Conservative Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson, who is trailing in the polls, is paying a campaign worker who was a bogus elector in a scheme to overthrow Joe Biden’s presidential victory.
Former fake elector Pam Travis is a “dedicated,” “grassroots staffer answering phones,” Johnson spokesperson Alexa Henning insisted in a text message Wednesday to NBC News. “This is being blown way out of proportion.” Henning also called it a “baseless attack on a private citizen.”
The Department of Justice is currently investigating fake electors in Wisconsin and six other states and their plot to overthrow the choice of voters, according to Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), chair of the House Jan. 6 commission.
Travis was one of 10 Wisconsin Republicans who signed completely bogus paperwork claiming to be an elector backing Trump when they were not.
Tom Nelson, a Wisconsin Democratic county executive who briefly ran in the state’s GOP Senate primary, said of the fake electors: “They should be in prison. Instead, they are on Ron Johnson’s payroll.”
Johnson’s reelection campaign has paid Travis just over $10,200 for full-time work since April, and an additional $3,500 in reimbursements for mileage costs between May and July, according to Federal Election Commission financial filings reported by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, which first uncovered the story.
Johnson currently appears to be the most vulnerable of Republican senators in the midterm elections. The 11-year Senate veteran and fierce Trump supporter is trailing Democratic opponent Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes by a slim margin, according to recent polls, in yet another example that extreme Trump loyalty might not pay off in the general election.
Johnson recently has been scrambling to distance himself from Trump — and the fake electors scheme. He insisted to a reporter last month that he was involved in the plot to present a false slate of electors for only “seconds,” and that he really had no idea what was going on.
“I had virtually no involvement,” the testy senator said at the time. “Literally, my involvement lasted seconds, OK?”
“I had nothing to do with the alternate slate,” he added. “I had no idea that anybody was going to ask me to deliver those. My involvement in that attempt to deliver spanned the course of a couple of seconds ... I knew nothing about it.”
Johnson ended up not delivering the fake Wisconsin slate because the chief of staff for then Vice President Mike Pence said it would not be accepted.
Early this summer, Johnson pretended to take a nonexistent phone call when reporters peppered him with questions about the counterfeit electors.
“I’m on the phone,” Johnson snapped in response.
“No, you’re not,” the reporter fired back. “I can see your screen.”
The goof became a bit on Stephen Colbert’s “The Late Show.”
Democrat Tammy Baldwin, the state’s other U.S. senator, slammed Johnson for his “direct support for Trump’s conspiracy to overturn the will of the people in Wisconsin.”
In another now unpopular position, Johnson defended the Capitol rioters as “peaceful” shortly after the insurrection — even after millions of Americans watched the violence on live TV.
“I knew those are people that love this country, that truly respect law enforcement, would never do anything to break the law, so I wasn’t concerned,” he said on “The Joe Pags Show.”
Almost 850 people have been charged with crimes in the storming of the Capitol. Johnson said he would have been “concerned” had the rioters been Black Lives Matter protesters.
Now Johnson is clearly edging away from Trump — at least in public.
“I don’t personally think Trump should have any impact whatsoever on this [Wisconsin] election in November 2022,” the senator said last month.