By any fair measure, last night’s debate between Republican Sen. Ron Johnson and Democratic Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes was not a friendly affair. At one point, for example, the candidates were asked to say something they admire about their opponent. Johnson responded by attacking Barnes’ patriotism.
There were audible boos from the Milwaukee audience.
But it was an exchange about Russia that stood out for me. USA Today reported:
Barnes criticized Johnson for once calling Russian President Vladimir Putin “a smart guy” and charged that the senator was told by the FBI that he could be a target for Russian disinformation…. Johnson countered by accusing the FBI of “setting him up” with a “corrupt” briefing.
Even for those who’ve followed the Republican senator’s career, this might’ve seemed a little obscure, so let’s take a minute to review the underlying controversy.
After years of indifference about then-Vice President Joe Biden’s efforts in Ukraine, congressional Republicans decided — right around the time the Delaware Democrat locked up his party’s presidential nomination — this was an area of potential controversy.
Johnson — who chaired the Senate Homeland Security Committee at the time — helped take the lead in the search for anti-Biden dirt, and a Russian agent claimed he fed information to the senator. Asked in 2020 whether he’d possibly relied on information from Kremlin-backed sources, the Wisconsin Republican evaded direct questions.
It was around this time, we later learned, that the FBI gave Johnson a private briefing. The senator acknowledged the briefing to The Washington Post, conceding that he’d been “a target of Russian disinformation.”
Instead of taking the matter seriously, the GOP lawmaker appears to have largely ignored the warning, telling the Post he found the briefing “completely useless.”
In other words, the then-chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee may have been targeted by the Kremlin, while the senator was seeking dirt on the future American president. When the FBI delivered a private warning, Johnson — who famously spent the 4th of July in Moscow a few years ago — thought the smart move would be to disregard the FBI’s concerns.
When this came up in last night’s debate, Johnson, whose affinity for weird conspiracy theories has long been among his more unsettling qualities, peddled another conspiracy theory.
“The FBI set me up with a corrupt briefing and then leaked that to smear me,” the Republican declared. The incumbent added that he’s been “trying to uncover and expose” what he sees as “corruption” within the FBI. As the video from the event shows, some in the audience found this so odd that they literally laughed at Johnson’s comments — and as a rule, when voters laugh at a candidate during a debate, that’s far from ideal. To the extent that reality still has any meaning, Johnson’s newest conspiracy theory — the FBI, the federal government’s most politically conservative agency, gave him a “corrupt” private briefing about Russians targeting him — is extremely difficult to take seriously. Indeed, the FBI’s concerns seemed entirely warranted. A Russian agent really did claim he’d fed information to the senator while Johnson really was seeking anti-Biden dirt related to Ukraine. Asked in 2020 whether he’d possibly relied on information from Kremlin-backed sources, the Wisconsin Republican really did evade direct questions. I can appreciate why all of this still makes the senator uncomfortable, but the idea that the FBI deliberately conspired against a key Republican committee chair, years before a re-election campaign that he hadn’t yet announced, seems pretty outlandish. Related:
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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