TO: Interested Parties 
FR: Kate Bedingfield, Deputy Campaign Manager and Communications Director,
Biden for  
President 
DA: July 21, 2020 
RE: The truth about the GOP’s sham inquiry and discredited attacks regarding
Ukraine 
Senator Ron Johnson, who during the coronavirus pandemic has made a number of
appalling statements about the value he places on American lives, is diverting the
Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee away from the rapidly
worsening outbreak in order to waste taxpayer dollars on a farcical, long-debunked,
hardcore rightwing conspiracy theory. 
And he is the least credible person in the entire United States government to lead such
a desperate taxpayer-funded smear campaign, because until less than a year ago he
himself formally supported the bipartisan, international anti-corruption victory for which
he’s now investigating Joe Biden for delivering in Ukraine. Whether he will call himself
as a witness remains unclear. 
In the coming weeks, Johnson will attempt to relitigate comprehensively discredited
accusations that Donald Trump drove himself into impeachment trying to force others to
legitimize. To do so, Johnson will strain to provoke Democrats into responding to
specific truncated and out of context snippets from documents and bad faith questioning
of witnesses. It’s an egregious misuse of his committee to further Donald Trump’s
political agenda at a time when he should focus the committee’s work on responding to
the pandemic. 
Try as he might, Senator Johnson cannot escape the truth or distract from it. Below are
the facts about Senator Johnson’s charade. 
1. Senator Johnson is diverting the Senate Homeland Security and
Government Affairs Committee away from the worsening coronavirus crisis
in order to fixate on a long-debunked, hardcore rightwing conspiracy
theory 
Because of Donald Trump’s catastrophic mismanagement, the coronavirus pandemic is
hitting the United States harder than any other industrialized country - most of which
have effectively contained the disease. Over 140,000 Americans have died, tens of
millions have lost their jobs, and we’re setting records for new cases multiple times a
week as the virus spirals even further out of control. But instead of dedicating the
Senate Homeland Security Committee’s taxpayer-funded resources to the worst public
health crisis we’ve faced in over a century, Senator Johnson -- who has made a series
of extremely troubling statements about the value of American lives during the outbreak
-- is instead diverting those resources to a wasteful charade founded on an exposed lie. 

 For example, in March, Senator Johnson sparked a national controversy when he
downplayed the threat of coronavirus, saying, “Getting coronavirus is not a death
sentence except for maybe no more than 3.4 percent of our population.” 3.4 percent of
the U.S. population would be over 11 million people. This led to a rebuke from Dr.
Anthony Fauci.  
Undeterred, Senator Johnson continued to minimize the threat to American lives from
COVID-19, later that month writing in USA Today, “Every premature death is a tragedy,
but death is an unavoidable part of life.”  
 
The inescapable fact is, Senator Johnson should be working overtime to save American
lives and jobs -- but instead, he’s wasting taxpayer dollars on a blatantly dishonest
attempt to help Donald Trump get reelected. 
2. Senator Johnson himself repeatedly endorsed the firing of Viktor Shokin,
including less than a year ago  
Senator Johnson is arguably the most discredited individual in American government
who could be involved with this farce - let alone “leading” it - because he fully and
repeatedly endorsed Vice President Biden’s efforts to remove Viktor Shokin from office,
a sentiment he repeated less than one year ago. 
In 2016, Johnson signed onto a bipartisan letter supporting the international effort to
remove Shokin, in alignment with the U.S. government, the European Union, the
International Monetary Fund, the Ukrainian anti-corruption community, and thousands of
Ukrainian citizens protesting Shokin’s corruption in the streets. Last October, Johnson
reaffirmed his position, correctly stating, "The whole world, by the way, including the
Ukranian caucus, which I signed the letter, the whole world felt that this, that Sholkin
wasn't doing a [good] enough job. So we were saying hey you've ... got to rid yourself of
corruption." 
And yet, at the very same time that Donald Trump was on the path to impeachment for
attempting to blackmail the Ukrainian government into spreading this conclusively
disproven conspiracy theory for him, Senator Johnson executed one of the most hamhanded flip flops in recent memory.  
This makes it impossible to believe that Senator Johnson is sincere. Because if he
were, he would have to believe that he himself was in on this supposedly sordid
worldwide scheme executed by Joe Biden. Maybe 2020 Ron Johnson should call 20162019 Ron Johnson as a witness?  
3. Senate Republicans themselves have warned that this sham is a windfall
for Russian disinformation 

 Concern over this charade is bipartisan. Members of the Senate Republican
Conference itself have registered that Senator Johnson and Senator Grassley’s work
would be a bonanza for the Russian government as it seeks to spread division in the
United States, includingSenate Intelligence Committee Chair Marco Rubio. 
Politico has reported that in December, Senator Richard Burr “told the leaders of the
Senate Homeland Security and Finance committees — Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and
Chuck Grassley of Iowa, respectively — that their probe targeting Biden could aid
Russian efforts to sow chaos and distrust in the U.S. political system…”  
And in February, Senator Lindsey Graham warned, “Any documents coming out of the
Ukraine against any American, Republican or Democrat, need to be looked at by the
intelligence services who have expertise - I don’t – because Russia is playing us all like
a fiddle.”  
4. Senator Johnson, the Trump Campaign, the White House, and the State
Department are refusing to say whether they are party to a foreign
influence operation  
Over the last several months, pro-Russian Ukrainians, led by Andriy Derkach, a
member of the Ukrainian parliament who graduated from a KGB academy and is known
as “The Ukrainian Putin,” have released a number of heavily edited audio recordings
purportedly of then-Vice President Biden conducting official U.S. business in Ukraine.
Russian propaganda outlets like Sputnik News and RT have heavily covered these
releases, explicitly calling on Western press to do so -- though Western press, reflecting
the lessons of 2016, have only passingly covered them in the context of being attempts
to influence the American presidential election.
 
Ukrainians involved with these leaks have said on the record, to Sputnik News and
to The Washington Post, that they have provided similar materials to Trump aides and
to Senator Johnson’s staff, indicating that Republicans plan to use them later in the year
to affect the campaign.  
However, Senator Johnson, the Trump campaign, the White House, and the State
Department have all declined to comment on whether that is true - meaning that each
are refusing to tell the American people whether they are party to a foreign influence
operation against the United States, which is a legitimate scandal and not a fabricated
distraction.  
5. Every fact checker and major nonpartisan news outlet has affirmed that
this conspiracy theory is debunked, as have Trump Administration officials
under oath 

 The conspiracy theory at the core of Johnson’s inquiry and of Donald Trump’s wild
accusations has been exhaustively investigated and declared false by every major fact
checker, including The Washington Post, The Associated Press, PolitiFact, and others. 
This lie has been called out as “debunked” or “discredited” by The New York Times, The
Associated Press, Bloomberg, The Washington Post, BuzzFeed. The Wall Street
Journal, NBC News, and Politico.  
Donald Trump’s former top envoy to Ukraine, a Republican-called witness during the
House impeachment hearings, said under oath, “The allegations against Vice President
Biden are self-serving and non-credible.” 
The fact is that the European Union, the International Monetary Fund, multiple
European governments, the entire Ukrainian anti-corruption community, and thousands
of Ukrainians protesting in the streets all concurred with the bipartisan view in the
United States, and the oficial position of the U.S. government reached through an
interagency process, that Viktor Shokin was manifestly corrupt and an impediment to
reform in Ukraine. 
And Donald Trump’s contention that Biden was executing some kind of self-interested
plot and that Shokin was a good faith official undeserving of losing his position is
laughable.  
Shokin was notorious for beginning investigations and either letting them idle indefinitely
or ceasing them upon receiving extortion payments. After his subordinates were
revealed for hoarding diamonds received as bribes and other contraband, the officials
investigating them lost their jobs. He was seen across Ukraine and the international
community as toxic.  
###