Via Up North News:

Republican senator turns to the usual targets rather than acknowledging using Ukraine as a pawn to help Trump’s campaign.

Sen. Ron Johnson, the Wisconsin Republican who acknowledged in 2020 that his frequent committee hearings on Ukraine “would certainly help Donald Trump win re-election,” is now claiming it was Democrats who made it easier for Russia to invade, because of the impeachment of the former president for his attempted extortion of Ukraine’s leader.

“I don’t think Vladmir Putin would have moved on Ukraine were it not for the weakness displayed—certainly by the Biden administration but also by the west in general,” Johnson said on a Sunday morning talk show. “And I’m certainly hoping that Col. [Alexander] Vindman, [US Rep.] Adam Schiff, [Speaker of the House] Nancy Pelosi, who used Ukraine as a pawn in their impeachment travesty are also recognizing, reflecting how they weakened Ukraine, weakened the west, weakened America by the divisive politics that they play.”

But when Johnson made similar assertions online on Saturday, the response traffic was fast and firm.

“You tried to push the narrative as recently as 2019 that Ukraine, not Russia, interfered in the 2016 US election,” said Asha Rangappa, a former FBI special agent for counterintelligence and investigating suspected foreign agents, in a Twitter exchange. “You were being fed this info by people linked to Russian intel and the FBI *warned* you about it. And still you persisted. You can sit down.”