Ron Johnson: Capitol Riot 'Didn't Seem Like an Armed Insurrection'

Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., said in a recent interview that the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6 “didn’t seem like an armed insurrection to me,” and said that “groups of agitators” are to blame, The Washington Post reports.

“This didn’t seem like an armed insurrection to me,” Johnson told Wisconsin radio station WISN-AMon Monday in an interview with conservative talk show host Jay Weber.

“I mean ‘armed,’ when you hear ‘armed,’ don’t you think of firearms?” He continued. “Here’s the questions I would have liked to ask: How many firearms were confiscated? How many shots were fired? I’m only aware of one and I’ll defend that law enforcement officer for taking that shot. It was a tragedy, OK? But I think there was only one.”

NBC News reported in January that about a dozen guns and thousands of rounds of ammunition were recovered from seven people who were arrested for their involvement in the riot. Police also reported that others at the scene had brass knuckles, pocket knives, and “stinger whips,” according to NBC, and a stun gun was used against one officer, leading to him having a heart attack, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Johnson also said that “groups of agitators” caused the riot, not the “tens of thousands of [Donald] Trump supporters” who had attended the former president’s rallies.

“The group of people that supported Trump, the hundreds of thousands of people who attended those Trump rallies, those are the people that love this country,” he said. “They never would have done what happened on Jan. 6. That is a group of people that love freedom; that’s a group of people we need to unify and keep on our side.”