Kelly calls senator's claims 'patently false'

U.S. Rep. Mike Kelly is denying claims made by a Wisconsin senator that he provided the senator's office with slates of false electors for former President Donald Trump as part of a scheme to overthrow the results of the 2020 presidential election.

U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson said in an interview Thursday on WIBA-AM, in Madison, Wisconsin, that documents about false slates of electors for Wisconsin and Michigan, which he and an attorney attempted to get to Vice President Mike Pence on the morning of the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol actually came from Kelly. Johnson initially told reporters that he did not know about the efforts of his staff to get the fake Wisconsin electors list to Pence, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported.

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Both Johnson's initial statement saying he was unaware of his staff's participation and his subsequent remarks about his involvement with a Wisconsin attorney in the scheme came after a House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol uncovered more details about a plot to reject slates of electors for President Joe Biden from key battleground states like Wisconsin and Pennsylvania and substitute them with false slates of Trump electors.

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During a hearing Tuesday, the committee released evidence showing that Johnson's chief of staff attempted to provide Pence aides with the fake slates, only to be rebuffed by those aides.

Johnson said in the radio interview Thursday that on the morning of Jan. 6, 2021, he coordinated with his chief of staff and Wisconsin attorney Jim Troupis by text message the effort to get the Wisconsin slate of Trump electors to Pence.

Johnson also shared a story Thursday by conservative journalist John Solomon in which Solomon reported that Kelly had called Troupis to get elector slates to Pence via Johnson, the Journal Sentinel reported. Solomon wrote that a Trump campaign official had asked Kelly to get the alternate slate to Pence, which prompted Kelly to call Troupis. Troupis, Solomon wrote, then text messaged Johnson.

When Johnson's chief of staff asked a Pence aide about furnishing the vice president with the fake slates of electors for Wisconsin and Michigan, the aide replied: “Do not give that to him," the aide texted. Solomon wrote Pence's staff was already aware of the alternate electors and expected to receive the slates by mail. Solomon also reported that Johnson and the staffer opted to "stand down" because Pence was not supposed to receive any mail that had not been screened.

Kelly, a staunch Trump ally who has continued to claim without evidence that the 2020 presidential election was stolen by Biden, voted against certifying Pennsylvania's vote when both chambers of Congress met on Jan. 6, 2021, to certify the election results.

He also filed lawsuits following the presidential election to have Pennsylvania's mail-in ballots thrown out and the state law that allowed for no-excuse mail-in voting to be ruled unconstitutional.

Spokesman says Johnson's claims are untrue

Until this week, Kelly had not been drawn into the House committee's investigation into the Jan. 6 attacks which have explored the steps Trump and his backers took to overturn the election. Those efforts included pressuring state lawmakers to overturn their certification of the vote; attempting to install an environmental lawyer for the U.S. Department of Justice as attorney general so that the lawyer could launch an investigation into the false claims of election fraud; and attempting to substitute real slates of Biden electors with slates of fake Trump electors.

A Kelly spokesman this week issued a statement denying Johnson's claims about the six-term congressman's involvement in the fake elector scheme.

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“Senator Johnson’s statements about Representative Kelly are patently false," said Kelly Press Secretary Matt Knoedler in a statement. "Mr. Kelly has not spoken to Sen. Johnson for the better part of a decade, and he has no knowledge of the claims Mr. Johnson is making related to the 2020 election.”

But, as the conservative reporter Solomon noted, the statement from Kelly's office did not say whether Kelly or a member of his staff had contact with Troupis.

The Erie Times-News has requested an interview with Kelly.

Earlier this year, Kelly told the Times-News editorial board that he had not been subpoenaed by the House committee investigating the U.S. Capitol insurrection.

It is unclear if that has or will change.

Also revealed by the panel this week was an effort by at least a half dozen Republican members of Congress to seek a preemptive pardon from Trump, including Alabama Rep. Mo Brooks, who asked Trump to pardon all 147 members of Congress who objected to the certification of Biden's victory.

Contact Matthew Rink at mrink@timesnews.com. Follow him on Twitter at @ETNrink.