Conspiracy theorist Ron Johnson, who moonlights as a Republican senator from Wisconsin, wants to hold congressional hearings to prove that the federal government is covering up information on the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
In an interview with a right-wing podcaster, Ron Johnson falsely claimed the attacks that killed thousands of people across New York, Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania were an inside job.
“My guess is there’s an awful lot being covered up, in terms of what the American government knows about 9/11,” Johnson said Monday, also noting that he thought President Donald Trump “should have some interest, being a New Yorker himself.”
Johnson went on to claim that 7 World Trade Center, which collapsed after the twin towers fell due to fire weakening structural beams within it, was actually felled by a “controlled demolition,” saying he thinks someone “ordered the destruction and removal” of evidence in the building. Cuckoo much?
Needless to say, Johnson’s ideas about 9/11 have been thoroughly and repeatedly debunked.
He also said he will team up with former Rep. Curt Weldon, Republican of Pennsylvania, who has also been spreading 9/11 conspiracy theories on former Fox News host and Russian propagandist Tucker Carlson’s show, to find out what happened in the attack.
“I will work with him to expose what he’s willing to expose,” Johnson said. “My eyes have been opened up.”
This is not the only absurd and offensive conspiracy theory that the senior senator from Wisconsin has spread.
In September, Johnson claimed the Great Depression was planned.
“The Great Depression was pretty well planned,” he said in an interview with a right-wing radio program. “You know, all the big money men were pretty well warned that they were going to finally collapse the system. They had booms and busts. They had to finally just collapse the system, kind of start all over.”
“I know it really sounds like conspiracy theory,” Johnson continued. “I don’t completely understand it, but it sure seems—it’s just in my bones, I just feel there’s a great deal of corruption and control there that the vast majority of people do not understand.”
How comforting that a sitting U.S. senator is spreading a conspiracy theory without any evidence other than a feeling in his “bones.”
Johnson has also pushed conspiracy theories about the Jan. 6, 2021, attack in the U.S. Capitol, when thousands of Trump supporters violently broke into the building to stop the certification of then-President-elect Joe Biden’s victory. Johnson falsely claimed that the insurrectionists weren’t supporters of Trump but rather “agents-provocateurs” who “whipped the crowd and breached the Capitol.”
Of course, an independent watchdog found that there were no undercover agents in the crowd on Jan. 6, and that it really was just rabid Trumpers who wanted to keep Dear Leader in office despite his loss.
Johnson has also promoted COVID-19 misinformation, including falsely claiming that people could use mouthwash to prevent infection.
It’s unclear why Johnson is reopening a can of worms about 9/11 now, more than 20 years after the attack. But it could be because he has an ally in Trump, who has never met a conspiracy theory he didn’t like.
Since taking office in January, Trump has released files on the assassinations of former President John F. Kennedy and former Sen. Robert F Kennedy.
The release of documents from RFK’s assassination have angered his daughter, Kerry Kennedy, who condemned the Trump administration for releasing images from the autopsy report.
She wrote in a post on X:
It was hard to be an 8-year-old girl who lost her father to a man with a gun. It was hard to absorb that violence. It was hard to imagine what his final moments were like. It was hard knowing that anytime I watched a movie or show about the 1960s, I’d inevitably relive the worst moment of my life.
As of yesterday—Good Friday—it will be hard in a new and unimaginable way. Anytime I, or one of my siblings, children, nieces, or nephews, come across images of my father—the man who hugged me every morning and kissed me goodnight—we won’t just see him as we remember him. Instead, we’ll be confronted with graphic, explicit photos of his mangled body from an autopsy report.
Meanwhile, Attorney General Bondi waged a failed PR stunt to release files surrounding now-deceased sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, handing out binders with documents that had already been made public to a select few pro-Trump influencers.
The failed stunt angered Trump allies, who called the release “unprofessional” and a “complete disappointment.”