Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) expressed his frustration on Feb. 21 over the “double standard” applied by Democrats when it comes to prosecuting violent acts during riots and protests.
Although Republicans have actively condemned the violent acts perpetrated during the Jan. 6 breach of the U.S. Capitol, Johnson said he hasn’t observed the same of his Democratic colleagues in terms of condemning the violence perpetrated by left-wing extremists.
“That’s not the same standard that the Democrats use ... in many cases [they] encouraged the riots that occurred over the summer,” he said.
“Whether it was $1 [billion] to $2 billion of property damage, 12 to 19 people killed in those peaceful protests turned to riots, no condemnation. In fact, there’s actually encouragement of that, for example, by the vice president [Kamala Harris] to encourage people to donate to a fund that would bail out the rioters.”
“How does that make sense? So the double standard, the unequal enforcement of the law, is really what troubles an awful lot of people on our side of the aisle,” Johnson added.
He commented days before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs is scheduled to hold a hearing about the events of Jan. 6 and to seek accountability for the incident.
“Right now, we’re going to be going into that hearing with what we’ve read in the newspaper,” he said.
“We don’t have the base of information I would like to have before I would go into a hearing ... I’m hoping we start getting some information from the people that were actually there and we get a full accounting of what actually happened.”
He noted conflicting reports about what the FBI knew prior to Jan. 6, saying that one branch appeared to have received some “pretty disconcerting warnings” about the breach beforehand. However, Johnson pointed out that in Sund’s letter, the FBI and other law enforcement officials didn’t provide “any intelligence indicating that there would be a coordinated violent attack on the U.S. Capitol.”
“Perfect hindsight does not change the fact that nothing in our collective experience or our intelligence—including intelligence provided by FBI, Secret Service, Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and D.C. Metropolitan Police (MPD)–indicated that a well-coordinated, armed assault on the Capitol might occur on January 6,” Sund wrote in his letter.
“There was really no suspected harmful activity,” Johnson said. “People really were caught by surprise. This was not predictable. This was not foreseeable as the House managers continue to talk about. I just don’t believe it was.”