U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson said President Trump was just trying to get to the “truth” with the Ukrainian president in a phone call now at the center of the House impeachment inquiry.
“The president, as I interpret that, is trying to get to the truth. And I have no problem with that,” Johnson said in an interview aired Sunday on “UpFront,” produced in partnership with WisPolitics.com.
“He is the chief law enforcement officer of America. He would like to find out what led to this entirely false narrative of Russian collusion with his campaign that has literally put his administration through the ringer, hampered his ability to govern. I want to know that. I think the American people have the right to know, did something happen, or if nothing happened, they need to know that as well,” Johnson said.
“He has hard feelings about some of the rumors flying in terms of possible DNC, Hillary Clinton campaign involvement with Ukraine, trying to dig up dirt on Paul Manafort, maybe even dig up dirt on Joe Biden back then (2016), prior to Joe Biden deciding not to get into the presidential primary on the Democrat side,” Johnson said.
Johnson said the content of the phone call between Trump and Ukraine’s president should have been kept confidential under executive privilege. He called the release of it harmful and unfortunate.
Presidents, Johnson said, need to be able to “offer very candid advice, sometimes out-of-the-box thinking, that really should not be made available to the public. So (we) really are hampering not only this president, but future presidents’ ability to do their job.”
Also on the program, Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate Ed Fallone said incumbent Justice Daniel Kelly is “a recent appointee whose resume is thin on experience but very thick on partisan political activity.”
Fallone, a Marquette University Law School professor, is seeking to unseat Kelly in the coming 2020 election. Fallone is making his second run for the high court. He lost in his first attempt in 2013 but said he learned from that campaign.
“What I learned is that the voters really want to know what your values are, what your principles are. So if anything, in this campaign, I am being more open and more honest about my background and my experiences,” Fallone said.
Fallone also said the public has lost faith in the independence of the Wisconsin Supreme Court.
“I think the public views the court as veering too far into political activity. And what they really want is a return to an independent court, a court that is beholden to no party, that acts independently, and that we can trust to be a mediator between the political branches and the people,” he said.
See more from the program:
http://wisn.com/upfront
