Ron Johnson to bring Ken Starr to testify at controversial hearing on 2020 elections

Johnson’s hearing is set to occur just two days later.

And one Republican on his committee, Utah Sen. Mitt Romney, told CNN that he will “probably not” participate in the hearing.

“We have a process in this country, under the Constitution and our judicial system, which should be followed,” Romney, the party’s 2012 nominee, said on Friday when asked about the hearing. “The idea of trying to change that process or interrupt it is, in my opinion, a grave mistake.”

Johnson insists that is not his goal, saying he and his staff have been “reaching out to everybody who has been researching this” in order to “accumulate all the irregularities that’s being publicized or not being publicized,” Johnson said.

“And then my next step is, I’m gonna try to debunk it,” Johnson said. “I’m going to say, ‘OK, so how do you explain this.’ Oh, there’s a reasonable explanation.”

Johnson said that Starr, the former independent counsel who probed Bill Clinton when he was president, will be the “lead witness” and to hear his testimony about “warnings they gave us in terms of absentee ballots.”

Johnson said he’s also invited retired judge Jim Troupis, a GOP attorney representing the Trump campaign in Wisconsin, to testify, along with an attorney in Nevada. He said they are also looking at inviting witnesses from Pennsylvania and Georgia, all states Biden won despite Trump’s baseless claims to the contrary.

“It’s just a clear violation of Wisconsin election law, what happened there,” Johnson said. “Now, what’s the remedy going to be?”

But Republicans have failed to successfully challenge the Wisconsin results in court or convince federal judges there have been widespread irregularities across the country that could change the outcome — oftentimes not even presenting evidence of fraud in court.

On the floor this week, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer slammed Johnson for the hearing, demanding he immediately scrap the proceeding, which he called a “ridiculous charade.”

“It’s deeply irresponsible that there hasn’t been a full-throated defense of the validity of our elections by Republican senators and the Republican leader, who still refuse to call Joe Biden president-elect,” Schumer said.

“But to go one step further, and use a Senate committee as a platform to spread misinformation about our own elections — it’s beyond the pale.”

Johnson, who argues that’s not his intention, met this week with Jordan, a staunch Trump ally who has been sowing doubt about the election, which officials in both parties have said was secure and that no amount of fraudulent activity could change the results.

“We were just talking about what irregularities that we want to highlight prior to our hearing,” Johnson said of his meeting with Jordan.

Asked if he would join the House Republicans, Johnson said it depends on what the testimony at next week’s hearing shows. “If there’s not a good and satisfactory explanation for this, that’s a problem.”

As he’s aligned himself with Trump, Democrats have been eager to challenge him in 2022 if he runs for a third term.

“The election’s not over,” Johnson said when asked if he would run again, referring to the November election that Biden won. Asked when he would make a decision, Johnson said: “Once the election is over.”