the briefing he’d received from other intelligence leaders in September.<p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">Johnson also complained that Obama had failed to confront the Russia government with strength, even though the Obama administration had proposed a strong stand on cyber hacking which Johnson declined to join.<p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">So things stood until this week, when Johnson did an about face and declared his concern about Russia’s cyber hacking of his country. Why the sudden shift of position?<p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">Perhaps because Trump’s election was certified last week so Russia’s efforts to help elect him can’t be used to pry away any electoral votes. Or perhaps because of the Senate hearing last Thursday, where senators <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/05/us/politics/armed-services-committee-john-mccain-russia-hacking.html?r=0" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; outline: 0px;">on both sides of the aisle expressed concern</a> about testimony by intelligence leaders on Russian hacking. As GOP Sen. Lindsay Graham noted, Republicans could be the next target of cyberattacks. “Could it be Republicans next election?” he said. “It’s not like we’re so much better at cybersecurity than Democrats.”<p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">Indeed, all Americans are threatened when a hostile nation targets us for cyber attacks. That’s true now, and was true back in mid-September when Ron Johnson failed to take any action. Perhaps it’s time for him to explain why.<div id="topic-list" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;"><h3 style="margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: normal; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 34px; vertical-align: baseline;">More about the Russian Affair</h3><ul style="margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style-position: inside; list-style-image: initial;"><li style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 18px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://urbanmilwaukee.com/2018/07/24/op-ed-is-walker-a-russian-dupe/" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; outline: 0px;">Op Ed: Is Walker a Russian Dupe?</a> - Bill Kaplan - Jul 24th, 2018</li><li style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 18px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://urbanmilwaukee.com/pressrelease/gov-scott-walker-political-operation-snagged-250000-check-mere-days-after-meeting-with-accused-russian-spy/" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; outline: 0px;">Gov. Scott Walker Political Operation Snagged $250,000 Check Mere Days After Meeting With Accused Russian Spy</a> - One Wisconsin Now - Jul 20th, 2018</li><li style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 18px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://urbanmilwaukee.com/pressrelease/whats-walker-hiding/" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; outline: 0px;">What’s Walker Hiding?</a> - Democratic Party of Wisconsin - Jul 18th, 2018</li><li style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 18px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://urbanmilwaukee.com/2018/07/18/campaign-cash-russian-operative-highlights-walkers-nra-ties/" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; outline: 0px;">Campaign Cash: Russian Operative Highlights Walker’s NRA Ties</a> - Wisconsin Democracy Campaign - Jul 18th, 2018</li><li style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 18px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://urbanmilwaukee.com/pressrelease/matt-flynn-blasts-scott-walker-for-meeting-with-russian-spy/" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; outline: 0px;">Matt Flynn Blasts Scott Walker for Meeting with Russian Spy</a> - Matt Flynn - Jul 16th, 2018</li><li style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 18px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://urbanmilwaukee.com/2018/06/28/plenty-of-horne-giuliani-cant-practice-law-in-d-c/" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; outline: 0px;">Plenty of Horne: Giuliani Can’t Practice Law in D.C.</a> - Michael Horne - Jun 28th, 2018</li><li style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 18px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://urbanmilwaukee.com/pressrelease/pocan-statement-regarding-reports-that-russian-linked-facebook-ads-targeted-wisconsin/" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; outline: 0px;">Pocan Statement Regarding Reports that Russian-Linked Facebook Ads Targeted Wisconsin</a> - U.S. Rep Mark Pocan - Oct 4th, 2017</li><li style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 18px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://urbanmilwaukee.com/pressrelease/wisconsin-notified-of-unsuccessful-russian-hacking-attempt/" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; outline: 0px;">Wisconsin Notified of Unsuccessful Russian Hacking Attempt</a> - Wisconsin Elections Commission - Sep 22nd, 2017</li><li style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 18px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://urbanmilwaukee.com/2017/08/08/murphys-law-wisconsin-a-key-state-for-russian-hacking/" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; outline: 0px;">Murphy’s Law: Wisconsin A Key State for Russian Hacking</a> - Bruce Murphy - Aug 8th, 2017</li><li style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 18px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://urbanmilwaukee.com/pressrelease/report-suggests-wisconsin-voters-targeted-by-collusion-between-trump-campaign-russian-fake-news-operation/" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; outline: 0px;">Report Suggests Wisconsin Voters Targeted by Collusion Between Trump Campaign, Russian Fake News Operation</a> - One Wisconsin Now - Jul 13th, 2017</li><li style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 18px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://urbanmilwaukee.com/pressrelease/rep-pocan-statement-on-former-fbi-director-james-comeys-testimony-on-trump-and-russia/" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; outline: 0px;">Rep. Pocan Statement on Former FBI Director James Comey’s Testimony on Trump and Russia</a> - U.S. Rep Mark Pocan - Jun 8th, 2017</li><li style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 18px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://urbanmilwaukee.com/pressrelease/speaker-paul-ryan-swears-house-gop-to-secrecy-regarding-trumps-ties-to-russia-spokesperson-lies-about-the-conversation/" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; outline: 0px;">Speaker Paul Ryan Swears House GOP To Secrecy Regarding Trump’s Ties To Russia, Spokesperson Lies About The Conversation</a> - Democratic Party of Wisconsin - May 17th, 2017</li><li style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 18px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://urbanmilwaukee.com/pressrelease/as-fbi-confirms-russia-investigation/" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; outline: 0px;">As FBI Confirms Russia Investigation</a> - Democratic Party of Wisconsin - Mar 21st, 2017</li><li style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 18px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://urbanmilwaukee.com/pressrelease/fbi-investigation-into-links-between-trumprussia-highlights-need-for-special-prosecutor/" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; outline: 0px;">FBI Investigation into Links Between Trump/Russia Highlights Need for Special Prosecutor</a> - U.S. Rep. Gwen Moore - Mar 20th, 2017</li><li style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 18px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://urbanmilwaukee.com/pressrelease/revelations-about-sessions-contact-with-russia-warrants-his-removal/" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; outline: 0px;">Revelations about Sessions’ Contact with Russia Warrants his Removal</a> - U.S. Rep. Gwen Moore - Mar 2nd, 2017</li><li style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 18px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://urbanmilwaukee.com/pressrelease/senators-call-for-independent-prosecutor-to-investigate-trump-officials-collusion-with-russia-and-apparent-white-house-cover-up/" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; outline: 0px;">Senators Call for Independent Prosecutor to Investigate Trump Officials’ Collusion with Russia and Apparent White House Cover-Up</a> - U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin - Feb 15th, 2017</li><li style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 18px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://urbanmilwaukee.com/pressrelease/rep-pocan-urges-president-trump-to-fully-declassify-report-on-russian-interference-in-2016-election/" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; outline: 0px;">Rep. Pocan Urges President Trump to Fully Declassify Report on Russian Interference in 2016 Election</a> - U.S. Rep Mark Pocan - Feb 14th, 2017</li><li style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 18px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://urbanmilwaukee.com/2017/01/10/murphys-law-ron-johnson-asleep-on-russian-hacking/" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; outline: 0px;">Murphy’s Law: Ron Johnson Asleep on Russian Hacking?</a> - Bruce Murphy - Jan 10th, 2017</li><li style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 18px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://urbanmilwaukee.com/pressrelease/u-s-senator-tammy-baldwin-joins-call-for-bipartisan-senate-select-committee-investigation-of-russian-interference-in-2016-election/" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; outline: 0px;">U.S. Senator Tammy Baldwin Joins Call for Bipartisan Senate Select Committee Investigation of Russian Interference in 2016 Election</a> - U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin - Jan 3rd, 2017</li><li style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 18px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://urbanmilwaukee.com/pressrelease/u-s-senator-tammy-baldwin-statement-on-russian-cyberattacks/" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; outline: 0px;">U.S. Senator Tammy Baldwin Statement on Russian Cyberattacks</a> - U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin - Dec 16th, 2016</li><li style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 18px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://urbanmilwaukee.com/pressrelease/wisconsin-comrades-set-to-welcome-donald-trump-whitewash-russian-attempts-to-influence-elections/" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; outline: 0px;">Wisconsin Comrades Set to Welcome Donald Trump, Whitewash Russian Attempts to Influence Elections</a>- One Wisconsin Now - Dec 13th, 2016</li></ul></div></div><div id="bottom-links" helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" vertical-align="vertical-align" baseline="baseline" color="color" rgb="rgb" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit;"><div class="social-share-bar" style="margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 10px 0px 8px; border-width: 1px 0px; border-top-style: solid; border-right-style: initial; border-bottom-style: solid; border-left-style: initial; border-top-color: rgb(219, 219, 219); border-right-color: initial; border-bottom-color: rgb(219, 219, 219); border-left-color: initial; border-image: initial; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; width: 725px; clear: both;"><ul style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none outside; overflow: auto;" /></div></div></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">also ref</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/politics/2018/07/05/johnson-urges-dialogue-russia-but-warns-against-midterms-interference/761043002/">https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/politics/2018/07/05/johnson-urges-dialogue-russia-but-warns-against-midterms-interference/761043002/</a></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">republican U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson said Thursday that he and others in a congressional delegation to Moscow put Russians on notice not to interfere with the 2018 midterm elections.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div>Johnson was in the group of congressional Republicans that traveled this week to Moscow for talks with Russian lawmakers.Johnson said Russia's meddling in the 2016 U.S. elections was "brought up constantly by multiple senators.""The point was made," Johnson said. "I think they are very well aware of the fact that a way to blow up this first step would be to interfere in the 2018 elections."They were very well put on notice that we're not buying what they're saying. That we're basically issuing, let me be kind here, guidance that it would not be smart to be caught meddling in 2018. I think they got the message. There's no way they couldn't have had."The Washington Post reported the Republicans "sounded a newly conciliatory tone" in the talks that were held ahead of President Donald Trump's July 16 summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, Finland.U.S. Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) led the delegation. Johnson said he was only "cleared" to go on the trip last week, left for Moscow on Sunday and returned to Wisconsin Thursday.Late last year, Johnson and fellow Republican Sen. John Barrasso of Wyoming called off a planned trip to Moscow after Russia denied a visa to Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire.RELATED: <a data-track-label="inline|intext|n/a" href="https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/politics/2017/02/18/sen-ron-johnson-backs-russia-probes-but-downplays-urgency/98098796/" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Sen. Ron Johnson backs Russia probes but downplays urgency</a>RELATED: <a data-track-label="inline|intext|n/a" href="https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/investigations/daniel-bice/2018/01/25/wisconsin-sen-ron-johnson-walks-back-claims-anti-trump-secret-society-within-fbi/1065135001/" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson walks back claims of an anti-Trump 'secret society' within FBI</a>RELATED: <a data-track-label="inline|intext|n/a" href="https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/politics/2018/03/15/russian-twitter-trolls-stoked-racial-tension-wake-sherman-park-riots-milwaukee-before-2016-election/421439002/" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Russian Twitter trolls stoked racial tension in wake of Sherman Park rioting in Milwaukee before 2016 election</a>Johnson said relations between the U.S. and Russia are "strained.""I've been saying for a long time that I wish Russia was no worse than a friendly rival as opposed to an unfriendly adversary," he said. "I don't want it to degrade to the enemy category.""Right now, we're adversaries, there's no two ways about it," he said.But Johnson was hopeful that a process could be started for "an ongoing dialogue to find individuals so we can actually find relationships.""Those on-going personal relationships can be crucial in uncertain times," he said."My takeaway there was a sincere desire on both sides to improve relationships," he added.Johnson, who chairs the European subcommittee of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, defended the trip that saw the U.S. lawmakers in Moscow over July 4th."This is an important relationship," he said. "Russia is not going away."He added, "The main reason you go there is to understand their perspective."This was Johnson's first trip Moscow, which he described as "a modern, well-maintained European city. There was nothing shabby about it."He said there was "no evidence" that international sanctions were having an effect on the Russian economy. But he said Russia is rankled by sanctions on individuals, "targeting the oligarchs, their legislators."<div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">=</div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>=see distraction
<a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/04/trio-of-republican-senators-demand-doj-hand-over-information-on-clinton-email-probe-as-ag-barr-prepares-for-release-of-redacted-mueller-report/">https://www.alternet.org/2019/04/trio-of-republican-senators-demand-doj-hand-over-information-on-clinton-email-probe-as-ag-barr-prepares-for-release-of-redacted-mueller-report/</a>As Attorney General William Barr prepares the release of a redacted version of special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation report, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) is reportedly recruiting other Republican senators help with a separate endeavor. As MSNBC reports, “a trio of top Republican senators” are demanding the Justice Department “hand over information on the handling of the probe into Hillary Clinton’s private email server.”<div class="p1_6" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Graham, along with Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) and Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) sent a letter to Barr on Tuesday requesting documents pertaining to the department’s investigation of the former secretary of state.<div class="p2_6" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="alt_ad_block story-page-in-content-graph-2" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="teadsNative" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">The document request comes despite federal investigators clearing Clinton of criminal wrongdoing, and a separate Justice Department inspector general examination that reviewed the department’s probe. According to Politico, the trio of senators have requested a “classified briefing on steps the Justice Department plans to take <a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2019/04/16/fbi-clinton-email-probe-1278029" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">in light of its inspector general’s 2018 report</a>,” according to Politico.<div class="p3_6" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">“Now that the Special Counsel’s investigation has concluded, we are unaware of any legitimate basis upon which the Department can refuse to answer the Judiciary Committee’s inquiries,” Graham, Johnson and Grassley — who chair the Senate Judiciary Committee, Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee and Senate Finance Committee, respectively — wrote in their letter to Barr.<div class="p4_6" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The lawmakers also claimed a portion of the inspector general’s report “raises significant issues associated with the FBI’s failure to review certain highly classified information in support of its Midyear investigation.”<div class="p5_6" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">As Politico notes, Graham has likewise pledged to investigate whether the DOJ and FBI attempted to influence the 2016 to stop Donald Trump from becoming president.<p name="ac88" id="ac88" class="graf graf--p graf-after--p" style="margin: 29px 0px 0px; font-size: small; --baseline-multiplier:0.17; line-height: 1.58; letter-spacing: -0.003em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">For more than a decade, WPA — now WPAi — has been developing, honing, testing, innovating, and implementing various strategies using data science and predictive analytics.<p name="f751" id="f751" class="graf graf--p graf-after--p" style="margin: 29px 0px 0px; font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); --baseline-multiplier:0.17; line-height: 1.58; letter-spacing: -0.003em;">Successes reach back to Utah Senator Mike Lee’s 2010 unexpected victory over a long-time incumbent, 2012’s upset by attorney Ted Cruz over an establishment favorite, to our 2016 work on behalf of the <a href="http://www.weeklystandard.com/the-selling-of-the-candidates-2016/article/2005352" data-href="http://www.weeklystandard.com/the-selling-of-the-candidates-2016/article/2005352" class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" rel="nofollow noopener" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.54); background-repeat: repeat-x; background-image: linear-gradient(to right, currentcolor 100%, currentcolor 0px); background-size: 1px 1px; background-position: 0px calc(1em + 1px);">Club for Growth to assist in Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson’s come-from-behind victory</a>.<table border="0" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1517687781406_193815" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; word-break: break-word; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); width: 524px;"><tbody id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1517687781406_193814" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px; width: 524px;"><tr id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1517687781406_193813" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px;"><td style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px; border-spacing: 2px;">
</td><td width="25" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px; border-spacing: 2px;"> </td><td id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1517687781406_193812" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px; border-spacing: 2px; line-height: 21px;">Anatomy of a Fox News scandal

If you were paying attention to right-wing media on February 7, you saw <a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="https://mediamatters.nationbuilder.com/r?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.mediamatters.org%2Fblog%2F2018%2F02%2F08%2Flife-made-fox-news-scandal-obama-fbi-texts-edition%2F219321&e=2fd18ded548fce9ef66e074aaf01da3d5df1923b&utm_source=mediamatters&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=211weekly&n=12" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background: transparent; outline: none;">a major scandal unfold</a>. Based on a report from Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), conservatives accused then-President Obama of interfering in the Clinton email investigation. The basis for this was a text from an FBI agent on Sep. 2, 2016, that said "potus wants to know everything we're doing." Fox & Friends repeatedly covered the story as a "bombshell." Trump <a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="https://mediamatters.nationbuilder.com/r?u=https%3A%2F%2Ftwitter.com%2FrealDonaldTrump%2Fstatus%2F961270833569202176&e=2fd18ded548fce9ef66e074aaf01da3d5df1923b&utm_source=mediamatters&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=211weekly&n=13" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background: transparent; outline: none;">tweeted</a> about it at 11:10 ET, saying in all caps "NEW FBI TEXTS ARE BOMBSHELLS!"By noon, the story began to collapse <a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="https://mediamatters.nationbuilder.com/r?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.mediamatters.org%2Fvideo%2F2018%2F02%2F07%2FNew-Fox-News-FBI-text-pseudo-scandal-falls-apart-on-Outnumbered-%2F219298&e=2fd18ded548fce9ef66e074aaf01da3d5df1923b&utm_source=mediamatters&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=211weekly&n=14" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background: transparent; outline: none;">as people noted</a> that 1) the Clinton email investigation was closed months before this text was sent and 2) this text was actually about the FBI's investigation into Russian interference in the election. (In fact, just days after this text, Obama <a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="https://mediamatters.nationbuilder.com/r?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cnn.com%2F2016%2F09%2F05%2Fpolitics%2Fbarack-obama-g20-summit-asia%2Findex.html&e=2fd18ded548fce9ef66e074aaf01da3d5df1923b&utm_source=mediamatters&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=211weekly&n=15" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background: transparent; outline: none;">had a "blunt" meeting</a> with Putin.)In the early afternoon, the story was debunked by Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal. And yet, Fox News was undeterred. On Fox News' flagship staight news show, the panel talked about "more questions" being raised. In the 7 pm hour, Ed Henry reported that it was "up for debate" whether the text was about the Russia investigation or the Clinton investigation.It was in the evening that this scandal changed into a different scandal, as personalities started attacking Obama for being briefed on Russian interference in the election at all. By the morning of Feb. 8, Kellyanne Conway joined Fox & Friends to make the same argument. It's only a matter of time until they use this pseudo-scandal as a justification for whatever ridiculous thing Trump does.Also: Fox News <a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="https://mediamatters.nationbuilder.com/r?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.mediamatters.org%2Fblog%2F2018%2F01%2F30%2Ffox-news-virtually-ignored-trump-refusal-enact-election-related-russia-sanctions%2F219212&e=2fd18ded548fce9ef66e074aaf01da3d5df1923b&utm_source=mediamatters&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=211weekly&n=16" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1517687781406_193833" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background: transparent; outline: none;">barely mentioned</a> that the Trump administration is refusing to enact sanctions on Russia that were passed by a bipartisan, vet-proof majority in Congress; the network also <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="https://mediamatters.nationbuilder.com/r?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.mediamatters.org%2Fblog%2F2018%2F02%2F08%2Ffox-friends-didnt-discuss-trump-aide-rob-porters-history-reported-domestic-abuse-mentioned-obama-18%2F219315&e=2fd18ded548fce9ef66e074aaf01da3d5df1923b&utm_source=mediamatters&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=211weekly&n=17" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1517687781406_193819" style="-webkit-padding-start: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background: transparent; outline: none;">ignored reports</a> that Trump's White House had known about domestic abuse allegations against a top Trump staffer for months.</td></tr></tbody></table>=<div></div><div>
</div><div><a href="https://www.npr.org/2016/12/06/504590408/republicans-raise-concerns-about-uptick-in-midnight-regulations">https://www.npr.org/2016/12/06/504590408/republicans-raise-concerns-about-uptick-in-midnight-regulations</a></div><div>
</div><div><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Department of Homeland Security issued a regulation Tuesday putting restrictions on the kinds of archaeological materials that can be imported from Egypt.<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">That may not sound like a big deal unless maybe you're a collector or a museum. There are lots of federal regulations taking effect every day, and in fact there's been an uptick as the Obama administration's time in office wanes.<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Such an increase is troubling to Republicans, but gives hope to those who want new policies in place before a new administration moves into the White House.<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">They're called "midnight regulations," implying they are issued in the dark of night or at the last hour of an outgoing administration.<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Susan Dudley, director of the Regulatory Studies Center at George Washington University defined them more broadly.<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">"I tend to think of true midnight regulations as those issued after the elections," during the three months between election day and inauguration day, she said.<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Dudley said that in every recent administration, regardless of party, "we tend to see an uptick in regulatory activity in that window."<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto;">The GW center said there are now some 340 significant regulations in the works that fit that bill. Fifty-nine of those are deemed economically significant, which means they are expected to have a impact on the economy of $100 million or more.<aside id="ad-backstage-wrap" aria-label="advertisement" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><aside id="ad-mobilebackfill-wrap" aria-label="advertisement" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">White House spokesman Josh Earnest pushed back against the notion that the Obama administration is working overtime to issue new regulations.<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">"The regulatory work that's being done in this administration is not going to be characterized by a last minute rush on the way out the door," Earnest said. "I think what it will be characterized by is a continuous and persistent effort to complete the work that's already been started."<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto;">Groups concerned about the environment hope the administration will issue new rules onenergy efficiency for appliances and protecting the Arctic. David Goldston, director of Government Affairs at the Natural Resources Defense Council said those "are probably two of the most prominent remaining sets."<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Expanding public lands, including a proposed "Bears Ears" National Monument in Utah is also on the wish list.<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Republicans in Congress, meanwhile, are telling the Obama administration to stop issuing regulations entirely.<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., has sent that message to a number of agencies, including the Department of Labor about its rule expanding the number of salaried employees eligible for overtime (which has been blocked by a Federal judge,) the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Food and Drug Administration, over its already-implemented regulations on e-cigarettes.<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto;">Johnson wants the FDA to "take a pause on" the vaping regulation, because it could put "an entire industry or most of an industry out of business, thousand of workers out of work and you could really harm people."<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Johnson said the Obama administration has been in "overdrive" in terms of issuing major regulations, and that it will be the Senate's job "to really prioritize" and eliminate those regulations "where the costs far exceed any kind of benefit" and make American workers less competitive.<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto;">Congress can overturn regulations issued in the last 60 working days under the Congressional Review Act. They'll have to prioritize though, because such votes take valuable time in the Senate, which also needs to act on hundreds of Trump administration nominees and pass a budget.<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Goldston of the NRDC says though many regulations, which may not be popular with lawmakers sometimes are to their constituents.<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">"Often there's kind of this general visceral reaction against regulation," Goldston said. "But once the public is looking at a specific protection where they see the reason for it they generally react badly to it being reversed."</aside></aside></div><div>
</div><div>=</div>===rematch:By Jessica Mason

Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson, a Republican, is scrambling to hold

off Democratic challenger Russ Feingold in a race that will help

determine which party controls the U.S. Senate. But for all his claims

to "outsider" status, incumbent Johnson's campaign is being driven by

millions in outside spending by industry front groups, national

Republican PACs and right-wing dark money groups, including the Koch

brothers' Americans for Prosperity.

With an empty seat at the U.S. Supreme Court and public pressure mounting to overturn the Court's Citizens United decision,

which open the door to unlimited spending by nominally "independent"

Super PACs and dark money nonprofits, the stakes could not be higher for

the Kochs and their cronies who have worked for decades to undermine

disclosure rules and limits on political spending.

<h2>Flood of Undisclosed Dark Money Enters Race More than a Year in Advance</h2>

Johnson's campaign <a href="http://elections.wispolitics.com/2016/04/memo-johnson-raised-21-million-in-first.html" target="blank">reported raising $2.1 million</a> in the first quarter of 2016, while Feingold's campaign <a href="http://www.jsonline.com/news/statepolitics/ron-johnson-russ-feingold-race-back-in-the-spotlight-b99702255z1-374913011.html" target="blank">raised $3.4 million</a>.

Those totals don't account for the whopping $2.7 million that special

interest groups have already spent supporting Johnson, according to

newspaper reports.

Some of the money is being spent on positive ads to bump up Johnson's

name recognition in the state. Johnson who holds telephonic town hall

meetings from Washington, D.C., had his name recognition between <a href="https://law.marquette.edu/poll/2016/01/28/new-marquette-law-school-poll-finds-tight-races-in-wisconsin-presidential-primaries/" target="_blank">30-40 percent</a>

said Wisconsin pollster Charles Franklin. In the Senate, Johnson is the

Chair of the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee.

On the flip side no outside money has been spent supporting Feingold, who just released his <a href="http://host.madison.com/ct/news/local/govt-and-politics/election-matters/russ-feingold-launches-first-ad-of-senate-campaign/article_84712b77-8972-5ca1-842c-f992cd480cf7.html" target="_blank">first campaign ad</a>

last week. Feingold who held the Senate seat until 2010, is best known

for his role in working with Senator John McCain (R-AZ) to pass the 2002

Bi-Partisan Campaign Reform Act (also known as McCain-Feingold), as

well as for defending civil liberties by voting against the USA PATRIOT

Act.

In this race, Feingold has challenged Johnson to limit outside

spending by taking a pledge to donate 50 percent of any outside ad's

cost to the charity of the opponent's choice. U.S. Senator Elizabeth

Warren (D-MA) and her opponent Scott Brown took a similar pledge in 2012

which discouraged outside money. So far, Johnson has declined.

<h2>Americans for Prosperity Spends Big on Kochs' "Model Legislator"</h2>

Back in April 2013, Johnson <a href="http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/05/big-money-the-koch-brothers-and-me-107225?o=3" target="_blank">attended a Koch seminar at</a>

the luxurious Renaissance Esmeralda Resort in Indian Wells, California,

rubbing elbows with big money donors who mused about whether Koch

funding was a viable alternative to the Republican Party itself.

He was described as the Kochs' "<a href="http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/05/big-money-the-koch-brothers-and-me-107225?o=3" target="blank">model legislator</a>," reports Politico's Ken Vogel who infiltrated the summit. Koch Industries has been the <a href="https://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/contrib.php?cycle=Career&type=I&cid=N00032546&newMem=N&recs=20" target="blank">8th largest contributor</a> to Ron Johnson throughout his six-year term, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Now the Koch's are coming to his aid. On April 6, 2016, Americans for

Prosperity (AFP), the Kochs' "grassroots" 501(c)(4) nonprofit, launched

a $1.1 million dollar ad campaign praising Ron Johnson's <a href="http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/05/big-money-the-koch-brothers-and-me-107225_Page3.html#.VxT7gxNViko" target="blank">"vision," </a>which was reinforced by a canvassing push by AFP volunteers in <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/04/04/americans-for-prosperity-launches-1-million-campaign-touting-u-s-sen-ron-johnson/" target="blank">seven cities</a>. As a "social welfare" nonprofit, AFP is not required to disclose its donors.

<h2>Club for Growth Spends Big</h2>

<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Club_for_Growth" target="blank">Club for Growth</a>, another right-wing 501(c)(4), has already <a href="http://www.politico.com/tipsheets/morning-score/2015/09/club-for-growth-attacks-russ-feingold-advancing-colorado-goes-after-sen-michael-bennet-walker-out-210333" target="blank">spent $700,000</a> on <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=14&v=5W7KkCMo_Kw" target="_blank">two separate ads</a>

targeting Feingold through its 527 PAC, Club for Growth Action, and

shows no signs of slowing down. The organization reportedly planned to

spend more than $2.5 million in the Wisconsin Senate race, according to <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2015/08/17/club-growth-spend-25-million-back-johnson-re-election-campaign/31870785/" target="_blank">USA Today</a>.

Club for Growth has been a top contributor to Ron Johnson throughout

his career. The Executive Vice-President of Club for Growth and

Assistant Treasurer of Club for Growth Action, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/chuck-pike-2ab49212" target="_blank">Chuck Pike</a>,

was previously the Chief of Staff to former U.S. Congressman Mark

Neumann in his unsuccessful Senate run against Feingold in 1998. Pike

also previously served as Vice-President of The Neumann Companies.

The Koch-backed Freedom Partners provided a $1 million grant to Club for Growth in 2014, according to its <a href="http://www.guidestar.org/FinDocuments/2014/453/732/2014-453732750-0c0d3665-9O.pdf" target="blank">IRS filings</a>, and Wisconsin billionaire Richard Uihlein has been Club for Growth Action's top donor in the 2016 cycle with <a href="https://www.opensecrets.org/pacs/pacgave2.php?cycle=2016&cmte=C00487470" target="blank">$1.5 million in contributions</a>.

AFP and Club for Growth are not the only early spenders in the race.

<h2>Secretive Front Group Wisconsin Alliance for Reform</h2>

Wisconsin Alliance for Reform is a 501(c)(4) non-profit registered in Wisconsin by <a href="http://www.prwatch.org/files/whois_lookup_domain_availability-registration_information-godaddy.pdf" target="blank">Lorri Pickens</a>, a long-time political operative in the state of Wisconsin who <a href="http://www.prwatch.org/files/lorri_pickens_linkedin.pdf" target="blank">has worked</a>

for the Kochs' AFP in the past. The group has already run three ads

attacking Feingold focusing on taxes, immigration, military spending and

"Obamacare." The group also runs the website <a href="https://www.feingoldfacts.com/" target="blank">Feingoldfacts.com</a>, which purports to provide information on "Russ Feingold's failed liberal agenda." Because the group runs phony "issue ads," <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BO4cbSxskfE" target="blank">like this one</a>, how much the group has spent is not yet known.

In a recent Wisconsin Supreme Court race, WAR <a href="http://www.prwatch.org/news/2016/03/13073/war-wisconsin-voters-big-money-streams-wisconsin-supreme-court-race-no-disclosure" target="_blank">appeared to be </a>spending

the money usually spent by Wisconsin Manufactures and Commerce and

Wisconsin Club for Growth in Supreme Court races. The U.S. Chamber of

Commerce <a href="http://www.ronjohnsonforsenate.com/blog/ron-is-endorsed-by-the-u.s.-chamber-of-commerce" target="_blank">has endorsed</a> Johnson.

<h2>Wisconsin Billionaires Richard Uihlein and Terry Kohler</h2>

Various right-wing billionaires are also readying to unload on Feingold.

Richard Uihlein, who owns a shipping supply company in Wisconsin, is almost single-handedly bankrolling two other Super PACs, <a href="http://www.fec.gov/fecviewer/CandidateCommitteeDetail.do?candidateCommitteeId=C00571588&tabIndex=3" target="blank">Restoration PAC</a> and <a href="http://www.jsonline.com/watchdog/noquarter/uihleins-spend-big-to-help-ron-johnson-defend-senate-seat-from-russ-feingold-b99589973z1-330585321.html" target="blank">Americas PAC</a>. Terry Kohler, the Wisconsin toilet magnate, contributed $50,000 to Restoration PAC.

In July 2015, well over a year before the election, Restoration PAC reportedly ran <a href="http://www.jsonline.com/watchdog/noquarter/money-pouring-into-Senate-race-322638532.html" target="blank">$500,000 worth of</a> TV ads in Green Bay, Madison and Milwaukee praising Johnson for his opposition to President Obama's nuclear deal with Iran. <a href="https://www.facebook.com/restorationpac/videos/1500334006924270/?fallback=1">The ad,</a> made by infamous "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" producer Rick Reed, <a href="http://www.politifact.com/wisconsin/statements/2015/jul/24/restoration-pac/barack-obama-met-iran-president-says-pac-backing-w/" target="blank">was given</a> a "Pants on Fire" rating from Politifact. A <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=2&v=d_KBC_IskNY" target="blank">separate ad attacks</a> Feingold for hypothetically "rubber stamping" the deal. In January 2016, <a href="http://docquery.fec.gov/pdf/459/201604149012337459/201604149012337459.pdf" target="blank">Americas PAC</a> reported spending $60,000 on radio opposing Feingold.

Terry Kohler has also established a committee called the <a href="http://www.fec.gov/fecviewer/CandidateCommitteeDetail.do?candidateCommitteeId=C00581934&tabIndex=1" target="_blank">Reform America Fund</a>

that may be preparing to enter the race. The committee was recently

registered by Lorri Pickens, but Scott Walker's campaign guru R.J.

Johnson has long had ties to Kohler and could be involved in any

expenditures on the billionaire's behalf.

<h2>Johnson SuperPAC Run by Former Staffer</h2>

Johnson's former Chief Strategist Mark Stephens oversees<a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2015/12/former-chief-strategist-launches-pro-ron-johnson-super-pac-216353" target="_blank"> Let America Work</a>,

which is expected to be the central super PAC supporting his

re-election bid. The Super PAC has launched two ads, spending over <a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/outsidespending/recips.php?cmte=C00582700&cycle=2016" target="_blank">$400,000</a> on the race so far, mostly on negative ads against Feingold.

Johnson is also benefiting from ads recently released by the <a href="http://https://www.nrsc.org/press/digital-ad-buy-feingold-failing-to-secure-2016-04-06/" target="blank">National Republican Senatorial Committee</a>, which <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERgcUWLDnrU" target="blank">fear mongers on terrorism</a> and criticize Feingold for his PATRIOT Act vote, and the <a href="http://www.jsonline.com/blogs/news/361345231.html" target="_blank">Republican Party of Wisconsin</a>, which attack Feingold for Obama's foreign policy.

In a small state like Wisconsin this flood of early money is likely to have an impact.<a href="http://www.prwatch.org/news/2016/04/13086/kochs-americans-prosperity-club-growth-wi-shell-save-ron-johnson">http://www.prwatch.org/news/2016/04/13086/kochs-americans-prosperity-club-growth-wi-shell-save-ron-johnson</a>
=
Koch Industries PAC is one of Ryan's top 10 career contributors, <a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/contrib.php?cycle=Career&cid=n00004357&type=I" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">according to</a> Open Secrets. It was notable to CMD that Ryan recently did a 180-degree turn on criminal justice reform, shortly after the Kochs signaled their <a href="http://www.prwatch.org/news/2015/12/13002/koch-criminal-justice-reform-trojan-horse" style="text-decoration: none;">support for self-serving criminal justice reform</a>. Ryan has appeared at <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2013/08/eric-cantor-paul-ryan-koch-brothers-095294" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">several</a> <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/20/us/politics/20koch.html?r=0" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">Koch summits</a>, <a href="http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0812/80393_Page3.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">has spoken</a> frequently to the Kochs' Americans for Prosperity group, and Politico's Ken Vogel reported in 2012 that the Kochs <a href="http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0812/80393_Page3.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">may have helped</a> Ryan secure the VP slot on the Romney ticket.<h2 style="line-height: 2em; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em;">Kochs Go to Bat for U.S. Senator Ron Johnson</h2>In other Koch news, Patrick Marley at the <a href="http://www.jsonline.com/blogs/news/374538301.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">Milwaukee Journal Sentinel</a> reported yesterday the Kochs' <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Americans_for_Prosperity" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">Americans for Prosperity</a> astroturf group would be spending in Russ Feingold's race against incumbent U.S. Senator Ron Johnson.They will spend <a href="http://https//www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=30&v=Jn9UsZPXbbw" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">$1 million in four weeks</a> with <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jn9UsZPXbbw" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">positive ads</a> trying to raise the profile of Johnson, who is virtually unknown in the state. While Feingold visited every one of Wisconsin's 72 counties every year during his time in the U.S. Senate, Johnson rarely faces the public, <a href="http://www.milwaukeemag.com/2013/09/06/theredphone/" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">preferring</a> to have controlled "telephonic" town hall meetings.Other dark money groups backed by millionaires and billionaires are prepping to unload on Feingold including <a href="http://www.prwatch.org/news/2015/08/12915/Uihlein-Goes-to-Bat-for-Ron-Johnson-in-Wisconsin-Senate-Race" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">"Restoration PAC,"</a> bankrolled by Wisconsin businessman Richard Uihlein, and "Reform America Fund," bankrolled by toilet magnate Terry Kohler. Uihlein <a href="http://www.jsonline.com/watchdog/noquarter/uihleins-spend-big-to-help-ron-johnson-defend-senate-seat-from-russ-feingold-b99589973z1-330585321.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">spent</a> some $500,000 on ads supporting Johnson last year.<div class="clearfix" style="line-height: 24px;">Reform America <a href="http://www.fec.gov/fecviewer/CandidateCommitteeDetail.do?candidateCommitteeId=C00581934&tabIndex=1" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">was recently registered by Koch operative Lorri Pickens at the FEC</a>. Kohler has long worked with Scott Walker's campaign guru R.J. Johnson, and was last spotted in an unseemly scandal regarding a <a href="http://www.jsonline.com/watchdog/watchdogreports/united-sportsmens-group-had-terry-kohler-as-staunch-ally-b9997043z1-223796411.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">$500,000 government appropriation</a> for a phony sporting organization packed with Koch insiders.This is an unprecedented pattern in Wisconsin politics. Politicians no longer have to travel the state, meet constituents, and earn media if they have millionaires willing to spend on positive ads to boost their poll numbers and attack their opponents.<h2 style="line-height: 2em; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em;">Will Undisclosed Dark Money Be the Big Winner in the WI Supreme Court Race?</h2>Finally, Koch money could also be in play in a close Wisconsin Supreme Court race where a dark money group called "Wisconsin Alliance for Reform" <a href="http://www.wisdc.org/wialliancereform2016.php" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">is spending $2.6 million on misleading attack ads</a> on Wisconsin Judge Joanne Kloppenburg, according to an estimate from the nonprofit Wisconsin Democracy Campaign.As CMD uncovered, WAR was also registered by Pickens, who has served as a dark money maven in the state for many decades. Pickens was involved in <a href="http://%20http//www.prwatch.org/news/2016/03/13073/war-wisconsin-voters-big-money-streams-wisconsin-supreme-court-race-no-disclosure" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">another Supreme Court race in 1997</a> that resulted in $60,000 in fines for illegal coordination between the committee of Justice Jon Wilcox and a purportedly independent third party group run by Pickens' husband and Mark Block. Pickens has worked for the Koch's Americans for Prosperity and numerous other groups that pushed for a trio of bills in 2015 that laid to waste Wisconsin's anti-corruption laws. One of the bills allowed unlimited undisclosed dark money into Wisconsin campaigns and elections for the first time.While the Kochs and their servants are working hard to keep voters in the dark on election day, disclosure in campaign financing is broadly supported by the American public, including Republicans. In <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/06/02/us/politics/money-in-politics-poll.html" style="text-decoration: none;">a recent poll</a>, 77 percent of Americans want limits on money in politics and 88 percent wanted to "make fundamental changes" or "completely rebuild" the campaign finance system.<h2 style="line-height: 2em; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em;">Koch Fingerprints on Wisconsin Voter Supression</h2>Today also marks for many Wisconsin voters their first encounter with the state's <a href="http://www.prwatch.org/news/2011/11/11117/koch-funded-alec-agenda-works-deny-voting-rights-brave-new-film-highlights-voter-" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">Koch-backed and ALEC-inspired</a> voter ID law which <a href="http://www.prwatch.org/news/2014/09/12614/voter-id-wisconsin" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">threatens to disenfranchise</a> up to 300,000 eligible voters who lack needed ID.While the law explicitly requires a public campaign to educate voters about new ID requirements, it is no coincidence that the state legislature <a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/wisconsin-voter-id-law-education-campaign-state-hasnt-funded" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">hasn't appropriated money</a> to run public service ads in this cycle. Democracy advocates will be on the look-out for problems, and voters facing problems can call an emergency hotline: 1-866- OUR-VOTE.Despite a <a href="http://prwatch.org/news/2012/06/11569/rampant-voter-fraud-wisconsin-or-martians-are-coming" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">near-total absence</a> of in-person voter fraud, voter ID was passed in 2011 but <a href="http://www.prwatch.org/news/2014/10/12627/wisconsin-alec-inspired-voter-id-put-hold-us-supreme-court" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">immediately drew</a> legal challenges and a court injunction. An all-Republican panel of 7th Circuit justices reinstated voter ID just a few weeks before the November 2014 election. When the full court—whose eleventh seat has been vacant since 2010—heard the case, it <a href="http://www.prwatch.org/news/2014/09/12614/voter-id-wisconsin" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">issued</a> a 5-5 decision split along party lines, leaving the panel's ruling intact.Backed by the same political network that pushed voter ID through in the first place, the Senator who has been <a href="http://www.jsonline.com/news/statepolitics/obama-nominates-madison-lawyer-for-7th-circuit-vacancy-b99650722z1-365064531.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">blocking that 7th Circuit appointment</a> for nearly six years is none other than Ron Johnson.- See more at: http://www.prwatch.org/news/2016/04/13076/kochs-make-news-wisconsin-voters-threaten-turn-races-upside-down#sthash.ED7242fY.dpuf
=scalia:<div id="center-right">

</div>

<h1>Judicial Crisis Network</h1>

<h2><a target="_blank" href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/judicial-confirmation-network" title="Judicial Confirmation Network">Judicial Confirmation Network</a></h2>

The Judicial Confirmation Network (JCN) was created just as the

debate in the Senate over Republican leaders' plans to eliminate the

use of the filibuster on judicial nominations was reaching its apex. JCN

was also active in the right-wing campaign to confirm Chief Justice

John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito.

</div>

</div>

</div>

</div>

<h2><a target="_blank" href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/ron-johnson-taking-his-scotus-talking-points-straight-right-wing-groups" title=" Ron Johnson Is Taking His SCOTUS Talking Points Straight From Right-Wing Groups"> Ron Johnson Is Taking His SCOTUS Talking Points Straight From Right-Wing Groups</a></h2>

Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin is one of the Republican senators

who is under considerable pressure in his home state to break from his

party leadership and consider the nomination of Judge Merrick Garland to

the Supreme Court.

So far, Johnson has toed the party line and says that he supports

blocking any nominee to the Supreme Court for the remainder of Obama’s

presidency. In defending this position, he has turned to a number of

stock talking points cooked up by right-wing groups seeking to keep an

Obama nominee off the Supreme Court.

As soon as President Obama announced his nomination of Garland, Johnson turned to the talking point <a href="http://www.pfaw.org/rww-in-focus/obstruction-lobby-what-outside-groups-working-block-new-supreme-court-justice-really-wa"> that the conservative Judicial Crisis Network has been promoting </a> since soon after Justice Antonin Scalia’s death left a vacant seat on the Supreme Court.

In just 8 months, the American people will decide direction of the country. Give them a voice on the direction of court. <a target="_blank" href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/SCOTUSnominee?src=hash">#SCOTUSnominee</a>

— Senator Ron Johnson (@SenRonJohnson) <a target="_blank" href="https://twitter.com/SenRonJohnson/status/710190427639562241">March 16, 2016</a></blockquote>

Johnson’s appeal to let the American people “decide” and give them a

“voice” by discounting President Obama’s entire last year in office,

comes <a target="_blank" href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/judicial-crisis-networks-incredibly-dishonest-pro-obstruction-ad">straight out of the messaging</a> that JCN started hammering in early ads urging obstruction. In JCN’s first ad, a narrator says:

It’s ‘We the People.’ Sometimes the politicians forget that. The

Supreme Court has a vacancy and your vote in November is your only

voice. Sen. Chuck Grassley agrees: the American people should decide.

This isn’t about Republicans or Democrats. It’s about your voice. You choose the next president, the next president chooses the next justice. Call Sen. Chuck Grassley. Thank him for letting the people decide.

</blockquote>

Of course, the people already did have a voice in choosing who would

pick the next Supreme Court justice when they reelected President Obama

for a second four-year term in 2012.

The New York Times<a target="_blank" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/25/us/politics/wisconsin-race-supreme-court-nominee-merrick-garland.html"> reported</a>

yesterday on an event in Wisconsin at which Johnson attempted to

justify the Senate GOP’s obstructionism by implying that the

Constitution’s requirement of “advice and consent” can mean the Senate

advising the president not to make any judicial nomination at all:

“Yeah, I am hearing the drumbeat, ‘Do your job! Do your job!’ ” Mr.

Johnson said, invoking the Democrats’ battle cry in their quest to get

Judge Garland a hearing. “We’re doing our job,” Mr. Johnson declared, to

shouts of “yes.”

“Our job as a coequal branch in the nomination process is advise and consent,” he said. “Well, <a target="_blank" href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/o/barack_obama/index.html?inline=nyt-per" title="More articles about Barack Obama"> President Obama </a>

— surprise — didn’t heed our advice. So now we are doing the second

part of that advice and consent: We’re withholding our consent.

Completely appropriate.”

</blockquote>

This is a talking point that Jay Sekulow of the American Center for

Law and Justice, a longtime right-wing player in judicial fights, <a target="_blank" href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/jay-sekulow-advice-and-consent-means-telling-obama-dont-put-nominee">pioneered</a>

very soon after the death of Justice Scalia, when he told televangelist

Pat Robertson, “The Senate has a role in this, the Constitution says

‘advice and consent.’ The advice here is, ‘Don’t put up a nominee when

you’re only going to be the president, you’re a lame duck and you’re

only going to be the president for 11 months.’”==

"“I absolutely do not believe in the science of man-caused climate change,” Johnson said. “It’s not proven by any stretch of the imagination. It's far more likely that it's sunspot activity or just something in the geologic eons of time.”[source]

==

An ad campaign targeting climate-denying politicians appears to be having something of an effect.Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), under fire for being a climate denier in a world ravaged by climate change, this week denied believing that humans are not warming the planet. Yet the senator still will not acknowledge the basic fact that humans are warming the planet.Confused? So are we. But we’ll try to explain.Johnson is one of four members of Congress being targeted by a <a href="http://grist.org/news/climate-denier-politicians-under-attack-by-new-ad-campaign/" target="blank" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none; color: rgb(0, 183, 243);">$2 million TV advertising campaign</a> funded by the League of Conservation Voters. LCV went after Johnson because of statements he’s made denying climate science, like in 2010 when he <a href="http://www.jsonline.com/news/statepolitics/100814454.html" target="blank" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none; color: rgb(0, 183, 243);">told the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel</a>, “I absolutely do not believe in the science of man-caused climate change,” and speculated that sunspots or “something in the geologic eons of time” might instead be responsible for the changing weather.But on Wednesday, Johnson stepped back from such strong assertions. During a Madison Rotary Club luncheon, he said he’s a “strong environmentalist.” (What is this — <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four" target="blank" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none; color: rgb(0, 183, 243);">1984</a>?) Here were his comments to the group when asked about climate change, <a href="http://www.thedailypage.com/daily/article.php?article=40767" target="blank" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none; color: rgb(0, 183, 243);">as reported by the Isthmus Daily Page</a>:<blockquote style="margin: 1.5em; padding: 1em; border: 1px solid rgb(220, 220, 220); outline: none 0px; vertical-align: baseline; quotes: none; color: rgb(102, 102, 102); font-style: italic; line-height: 18px;">“I don’t have a belief one way or the other,” he told the crowd of some 300 Rotarians. “I’m willing to accept the science. I’m willing to accept the facts. What I’m not willing to accept is that until we know conclusively what’s doing it and if any action we take would have any kind of measurable impact, I don’t think we should be spending trillions of dollars unilaterally.” </blockquote>Here’s the thing: If you “don’t have a belief” that humans are changing the climate, then you are a climate denier.This is the LCV ad that appears to have fueled Johnson’s half-hearted flip-flop: ---

JH

Yet, hundreds of these (c)(4)s – mostly right-wing – are flagrantly violating the tax law by operating primarily as political fronts for funneling secret corporate donations into raw, partisan campaigns. How did they get their privileged status as charities? By outright lying to the IRS, then defying the agency to stop them as they dump millions of corrupt dollars into our elections.

For example, American Action Network, a (c)(4) created by Wall Street lobbyists, has spent two-thirds of its revenue on elections, including putting up $745,000 from secret donors to elect Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin. How ironic, then, that Johnson is now one of the tea party mad dogs howling at IRS officials. It’s scandalous, Johnson shrieks, that some tea party groups have not been given (c)(4) status, because IRS agents have had the temerity to question whether the groups actually are charitable enterprises – or just rank political outfits fraudulently posing as charities.

Tea Party groups should not be singled out for IRS scrutiny, but neither should they be allowed to cheat by shamefully masquerading as Little Sisters of the Poor. That’s the real scandal.

"Groups Targeted By I.R.S. Tested Rules on Politics," The New York Times, May 27, 2013.

"Five 501(c)(4) Groups That Might Have Broken the Law," <a href="http://www.thenation.com/blog/174458/five-501c4-groups-might-have-broken-law" target="_blank"> www.thenation.com</a>, May 21, 2013.

"Dubious Dealing of Tea Party Groups Could Have Drawn IRS Scrutiny," <a href="http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/05/irs-tea-party-tax-problems" target="_blank"> www.motherjones.com</a>, May 17, 2013

"Whose Welfare?" The New York Times, June 4, 2012.

==wikiRonald Harold "Ron" Johnson (born April 8, 1955) is the senior <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Senate" title="United States Senate" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">United States Senator</a> for <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wisconsin" title="Wisconsin" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">Wisconsin</a> and a member of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republican_Party(United_States)" title="Republican Party (United States)" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">Republican Party</a>.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Johnson(U.S.politician)#cite_note-feingold_loses-1" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">[1]</a><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Johnson(U.S.politician)#cite_note-catanese1-2" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">[2]</a> Prior to his election to the Senate, he was <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CEO" class="mw-redirect" title="CEO" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">chief executive officer</a> of PACUR, LLC, a polyester and plastics manufacturer.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Johnson(U.S.politician)#cite_note-catanese1-2" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">[2]</a><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Johnson(U.S.politician)#cite_note-pacur-3" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">[3]</a><div id="toc" class="toc" style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); background-color: rgb(249, 249, 249); padding: 7px; display: table; zoom: 1; color: rgb(37, 37, 37); font-weight: normal;"><div id="toctitle" style="direction: ltr; text-align: center;"><h2 style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background: none; margin: 1em 0px 0.25em; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; border: none; display: inline; line-height: 1.3;">Contents</h2>  [<a role="button" tabindex="0" id="togglelink" style="color: rgb(6, 69, 173); background: none; cursor: pointer;">hide</a>] </div><ul style="list-style-type: none; margin: 0.3em 0px; padding: 0px; list-style-image: none;"><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-1" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Johnson(U.S.politician)#Early_life_and_education" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">1Early life and education</a></li><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-2" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Johnson(U.S.politician)#Business_career" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">2Business career</a></li><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-3" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Johnson(U.S.politician)#U.S.Senate" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">3U.S. Senate</a><ul style="list-style-type: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 2em; padding: 0px; list-style-image: none;"><li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-4" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Johnson(U.S.politician)#Elections" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">3.1Elections</a></li><li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-5" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Johnson(U.S.politician)#Tenure" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">3.2Tenure</a><ul style="list-style-type: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 2em; padding: 0px; list-style-image: none;"><li class="toclevel-3 tocsection-6" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Johnson(U.S.politician)#Regulatory_reform" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">3.2.1Regulatory reform</a></li><li class="toclevel-3 tocsection-7" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Johnson(U.S.politician)#Fiscal_issues" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">3.2.2Fiscal issues</a></li><li class="toclevel-3 tocsection-8" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Johnson(U.S.politician)#Health_care" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">3.2.3Health care</a></li><li class="toclevel-3 tocsection-9" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Johnson(U.S.politician)#Immigration" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">3.2.4Immigration</a></li></ul></li><li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-10" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Johnson(U.S.politician)#Committee_assignments" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">3.3Committee assignments</a></li></ul></li><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-11" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Johnson(U.S.politician)#Political_positions" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">4Political positions</a><ul style="list-style-type: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 2em; padding: 0px; list-style-image: none;"><li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-12" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Johnson(U.S.politician)#Statute_of_limitations_for_sex_crimes" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">4.1Statute of limitations for sex crimes</a></li><li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-13" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Johnson(U.S.politician)#Fiscal_issues_2" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">4.2Fiscal issues</a></li><li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-14" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Johnson(U.S.politician)#Climate_change" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">4.3Climate change</a></li><li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-15" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Johnson(U.S.politician)#Health_care_2" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">4.4Health care</a></li><li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-16" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Johnson(U.S.politician)#Domestic_oil_production" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">4.5Domestic oil production</a></li><li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-17" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Johnson(U.S.politician)#Social_issues" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">4.6Social issues</a></li><li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-18" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Johnson(U.S.politician)#Gun_policy" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">4.7Gun policy</a></li></ul></li><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-19" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Johnson(U.S.politician)#Electoral_history" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">5Electoral history</a></li><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-20" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Johnson(U.S.politician)#Personal_life" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">6Personal life</a></li><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-21" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Johnson(U.S.politician)#References" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">7References</a></li><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-22" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Johnson(U.S.politician)#External_links" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">8External links</a></li></ul></div><h2 style="background: none rgb(255, 255, 255); font-weight: normal; margin: 1em 0px 0.25em; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); line-height: 1.3;">Early life and education[<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ron_Johnson(U.S.politician)&action=edit&section=1&editintro=Template:BLP_editintro" title="Edit section: Early life and education" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">edit</a>]</h2>Johnson was born in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mankato,Minnesota" title="Mankato, Minnesota" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">Mankato, Minnesota</a>, the son of Jeanette Elizabeth (née Thisius) and Dale Robert Johnson. His father was of Norwegian descent and his mother was of German ancestry.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Johnson(U.S.politician)#cite_note-4" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">[4]</a> While growing up, Johnson delivered newspapers, worked as a caddy at a golf course, baled hay on his uncle's dairy farm, and worked as a dishwasher in a restaurant.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Johnson(U.S.politician)#cite_note-aap14-bio-5" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">[5]</a> He attended the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Minnesota" title="University of Minnesota" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">University of Minnesota</a> while working full-time and graduated in 1977 with a degree in business and accounting. He continued studying until 1979 but did not receive a postgraduate degree.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Johnson(U.S.politician)#cite_note-6" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">[6]</a><h2 style="background: none rgb(255, 255, 255); font-weight: normal; margin: 1em 0px 0.25em; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); line-height: 1.3;">Business career[<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ron_Johnson(U.S.politician)&action=edit&section=2&editintro=Template:BLP_editintro" title="Edit section: Business career" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">edit</a>]</h2>In 1979, Johnson moved to Wisconsin with his wife Jane, and both started working for PACUR, a custom <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plastics_extrusion#Sheet.2Ffilm_extrusion" title="Plastics extrusion" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">sheet extruder</a> company, with his wife's brother, Patrick Curler, for whom the company was named. PACUR had been created a few months before Johnson arrived in Wisconsin with funding from Patrick and from Jane's father Howard Curler. PACUR's sole customer for the first several years of the company's existence was a company called Bemis, which was run by Howard Curler.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Johnson(U.S.politician)#cite_note-7" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">[7]</a>For nearly a year, Johnson worked as the accountant and as a machine operator, trading 12-hour shifts with his brother-in-law, with whom he also shared a small cot. The company later expanded into the area of medical device packaging, which involved hiring salespeople and exporting products to other countries. In the mid-80s Pat Curler left PACUR and Johnson became CEO. In 1987, the Curler family sold PACUR to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowater" title="Bowater" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">Bowater Industries</a> for $18 million. Bowater kept Johnson on as the company's CEO. In 1997, Johnson purchased PACUR from Bowater; he remained as the company's CEO until he was elected to the US Senate in 2010.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Johnson(U.S.politician)#cite_note-meet_Ron-8" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">[8]</a><h2 style="background: none rgb(255, 255, 255); font-weight: normal; margin: 1em 0px 0.25em; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); line-height: 1.3;">U.S. Senate[<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ron_Johnson(U.S.politician)&action=edit&section=3&editintro=Template:BLP_editintro" title="Edit section: U.S. Senate" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">edit</a>]</h2><h3 style="background: none rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.3em 0px 0px; overflow: hidden; padding-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0px; border-bottom: none; line-height: 1.6;">Elections[<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ron_Johnson(U.S.politician)&action=edit&section=4&editintro=Template:BLP_editintro" title="Edit section: Elections" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">edit</a>]</h3><dl style="margin-top: 0.2em; margin-bottom: 0.5em; color: rgb(37, 37, 37); font-weight: normal; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><dt style="font-weight: bold; margin-bottom: 0.1em;">2010</dt></dl><div role="note" class="hatnote" style="font-style: italic; padding-left: 1.6em; margin-bottom: 0.5em; color: rgb(37, 37, 37); font-weight: normal; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Main article: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Senate_election_in_Wisconsin,2010" title="United States Senate election in Wisconsin, 2010" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">United States Senate election in Wisconsin, 2010</a></div><div class="clearfix" style="line-height: 24px; display: inline !important;">In the September 14, 2010, Republican <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primary_election" title="Primary election" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">primary</a>, Johnson, running a largely self-financed campaign,<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Johnson(U.S.politician)#cite_note-12" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">[12]</a> defeated <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watertown,Wisconsin" title="Watertown, Wisconsin" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">Watertown</a>businessman Dave Westlake, taking 85% of the vote, with 10% going to Westlake and the remaining 5% going to Stephen Finn.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Johnson(U.S.politician)#cite_note-realclearpolitics-13" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">[13]</a><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Johnson(U.S.politician)#cite_note-primary_results-14" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">[14]</a></div>
The 2010 US Senate campaign was Johnson's first run for elective office. He was described as a "political blank slate" because he had no history of campaigning or holding office.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Johnson(U.S.politician)#cite_note-record_includes-9" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;">[9]</a> He attracted the attention of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tea_Party_movement" title="Tea Party movement" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;">Tea Party movement</a> when he gave two emotional speeches at Tea Party rallies. According to The New York Times, he said he "did kind of spring out of the Tea Party" and is glad to be associated with it,<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Johnson(U.S.politician)#cite_note-where_tea-10" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;">[10]</a> although he did not subsequently join the Senate Tea Party Caucus.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Johnson(U.S.politician)#cite_note-rise-11" style="background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">[</a><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Johnson(U.S.politician)#cite_note-rise-11" style="background: none; text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128);">11]</a>As a candidate, Johnson opposed the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Recovery_and_Reinvestment_Act" class="mw-redirect" title="American Recovery and Reinvestment Act" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">American Recovery and Reinvestment Act</a> of 2009. He launched his campaign by telling the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that, "We would have been far better off not spending any of the money and let the recovery happen as it was going to happen." The newspaper later reported that the education council Johnson led considered applying for stimulus money in 2009, but ultimately elected not to do so. The Johnson campaign stated that non-profits consider "many possibilities," but that the council "made no application."<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Johnson(U.S.politician)#cite_note-inquired_about-15" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">[15]</a>In the November 2, 2010, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_election" title="General election" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">general election</a>, Johnson defeated Democratic incumbent <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russ_Feingold" title="Russ Feingold" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">Russ Feingold</a> with 52% of the vote.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Johnson(U.S.politician)#cite_note-results_wisconsin-16" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">[16]</a>Johnson contributed $9 million of his own money to his campaign, which raised a total of $15.2 million.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Johnson(U.S.politician)#cite_note-17" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">[17]</a><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Johnson(U.S.politician)#cite_note-18" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">[18]</a> In June 2011, Johnson's financial disclosures showed Pacur, where he was CEO for 13 years until elected to the Senate, had paid him $10 million in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deferred_compensation" title="Deferred compensation" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">deferred compensation</a> in early 2011. The compensation covered the period from 1997–2011, during which he took no salary from PACUR. Johnson said that he, as CEO, had personally determined the dollar amount and that the amount was unrelated to the contributions he had given to his campaign.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Johnson(U.S.politician)#cite_note-19" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">[19]</a><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Johnson(U.S.politician)#cite_note-20" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">[20]</a>After being elected to the Senate, Johnson "sold every liquid asset so there would be absolutely no chance for conflict of interest," although he was not required to sell these holdings.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Johnson(U.S.politician)#cite_note-21" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">[21]</a><dl style="margin-top: 0.2em; margin-bottom: 0.5em; color: rgb(37, 37, 37); font-weight: normal; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><dt style="font-weight: bold; margin-bottom: 0.1em;">2016</dt></dl><div role="note" class="hatnote" style="font-style: italic; padding-left: 1.6em; margin-bottom: 0.5em; color: rgb(37, 37, 37); font-weight: normal; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Main article: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Senate_election_in_Wisconsin,2016" title="United States Senate election in Wisconsin, 2016" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">United States Senate election in Wisconsin, 2016</a></div>In March 2013, Johnson announced that he would seek re-election to the US Senate in 2016. In November 2014, he was endorsed by the fiscally conservative <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Club_for_Growth" title="Club for Growth" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">Club for Growth</a>;<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Johnson(U.S.politician)#cite_note-endorsed2016-22" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">[22]</a> that month, he said he would not self-finance his re-election bid.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Johnson(U.S.politician)#cite_note-23" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">[23]</a>In December 2014, the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Post" class="mw-redirect" title="Washington Post" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">Washington Post</a> rated Johnson the most vulnerable incumbent US Senator in the 2016 election cycle.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Johnson(U.S.politician)#cite_note-24" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">[24]</a> In May 2015, former Democratic U.S. Senator <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russ_Feingold" title="Russ Feingold" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">Russ Feingold</a>, whom Johnson had defeated in 2010, announced he would run to win the Senate seat back.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Johnson(U.S.politician)#cite_note-Bauer-25" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">[25]</a> In the November 8, 2016, general election, Johnson won his reelection bid against Feingold with 50.2% of the vote.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Johnson(U.S.politician)#cite_note-26" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">[26]</a><h3 style="background: none rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.3em 0px 0px; overflow: hidden; padding-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0px; border-bottom: none; line-height: 1.6;">Tenure[<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ron_Johnson(U.S.politician)&action=edit&section=5&editintro=Template:BLP_editintro" title="Edit section: Tenure" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">edit</a>]</h3><h4 style="background: none rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.3em 0px 0px; overflow: hidden; padding-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0px; border-bottom: none; line-height: 1.6;">Regulatory reform[<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ron_Johnson(U.S.politician)&action=edit&section=6&editintro=Template:BLP_editintro" title="Edit section: Regulatory reform" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">edit</a>]</h4>In July 2011, Johnson introduced S. 1438, the Regulation Moratorium and Job Preservation Act. The bill would impose a moratorium on significant new federal regulations until the national unemployment level falls to 7.7 percent – just below where it was when President Obama took office.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Johnson(U.S.politician)#cite_note-27" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">[27]</a> Johnson cited the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Environmental_Protection_Agency" title="United States Environmental Protection Agency" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">EPA</a> "Boiler MACT" rule as one example of a new regulation which would be blocked.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Johnson(U.S.politician)#cite_note-28" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">[28]</a><h4 style="background: none rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.3em 0px 0px; overflow: hidden; padding-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0px; border-bottom: none; line-height: 1.6;">Fiscal issues[<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ron_Johnson(U.S.politician)&action=edit&section=7&editintro=Template:BLP_editintro" title="Edit section: Fiscal issues" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">edit</a>]</h4>In the Senate, Johnson has established a reputation for working behind the scenes to address fiscal issues. He has been particularly focused on limiting federal spending in order to reduce the deficit, and has been active in attempting to drive consensus on fiscal issues between Republicans in the Senate and the House. He was involved in the deals to raise the debt ceiling in July 2011 and January 2013.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Johnson(U.S.politician)#cite_note-rise-11" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">[11]</a>Johnson said that <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_debt-ceiling_crisis_of_2011" title="United States debt-ceiling crisis of 2011" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">2011 debate over whether to increase the US debt ceiling</a> presented an opportunity to establish hard caps on federal spending.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Johnson(U.S.politician)#cite_note-29" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">[29]</a> He argued that Congress could not keep raising the debt limit, and needed to prioritize spending.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Johnson(U.S.politician)#cite_note-30" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">[30]</a> Johnson called for open negotiations over the debt ceiling, saying that the closed-door talks were "outrageous" and "disgusting." He said that default should not have been a concern, because the government had plenty of funding to pay interest on debt, Social Security benefits, and salary for soldiers.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Johnson(U.S.politician)#cite_note-31" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">[31]</a>In January 2013, Johnson voted for the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiscal_cliff" class="mw-redirect" title="Fiscal cliff" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">fiscal cliff</a> agreement that reduced pending tax increases and delayed spending cuts that were precipitated by the 2011 debt ceiling deal.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Johnson(U.S.politician)#cite_note-rise-11" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">[11]</a><h4 style="background: none rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.3em 0px 0px; overflow: hidden; padding-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0px; border-bottom: none; line-height: 1.6;">Health care[<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ron_Johnson(U.S.politician)&action=edit&section=8&editintro=Template:BLP_editintro" title="Edit section: Health care" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">edit</a>]</h4>In 2013, Johnson co-sponsored legislation that would have allowed people at risk of losing their healthcare coverage due to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obamacare" class="mw-redirect" title="Obamacare" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">Obamacare</a> to keep their current healthcare plans. In an editorial for the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wall_Street_Journal" class="mw-redirect" title="Wall Street Journal" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">Wall Street Journal</a> on April 13, 2015, Johnson said that he would propose legislation to allow current Obamacare enrollees to keep their healthcare plans through August 2017 and to continue to receive existing subsidies. New enrollees would not receive subsidies. However, the individual and employer mandates would end. Mandated coverages would also be terminated to enable less expensive policies.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Johnson(U.S.politician)#cite_note-32" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">[32]</a><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Johnson(U.S.politician)#cite_note-33" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">[33]</a>In early 2014, Johnson criticized the ability of Congress to continue using pre-tax employer contributions to help pay for their medical care, rather than being subject to the full text of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affordable_Care_Act" class="mw-redirect" title="Affordable Care Act" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">Affordable Care Act</a> that the rest of the nation must follow.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Johnson(U.S.politician)#cite_note-huffingtonpost.com-34" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">[34]</a> Johnson initiated a lawsuit against the Obama Administration offering ACA exemptions to members of Congress and their staff.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Johnson(U.S.politician)#cite_note-huffingtonpost.com-34" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">[34]</a> "I really do believe that the American people expect, and they have every right to expect, that members of Congress, the political class here in Washington, should be fully subject to all of the rules, all the laws that Congress imposes on the rest of America...", Johnson said.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Johnson(U.S.politician)#cite_note-huffingtonpost.com-34" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">[34]</a> In July 2014, a court ruled that the Senator did not have standing and dismissed the case. In April 2015, a three-judge panel of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Court_of_Appeals_for_the_Seventh_Circuit" title="United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit</a> also said Johnson lacked legal standing to bring the case forward.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Johnson(U.S.politician)#cite_note-35" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">[35]</a><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Johnson(U.S.politician)#cite_note-36" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">[36]</a>Johnson has declined to support efforts to tie funding the federal government with defunding Obamacare, stating: "Even if we were to not pass the continuing resolution [to fund the federal government], you're not going to be able to defund Obamacare, absent of President Obama signing a law, which I think is highly unlikely."<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Johnson(U.S.politician)#cite_note-37" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">[37]</a><h4 style="background: none rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.3em 0px 0px; overflow: hidden; padding-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0px; border-bottom: none; line-height: 1.6;">Immigration[<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ron_Johnson(U.S.politician)&action=edit&section=9&editintro=Template:BLP_editintro" title="Edit section: Immigration" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">edit</a>]</h4>As chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, Johnson introduced the Secure the Border First Act of 2015.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Johnson(U.S.politician)#cite_note-38" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">[38]</a><h3 style="background: none rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.3em 0px 0px; overflow: hidden; padding-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0px; border-bottom: none; line-height: 1.6;">Committee assignments[<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ron_Johnson(U.S.politician)&action=edit&section=10&editintro=Template:BLP_editintro" title="Edit section: Committee assignments" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">edit</a>]</h3><ul style="margin: 0.3em 0px 0px 1.6em; padding: 0px; list-style-image: url(" data:image="data:image" svg="svg" xml="xml" c="C" fxml="Fxml" version="version" d="D" encoding="encoding" utf-8="UTF-8" f="F" e="E" a="A" csvg="Csvg" http="http" fwww.w3.org="Fwww.w3.org" f2000="F2000" fsvg="Fsvg" width="width" height="height" ccircle="Ccircle" cx="cx" cy="cy" r="r" fill="fill" color="color" rgb="rgb" font-weight="font-weight" normal="normal" background-color="background-color" xmlns="xmlns" xmlns:data="data"><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Senate_Committee_on_Foreign_Relations" title="United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">Committee on Foreign Relations</a><ul style="list-style-type: disc; margin: 0.3em 0px 0px 1.6em; padding: 0px; list-style-image: url(" data:image="data:image" svg="svg" xml="xml" c="C" fxml="Fxml" version="version" d="D" encoding="encoding" utf-8="UTF-8" f="F" e="E" a="A" csvg="Csvg" http="http" fwww.w3.org="Fwww.w3.org" f2000="F2000" fsvg="Fsvg" width="width" height="height" ccircle="Ccircle" cx="cx" cy="cy" r="r" fill="fill" xmlns="xmlns" xmlns:data="data"><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;">Subcommittee on Europe and Regional Security Cooperation (Chairman)</li></ul></li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Senate_Committee_on_the_Budget" title="United States Senate Committee on the Budget" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">Committee on the Budget</a></li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Senate_Committee_on_Homeland_Security_and_Governmental_Affairs" title="United States Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs</a> (Chairman)<ul style="list-style-type: disc; margin: 0.3em 0px 0px 1.6em; padding: 0px; list-style-image: url(" data:image="data:image" svg="svg" xml="xml" c="C" fxml="Fxml" version="version" d="D" encoding="encoding" utf-8="UTF-8" f="F" e="E" a="A" csvg="Csvg" http="http" fwww.w3.org="Fwww.w3.org" f2000="F2000" fsvg="Fsvg" width="width" height="height" ccircle="Ccircle" cx="cx" cy="cy" r="r" fill="fill" xmlns="xmlns" xmlns:data="data"><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Senate_Homeland_Security_Subcommittee_on_Oversight_of_Government_Management,the_Federal_Workforce_and_the_District_of_Columbia" class="mw-redirect" title="United States Senate Homeland Security Subcommittee on Oversight of Government Management, the Federal Workforce and the District of Columbia" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">Subcommittee on Oversight of Government Management, the Federal Workforce and the District of Columbia</a></li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Senate_Homeland_Security_Subcommittee_on_Federal_Financial_Management,Government_Information_and_International_Security" class="mw-redirect" title="United States Senate Homeland Security Subcommittee on Federal Financial Management, Government Information and International Security" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">Subcommittee on Federal Financial Management, Government Information and International Security</a></li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Senate_Homeland_Security_Ad_Hoc_Subcommittee_on_Disaster_Recovery_and_Intergovernmental_Affairs" class="mw-redirect" title="United States Senate Homeland Security Ad Hoc Subcommittee on Disaster Recovery and Intergovernmental Affairs" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">Ad Hoc Subcommittee on Disaster Recovery and Intergovernmental Affairs</a></li></ul></li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Senate_Committee_on_Commerce,Science,and_Transportation" title="United States Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">United States Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation</a></li></ul><h2 style="background: none rgb(255, 255, 255); font-weight: normal; margin: 1em 0px 0.25em; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); line-height: 1.3;">Political positions[<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ron_Johnson(U.S.politician)&action=edit&section=11&editintro=Template:BLP_editintro" title="Edit section: Political positions" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">edit</a>]</h2><h3 style="background: none rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.3em 0px 0px; overflow: hidden; padding-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0px; border-bottom: none; line-height: 1.6;">Statute of limitations for sex crimes[<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ron_Johnson(U.S.politician)&action=edit&section=12&editintro=Template:BLP_editintro" title="Edit section: Statute of limitations for sex crimes" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">edit</a>]</h3>In January 2010, prior to holding elective office, Johnson opposed a Wisconsin bill that would have eliminated the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statute_of_limitations" title="Statute of limitations" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">time limit</a> for future child sex abuse victims to bring lawsuits while allowing an additional three years for past victims to sue.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Johnson(U.S.politician)#cite_note-defends_position-39" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">[39]</a> Johnson testified before the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wisconsin_Senate" class="mw-redirect" title="Wisconsin Senate" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">Wisconsin Senate</a> that "punishment for the actual perpetrators should be severe," but questioned whether it would be just for employers of perpetrators to be severely financially damaged or destroyed by lawsuits.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Johnson(U.S.politician)#cite_note-40" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">[40]</a> He added that the bill, if enacted, might actually reduce the reporting of child sex abuse.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Johnson(U.S.politician)#cite_note-record_includes-9" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">[9]</a><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Johnson(U.S.politician)#cite_note-defends_position-39" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">[39]</a> At the time of his testimony, Johnson was on the Finance Council of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Catholic_Diocese_of_Green_Bay" title="Roman Catholic Diocese of Green Bay" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">Roman Catholic Diocese of Green Bay</a>.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Johnson(U.S.politician)#cite_note-record_includes-9" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">[9]</a><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Johnson(U.S.politician)#cite_note-defends_position-39" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">[39]</a> In June 2010 he told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, "I can't think of a penalty that would be too harsh for these guys"<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Johnson(U.S.politician)#cite_note-41" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">[41]</a> and in late September 2010, Johnson indicated that the legislation would have financially crippled organizations such as the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boys%26_Girls_Clubs_of_America" title="Boys & Girls Clubs of America" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">Boys & Girls Clubs</a> and that the punishment for child sex abuse should be, "severe and swift."<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Johnson(U.S.politician)#cite_note-defends_position-39" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">[39]</a> He also sought to address reports about his testimony, saying “I sought to warn legislators of those consequences in order to correct legislative language so that any bills that passed would punish the perpetrators and those that protect them, not honorable organizations that do so much good for our communities. We must rid our society of people who prey on children.”<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Johnson(U.S.politician)#cite_note-42" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">[42]</a><h3 style="background: none rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.3em 0px 0px; overflow: hidden; padding-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0px; border-bottom: none; line-height: 1.6;">Fiscal issues[<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ron_Johnson(U.S.politician)&action=edit&section=13&editintro=Template:BLP_editintro" title="Edit section: Fiscal issues" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">edit</a>]</h3>Johnson has opposed increased government spending and the federal stimulus. He has supported broad reduction in federal tax rates, simplifying regulations on business and free-market health care options.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Johnson(U.S.politician)#cite_note-real_reforms-43" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">[43]</a>When asked if Johnson would get rid of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_mortgage_interest_deduction" title="Home mortgage interest deduction" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">home mortgage interest deductions</a> (claiming mortgage interest as a tax-deductible expense), he said he "wouldn’t rule it out" as part of an effort to lower taxes and simplify the tax code.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Johnson(U.S.politician)#cite_note-horse_trade-44" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">[44]</a><h3 style="background: none rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.3em 0px 0px; overflow: hidden; padding-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0px; border-bottom: none; line-height: 1.6;">Climate change[<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ron_Johnson(U.S.politician)&action=edit&section=14&editintro=Template:BLP_editintro" title="Edit section: Climate change" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">edit</a>]</h3>In a 2010 interview, Johnson called scientists who attribute <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming" title="Global warming" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">global warming</a> to man-made causes "crazy", saying the theory is "lunacy" and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attribution_of_recent_climate_change" title="Attribution of recent climate change" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">attributing climate change</a> to causes other than human activity.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Johnson(U.S.politician)#cite_note-sunspots-45" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">[45]</a> In February 2016, Johnson said "I've never denied climate change. The climate has always changed, and it always will".<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Johnson(U.S.politician)#cite_note-46" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">[46]</a> While on a radio talk show August 1, 2015, on Racine, Wisconsin's WRJN-AM, Johnson said that "the climate hasn't warmed in quite a few years. That is proven scientifically."<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Johnson(U.S.politician)#cite_note-47" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">[47]</a> Johnson is a cosponsor of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_Tax_Prevention_Act" title="Energy Tax Prevention Act" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">Energy Tax Prevention Act</a>, which would block the EPA from imposing new rules on carbon emissions.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Johnson(U.S.politician)#cite_note-48" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">[48]</a><h3 style="background: none rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.3em 0px 0px; overflow: hidden; padding-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0px; border-bottom: none; line-height: 1.6;">Health care[<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ron_Johnson(U.S.politician)&action=edit&section=15&editintro=Template:BLP_editintro" title="Edit section: Health care" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">edit</a>]</h3>Johnson is opposed to the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patient_Protection_and_Affordable_Care_Act" title="Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act</a>. In an op-ed article written for the Wall Street Journal, Johnson spoke of his personal experience with his daughter, who was born with a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congenital_heart_defect" title="Congenital heart defect" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">congenital heart defect</a>, and suggested that the life-saving treatment she received was only possible because of the United States' free-market health care system.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Johnson(U.S.politician)#cite_note-49" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">[49]</a> Johnson says the PPACA "will lead to rationed care, lower the quality of care, increase medical costs and severely limit medical innovation… this law will add trillions of dollars to our nation’s debt and deficit".<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Johnson(U.S.politician)#cite_note-50" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">[50]</a> He is a cosponsor of legislation to suspend implementation of PPACA while legal challenges to the bill are decided.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Johnson(U.S.politician)#cite_note-51" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">[51]</a><h3 style="background: none rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.3em 0px 0px; overflow: hidden; padding-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0px; border-bottom: none; line-height: 1.6;">Domestic oil production[<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ron_Johnson(U.S.politician)&action=edit&section=16&editintro=Template:BLP_editintro" title="Edit section: Domestic oil production" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">edit</a>]</h3>When asked about allowing additional drilling for oil in the continental US, including the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Lakes" title="Great Lakes" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">Great Lakes</a> if oil was to be found there, Johnson responded: "We have to get the oil where it is, but we need to do it responsibly. We need to utilize American ingenuity and American technology to make sure we do it environmentally sensitively and safely." After criticism from the Feingold campaign, Johnson said in July 2010 that his answer did not mean he supported drilling in the Great Lakes.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Johnson(U.S.politician)#cite_note-drilling-52" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">[52]</a> Johnson argues that America's dependence on imported oil creates "both security and economic threats to the nation".<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Johnson(U.S.politician)#cite_note-ronjohnsonforsenate1-53" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">[53]</a> Johnson is a cosponsor of legislation to encourage job growth, reduce energy costs, and increase tax revenue by expanding domestic oil production.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Johnson(U.S.politician)#cite_note-54" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">[54]</a><h3 style="background: none rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.3em 0px 0px; overflow: hidden; padding-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0px; border-bottom: none; line-height: 1.6;">Social issues[<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ron_Johnson(U.S.politician)&action=edit&section=17&editintro=Template:BLP_editintro" title="Edit section: Social issues" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">edit</a>]</h3>Johnson opposes <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion" title="Abortion" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">abortion</a> except in cases of incest, rape, or when the mother's life is in danger.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Johnson(U.S.politician)#cite_note-55" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">[55]</a><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Johnson(U.S.politician)#cite_note-right_to_life-56" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">[56]</a> He opposes the funding of research that uses embryonic <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stem_cell" title="Stem cell" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">stem cells</a>. Johnson has stated he disagrees with it morally and also has said that eliminating the funding of the research would help balance the federal budget.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Johnson(U.S.politician)#cite_note-opposes_funding-57" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">[57]</a>In March 2015, Johnson voted for an amendment to establish a deficit-neutral reserve fund to allow employees to earn paid sick time.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Johnson(U.S.politician)#cite_note-58" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">[58]</a><h3 style="background: none rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.3em 0px 0px; overflow: hidden; padding-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0px; border-bottom: none; line-height: 1.6;">Gun policy[<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ron_Johnson(U.S.politician)&action=edit&section=18&editintro=Template:BLP_editintro" title="Edit section: Gun policy" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">edit</a>]</h3><div class="clearfix" style="line-height: 24px; display: inline !important;">Johnson is a strong supporter of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_politics_in_the_United_States" title="Gun politics in the United States" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">gun rights</a>. He is cosponsor of S.570, a bill that, if passed, would prohibit the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_Justice" title="United States Department of Justice" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">Department of Justice</a> from tracking and cataloging the purchases of multiple rifles and shotguns.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Johnson(U.S.politician)#cite_note-S570-59" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">[59]</a> In April 2013, Johnson was one of 12 Republican Senators who signed a letter threatening to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filibuster_in_the_United_States_Senate" title="Filibuster in the United States Senate" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">filibuster</a> any newly introduced <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_control" title="Gun control" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">gun control</a> legislation.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Johnson(U.S.politician)#cite_note-12filibuster-60" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">[60]</a> That month, Johnson joined 45 other Senators in defeating the Manchin-Toomey Amendment, which would have required background checks on all commercial sales of guns.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Johnson(U.S.politician)#cite_note-61" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background: none;">[61]</a></div>
...=

==

<table id="topContrib" class="tablesorter" style=" width: 523px;"><tbody><tr class="rowTint"><td>Wausau Homes</td><td class="number">$26,800</td><td class="number">$26,800</td><td class="number" style=" width: 249px;">$0</td></tr><tr class="odd"><td>Koch Industries</td><td class="number">$25,650</td><td class="number">$15,650</td><td class="number" style=" width: 249px;">$10,000</td></tr><tr class="rowTint"><td>Northwestern Mutual Life</td><td class="number">$23,550</td><td class="number">$16,150</td><td class="number" style=" width: 249px;">$7,400</td></tr><tr class="odd"><td>Foley & Lardner</td><td class="number">$22,150</td><td class="number">$19,650</td><td class="number" style=" width: 249px;">$2,500</td></tr><tr class="rowTint"><td>BayCare Clinic</td><td class="number">$20,725</td><td class="number">$20,725</td><td class="number" style=" width: 249px;">$0</td></tr><tr class="odd"><td>Blue Cross/Blue Shield</td><td class="number">$20,000</td><td class="number">$0</td><td class="number" style=" width: 249px;">$20,000</td></tr><tr class="rowTint"><td>Fiduciary Management Inc</td><td class="number">$19,400</td><td class="number">$19,400</td><td class="number" style=" width: 249px;">$0</td></tr><tr class="odd"><td>Aurora Health Care</td><td class="number">$19,150</td><td class="number">$19,150</td><td class="number" style=" width: 249px;">$0</td></tr><tr class="rowTint"><td>Michels Corp</td><td class="number">$17,800</td><td class="number">$17,800</td><td class="number" style=" width: 249px;">$0</td></tr><tr class="odd"><td>Pacur</td><td class="number">$17,100</td><td class="number">$17,100</td><td class="number" style=" width: 249px;">$0</td></tr><tr class="rowTint"><td>Fisher-Barton Group</td><td class="number">$17,034</td><td class="number">$17,034</td><td class="number" style=" width: 249px;">$0</td></tr><tr class="odd"><td>Oshkosh Corp</td><td class="number">$16,563</td><td class="number">$6,563</td><td class="number" style=" width: 249px;">$10,000</td></tr><tr class="rowTint"><td>Sargento Foods</td><td class="number">$14,750</td><td class="number">$14,750</td><td class="number" style=" width: 249px;">$0</td></tr><tr class="odd"><td>Abc Supply</td><td class="number">$13,930</td><td class="number">$13,930</td><td class="number" style=" width: 249px;">$0</td></tr><tr class="rowTint"><td>Baker Tilly</td><td class="number">$13,200</td><td class="number">$13,200</td><td class="number" style=" width: 249px;">$0</td></tr><tr class="odd"><td>Fox Valley Surgical Assoc</td><td class="number">$13,100</td><td class="number">$13,100</td><td class="number" style=" width: 249px;">$0</td></tr><tr class="rowTint"><td>Murray Energy</td><td class="number">$13,078</td><td class="number">$13,078</td><td class="number" style=" width: 222px;">$0</td></tr></tbody></table>

<table id="topIndus" class="datadisplay"><tbody><tr><th>Industry</th><th>Total</th></tr><tr class="rowTint"><td>Retired</td><td class="number">$640,110</td></tr><tr><td>Health Professionals</td><td class="number">$246,026</td></tr><tr class="rowTint"><td>Misc Manufacturing & Distributing</td><td class="number">$228,284</td></tr><tr><td>Securities & Investment</td><td class="number">$208,435</td></tr><tr class="rowTint"><td>Leadership PACs</td><td class="number">$172,396</td></tr><tr><td>Real Estate</td><td class="number">$166,830</td></tr><tr class="rowTint"><td>Insurance</td><td class="number">$161,700</td></tr><tr><td>Republican/Conservative</td><td class="number">$156,107</td></tr><tr class="rowTint"><td>Misc Finance</td><td class="number">$136,571</td></tr><tr><td>Lawyers/Law Firms</td><td class="number">$106,575</td></tr><tr class="rowTint"><td>Oil & Gas</td><td class="number">$102,350</td></tr><tr><td>Misc Business</td><td class="number">$91,850</td></tr><tr class="rowTint"><td>Commercial Banks</td><td class="number">$91,225</td></tr><tr><td>Chemical & Related Manufacturing</td><td class="number">$88,534</td></tr><tr class="rowTint"><td>Business Services</td><td class="number">$83,700</td></tr><tr><td>Food Processing & Sales</td><td class="number">$66,470</td></tr><tr class="rowTint"><td>Building Materials & Equipment</td><td class="number">$64,030</td></tr><tr><td>Accountants</td><td class="number">$62,400</td></tr><tr class="rowTint"><td>Mining</td><td class="number">$61,628</td></tr><tr><td>General Contractors</td><td class="number">$61,050</td></tr></tbody></table>

===

<table id="topSect" class="datadisplay"><tbody><tr><td>Agribusiness</td><td class="number">$240,715</td><td class="number">$69,750</td><td class="number">$170,965</td></tr><tr class="rowTint"><td>Communications/Electronics</td><td class="number">$125,051</td><td class="number">$31,500</td><td class="number">$93,551</td></tr><tr><td>Construction</td><td class="number">$255,900</td><td class="number">$44,500</td><td class="number">$211,400</td></tr><tr class="rowTint"><td>Defense</td><td class="number">$21,400</td><td class="number">$13,000</td><td class="number">$8,400</td></tr><tr><td>Energy & Natural Resources</td><td class="number">$197,078</td><td class="number">$49,000</td><td class="number">$148,078</td></tr><tr class="rowTint"><td>Finance, Insurance & Real Estate</td><td class="number">$838,261</td><td class="number">$217,750</td><td class="number">$620,511</td></tr><tr><td>Health</td><td class="number">$374,426</td><td class="number">$98,325</td><td class="number">$276,101</td></tr><tr class="rowTint"><td>Lawyers & Lobbyists</td><td class="number">$156,325</td><td class="number">$11,000</td><td class="number">$145,325</td></tr><tr><td>Transportation</td><td class="number">$131,013</td><td class="number">$54,500</td><td class="number">$76,513</td></tr><tr class="rowTint"><td>Misc Business</td><td class="number">$696,354</td><td class="number">$158,250</td><td class="number">$538,104</td></tr><tr><td>Labor</td><td class="number">$2,250</td><td class="number">$2,250</td><td class="number">$0</td></tr><tr class="rowTint"><td>Ideological/Single-Issue</td><td class="number">$382,660</td><td class="number">$203,918</td><td class="number">$178,742</td></tr><tr><td>Other</td><td class="number">$700,073</td><td class="number">$2,000</td><td class="number">$698,073</td></tr></tbody></table>

lcv score zero

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<h3>Fundraiser for Wisconsin anti-worker rights politicians</h3>

On March 16, 2011, BGR hosted a lavish, Washington, D.C. fundraiser for Wisconsin Republican politicians. Guests were expected to donate a minimum of $1,000 at the door. They could become "sponsors" by donating $2,500 or "hosts" by donating $5,000. Guests included Wisconsin's Senate Majority Leader <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Scott_Fitzgerald" title="Scott Fitzgerald">Scott Fitzgerald</a> and the state's Assembly Speaker Jeff Fitzgerald. The event was held just days after Republicans in Wisconsin's legislature voted 18-1 to eliminate collective bargaining rights for public employees. The vote was held with no Democrats in attendance. All five Republican members of Wisconsin's congressional delegation were invited to attend the D.C. fundraiser, along with Republican U.S. Senator Ron Johnson.<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/BGR_Holdings_LLC#cite_note-1">[2]</a><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/BGR_Holdings_LLC#cite_note-2">[3]</a>

The fundraiser sparked protest from pro-worker groups and workers' rights supporters who gathered in front of BGR Group offices to draw attention to Wisconsin Republicans' union-busting bill, and their subsequent efforts to raise money from out-of-state corporations in support of their actions.<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/BGR_Holdings_LLC#cite_note-3">[4]</a>

===

small words

10. Ron Johnson, R-WI: Johnson has been a harsh critic of the government stimulus bills. But somehow that didn’t stop him from seeking stimulus funds for renovations to the Grand Opera House when he was president of the venue’s board. His explanation when asked to justify the apparent hypocrisy was that “he may have asked a question or two, but that doesn’t mean he supports the stimulus effort or even wanted the money.” Of course not. He was just curious to see if they would hand over the cash, which he would have promptly returned.

===

5. Sen. Russ Feingold’s Loss

Sen. Russ Feingold’s (D-Wisc.) three-term tenure in the U.S. Senate as a champion of campaign finance reform <a href="http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/11/the-end-of-a-progressive-champion-russ-feingold-loses-to-ron-johnson.php">came to an end</a> at the hands of a multi-millionaire, Tea Party-backed, self-funded candidate named Ron Johnson. It’s a bitter irony that outside groups spent nearly $2.4 million to benefit Johnson, including three-quarters of a million dollars in attack ads by the U.S. Chamber. (Feingold has demanded for years that outside groups not spend money on his behalf.) But in the end, the outside campaign proved so decisive that Sen.-elect Johnson <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/2010/12/13/chamber-ron-johnson/">paid a “thank you” visit</a> to his new bosses over at the Chamber in December. Feingold’s <a href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=131057508">record on reform</a>, though battered by the courts, will live on as an example of a long-standing elected official who served until the end by doing what he believed was right for his constituents and the nation. That type of courage and commitment to principles will be missed in Congress.

---

thinkprogress

<h2 class="title"><a href="http://thinkprogress.org/2010/12/13/chamber-ron-johnson/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent link to 'Newly-Elected Senator Ron Johnson Travels To The Chamber To Pay Homage For Helping Him Win'">Newly-Elected Senator Ron Johnson Travels To The Chamber To Pay Homage For Helping Him Win</a></h2>

Conservative Republican Ron Johnson defeated incumbent Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) in the Wisconsin senate content this year. Many of the ads attacking Feingold came not from Johnson, but from outside groups like Karl Rove’s American Crossroads and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the big business lobbying organization. The Chamber used outright falsehoods against Feingold, including one ad that falsely stated that he supported a “<a href="http://politicalcorrection.org/adcheck/201010070011">government takeover</a>” of health care.

In response to the Chamber’s pivotal contributions to the race, the Los Angeles Times reports that last week Johnson visited the Chamber <a href="http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-political-funding-20101212,0,800332,print.story">to personally thank</a> Chamber CEO Tom Donohue:

When it comes to money in politics, the new normal is already on vivid display. It could be seen last week in posh restaurants and corporate townhouses on Capitol Hill, where politicians held fundraisers at a record pace. It was evident at Washington’s blue-chip law firms, where campaign finance lawyers began work setting up new political committees to collect unlimited donations. It was apparent in the halls of Congress, where lawmakers swapped strategies about how to contend with muscular interest groups looking to take them out. The unusually intense December bustle is the product of this year’s elections, where spending surged to $4 billion in sharp-edged campaigns across the country — a record for a midterm. [...] In a sign of the new order, a newly elected Republican senator, Wisconsin’s Ron Johnson, paid a personal visit last week to U.S. Chamber of Commerce President Tom Donohue to thank him for the chamber’s unsolicited support of his candidacy.

</blockquote>

Earlier this year, ThinkProgress <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/2010/10/05/foreign-chamber-commerce/">reported</a> that, in addition to donations from health insurance companies and Wall Street banks, the Chamber had solicited donations from foreign businesses, including state-run oil companies in Bahrain and outsourcing firms in India. To his credit, Johnson was one of the few Republican candidates <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/2010/10/12/ron-johnson-disclosure/">who called</a> for the Chamber to disclose the funding of its ads. The Chamber so far has refused any voluntary disclosures — but will the newly elected senator from Wisconsin continue to press the Chamber for transparency? <a href="http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2010/1007.verini.html">Historically</a>, the Chamber fundraises for its political program by telling corporations that they may more effectively lobby by funneling donations through the Chamber. While its clear Johnson appreciates the help from the Chamber, what will he do in return?=ENDIT1=

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