Yes, Ron Johnson attended the impeachment hearings

Social media hosted no shortage of debates amid former President Donald Trump’s second impeachment hearing, but a Feb 12, 2021, exchange centering around U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wisconsin, was particularly unexpected.

U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan, D-Wisconsin, said Johnson was a no-show on what turned out to be the second-last day of the proceedings.

"Hey @SenRonJohnson, were you too busy fighting with YouTube fighting over your crackpot theories on Covid? Do your damn job and show up," Pocan tweeted about 9 a.m., referencing Johnson’s ongoing feud over YouTube removing a video Johnson posted of COVID-related testimony from his Senate committee.

It prompted an expected dose of Twitter outrage, with posters condemning Johnson and saying he shouldn’t be able to vote if he didn’t show up.

But later that day Johnson spokesman Ben Voelkel said that was a lie and told Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporter Patrick Marley that Johnson had been in attendance throughout the trial.

So who’s right?

Pinning down attendance is tricky since the hearing took place in the Senate Chamber, but that wasn’t the only way for senators to watch the proceedings.

The Senate adopted a resolution allowing senators to leave and watch from the upstairs gallery or from an adjacent room by television. So a senator being absent from the floor for a time doesn’t mean they weren’t watching.

Pocan’s assertion that Johnson wasn’t there stemmed from a tweet by author Don Winslow, who has more than 600,000 followers on Twitter. The tweet showed pictures of Johnson and 13 other senators, describing them as "the Senators that chose not to attend the impeachment trial today."  It was retweeted more than 10,000 times before Winslow deleted it sometime Feb. 12.

An archived version of the tweet shows it was posted at 1:37 a.m. central time on Feb. 12. Since Winslow lives in California, that would have been 11:37 p.m. on Feb. 11 — meaning it was likely referencing the Feb. 11 proceedings, which had concluded hours earlier.

This tweet was spreading widely in the middle of the day Feb. 12, so many interpreted it to be referencing Feb. 12, but the Senate proceedings didn’t begin until 11 a.m. central, about 10 hours after this tweet was sent.

We’ll examine both days.

In an email to PolitiFact the evening of Feb. 12, Voelkel said his understanding is that Johnson "has been there the entire time."

But we don’t have to take his word for it.

Featured Fact-check

Ron Johnson

stated on October 10, 2009 in a speech at a tea party rally in Oshkosh

"Both the state and federal governments make more per gallon in gas taxes than the oil companies make themselves for doing all the work."

Johnson was obviously at the hearings Feb. 12. As noted, it’s not possible to prove his location at every moment in the day, but CSPAN video shows Johnson in his assigned seat (back row on the left, fourth from the left as viewed from the front of the room) during a standing ovation for Capitol police officers’ work Jan. 6. In addition, Getty Images captured a picture of him during a recess in the proceedings, USA TODAY captured a photo of him after the day’s session ended and CNN posted an update at 1:30 p.m. with Johnson commenting on the day’s proceedings.

Various news organizations also captured images of Johnson in the Capitol around the Feb. 11 hearings: Getty has a picture of him arriving at the beginning, and the Associated Press took a photo of him leaving at the end. CNN reported Feb. 11 at least 15 empty desks on the Republican side at one point, though, as noted, those senators could have been watching from other locations, and the online report didn’t list the senators missing.

Pocan’s office provided no evidence that Johnson was absent either day. 

Spokesman Usamah Andrabi said the office has "first-hand reports of him being out of the room at times," but with viewing setup from multiple locations that doesn’t prove this claim. Andrabi also asserted the "focus" of the tweet was on Johnson’s COVID conspiracy theories, though that doesn’t ring true given the post was a quote retweet of a claim about Johnson’s attendance.

Pocan told Johnson to "do your damn job and show up," retweeting a claim that Johnson wasn’t present for that day’s impeachment proceedings.

The timeline is a bit odd here, since the tweet that spurred this discussion likely was referencing Feb. 11, but it was being shared and debated in many cases as if it referenced to Feb. 12. In either case the now-deleted tweet was wrong about Johnson.

We don’t know what Johnson was doing every moment of every day, but we have photographic proof he was at the Capitol for the Feb. 11 and Feb. 12 impeachment hearings. That makes a claim he didn’t "show up" absurd. Pocan’s office provided no convincing evidence to the contrary.

So we have a claim based on a deleted tweet that conflicts with an array of photographic and other documented evidence. That’s false and ridiculous. 

Or as we call it, Pants on Fire.