Ron Johnson did Russia's 'bidding' on Biden, ex-Giuliani figure Lev Parnas tells Congress

WASHINGTON – A former associate of ex-Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani on Wednesday accused Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson of “doing the bidding” of Russia in his attempts to find evidence of corruption linked to the Biden family.

Lev Parnas, who worked with Giuliani to dig up damaging information in Ukraine on Joe Biden and his son Hunter in the runup to the 2020 election, mentioned the Oshkosh Republican as he described to the House Oversight Committee efforts from Donald Trump and allies to “manipulate the public” with unvetted information about the Bidens.

Parnas told the panel that Donald Trump, Giuliani and “various cohorts of individuals in government and media positions” lied to the public. He said accusations of Biden’s corruption “were untrue then, and they’re untrue now.”

“Congressman Pete Sessions, then-Congressman Devin Nunes, Sen. Ron Johnson and many others understood they were pushing a false narrative,” Parnas testified. He referenced right-wing media personalities and Fox News for using “this narrative to manipulate the public ahead of the 2020 election.”

"Sen. Ron Johnson was our guy in the Senate," Parnas said later in the hearing. "It was told to me that when we push the information, he's gonna push it in the halls of Congress."

A spokeswoman for Johnson dismissed the comments as “baseless.”

Parnas’ remarks came as part of House Republicans’ impeachment inquiry into Biden that has yet to produce evidence of wrongdoing. Parnas, who was sentenced to 20 months in prison in 2022 on campaign finance, making false statements and wire fraud convictions, was called as a witness by Democrats.

His references to Johnson centered around the Wisconsin Republican’s investigation with Iowa Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley into Hunter Biden’s ties to the Ukrainian energy company Burisma while Joe Biden, then vice president, was helping to direct U.S. policy toward Ukraine.

Johnson’s investigation concluded in 2020 and failed to connect Biden to a crime. Rather, it found that Hunter Biden benefitted from his family name during his global business dealings.

“There is nothing in Senators Johnson and Grassley’s reports on Biden family corruption that has ever proven to be untrue,” Johnson spokeswoman Kiersten Pels told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on Wednesday. “Anyone who ties Senator Johnson’s legitimate and accurate oversight work to Russia is amplifying a despicable lie that Democrats spread in 2020 to discredit the senator’s work and protect Joe Biden.”

But Parnas on Wednesday presented himself as at the center of what he described as Trump’s push to dig up dirt on Biden. He said he was “designated the point person in every matter they pursued” and said he would meet with conservative news outlets and Trump confidants to spread information he said came out of Russia.

Asked by Maryland Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin how he and Giuliani were able to amplify the false allegations in the U.S., Parnas said Fox News and other right-wing outlets helped push the narratives.

He added: “But then there was also other people that were doing the bidding for the Russian (sic) — people in Congress, like Sen. Ron Johnson, like Congressman Pete Sessions, who sits here right now, that was with me from the very beginning of this journey into finding, digging dirt on Joe Biden.”

Parnas later testified that Johnson "jumped on board" the effort to help disseminate the unverified information on Capitol Hill.

Johnson has long pushed back on accusations he pushed Russian disinformation. He has claimed that the FBI “set me up” when it warned him in August 2020 that he could be a target of disinformation.

He’s said the FBI set him up with “a corrupt briefing and then leaked that to smear me.” He said the briefing didn't include specifics and that he already knew of the threat from Russia.

That briefing came weeks after Democratic leaders in Congress told the FBI they feared Johnson's investigation was part of a Russian disinformation campaign.

Johnson and his staff in 2019 met with Ukrainian diplomat Andriy Telizhenko as the senator pursued the theory that Ukraine had interfered in the 2016 election.

The U.S. State Department later sanctioned Telizhenko and six others for attempting to undermine Biden's candidacy.

The sanctions led Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon to say Johnson's investigation of Biden was "based on Russian disinformation." Johnson has said he vetted the information Telizhenko provided before using it.

Republicans in Congress have continued to probe the Biden family’s business dealings and in December authorized a formal inquiry into the president.

Still, those efforts have been futile as the GOP has been unable to unearth evidence of wrongdoing. The probe suffered a setback earlier this year when one key Republican witness, Alexander Smirnov, was indicted for allegedly lying to investigators about the Biden family’s business dealings.

On Wednesday, Parnas said his own work under Giuliani returned “precisely zero evidence” of the Bidens’ corruption connected to Ukraine. “No credible source," he said, “has ever provided proof of criminal activity.”

“The American people have been lied to by Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani and various cohorts of individuals in government and media positions,” Parnas told the Oversight Committee. “They created falsehoods to serve their own interest knowing it would undermine the strength of our nation.”

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Ron Johnson did Russia's 'bidding' on Biden, Lev Parnas tells Congress