Senator Ron Johnson details his biggest concerns regarding threats to election integrity: Column

Senator Ron Johnson has written a column for the Daily Caller titled "FBI Ignoring Real Threats to Election Integrity" in which he blasted the FBI for an omission in a recent briefing they gave to all U.S. senators who chose to attend on threats to U.S. elections. He said they left out what he called “the most egregious act of election interference in our lifetime.” 

The briefing was called an “All Members Classified Briefing on Foreign Threats to U.S. Elections” and it was held in the Senate SCIF (sensitive compartmented information facility) on Sept. 25. Johnson said he arrived a little late, during the presentation of Avril Haines, the Director of National Intelligence. Her presentation was followed by FBI Director Christopher Wray and CISA Director Jen Easterly.

“With straight faces, these directors of federal intelligence and law enforcement were once again warning the U.S. Senate that foreign actors were trying to influence our election. Well, duh!,” he wrote. “Unfortunately, most of my Senate colleagues seemed to be lapping it up and taking the briefing seriously. After a few minutes of listening to Director Haines, I could only shake my head in disgust.”

While saying he takes the foreign threats seriously, and acknowledges that they have been “persistent for decades,” Johnson wrote that he “heard absolutely nothing about the most egregious examples of election interference in our lifetime, or the most significant threats to the integrity of the 2024 election.”

The three issues that Johnson focused on included the letter signed by a bipartisan group of former U.S. intelligence officials “which stated, without evidence, that the Hunter Biden laptop ‘has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.’”

The second issue was about “smurfing.”

“I asked Director Wray what the FBI was doing to investigate smurfing. This clear violation of campaign finance law was first revealed in March 2023 by investigative journalist, James O’Keefe. Using ActBlue, the Democrats’ donation platform, thousands of low-dollar donations are attributed to individuals allegedly without their knowledge — in one instance 5,776 donations totaling $754,124. Director Wray seemed clueless on the issue, and had no idea if the FBI was doing anything to investigate it.”

And the third issue Johnson wanted to discuss was voting by illegal immigrants, which he called his greatest concern about the 2024 elections, which he wasn’t able to ask about at all because the meeting was adjourned before he could. 

“Don’t be under the illusion that just because noncitizens are ineligible to vote, Democrats aren’t willing to overlook that legal technicality to win an election. We already have plenty of evidence that illegal immigrants are registering, sometimes without their knowledge,” he wrote before citing some recent examples. 

“President Biden threw open the borders and directed federal departments to register voters. Does anyone believe that registration effort will be non-partisan, or that some percentage of the millions of illegal immigrants won’t vote in November?” Johnson wrote in conclusion. 

“Based on last Wednesday’s [Sept. 25] briefing, I’m confident federal law enforcement won’t have any interest in investigating those crimes either.”