A top ally to President Donald Trump, Wisconsin Republican Senator Ron Johnson, met with a Ukrainian official who has been spreading the false conspiracy theory that the Hillary Clinton 2016 presidential campaign worked with Ukraine in an attempt to beat Donald Trump.
“I was in Washington, and Sen. Johnson found out I was in D.C., and staff called me and wanted to do a meeting with me. So I reached out back and said, ‘Sure, I’ll come down the Hill and talk to you,’ ” former Ukrainian diplomat Andrii Telizhenko told The Washington Post.
Telizhenko, who has spent hours working with Trump personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, spent 30 minutes or more with Senator Johnson, and an additional five hours with Johnson’s Senate staff. Presumably taxpayers paid staffers’ salaries during those meetings.
Johnson is a powerful Senate Republican. He is chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, and sits on other committees that have control over U.S. policy on Ukraine.
Telizhenko said he spoke with Sen. Johnson about “the DNC issue,” which the Post describes as “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.”
Senator Johnson, who has been unwavering in his support for President Trump, now faces an ethical conflict of interest should the House vote to impeach the president. Johnson is in the middle of the Ukrainian conspiracy, and some are asking if he should recuse from the impeachment trial. A spokesperson refused to say if he would.
Senator Johnson earlier this month spoke to far right wing pundit Mark Levin on Fox News to spread his Ukrainian conspiracy theories.
Photo of Telizhenko and Johnson taken at the hart Senate Office Building, posted to Facebook July 11