GOP Sen. Johnson vows rigorous COVID-19 investigation if Republicans win Senate

Wisconsin Republican Sen. Ron Johnson on Thursday vowed that, should Republicans take the Senate majority in 2024, he would pursue a rigorous investigation into the federal government's handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) eschewing of potential non-vaccine treatments.

"[I]n terms of holding people accountable, I mean, I don't have a chairmanship right now," he said on the "Just the News, No Noise" television show. "So I don't have subpoena authority. If we win the majority, I would be the chairman of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigation[s], [which] has the strongest subpoena power of any committee in the Senate because we're supposed to be the premier investigatory body."

"But you know, I only have five staff members. That's how unserious the senate is about investigations. But I've been, biding my time writing more than 60 oversight letters to these federal health agencies to lay the foundation for real hearings and real discovery. And you can rest assured that I will go after this with tenacity," he vowed.

"I think public health agencies, they're just trying to cover these things up and they can't afford to admit they were wrong on this," he said of potential adverse effects from mRNA vaccines.

He specifically highlighted the FDA's activities discouraging the use of Ivermectin, which fell under legal scrutiny and recently saw the agency settle a suit from doctors and agree to remove online content discouraging its use as a COVID-19 treatment.

"So I think those doctors have decided that at least the tacit admission, by the FDA by by pulling down all the negative information they had on ivermectin was probably about as good as you're gonna get," he contended. "They also probably see my attempts to, for example, just get the unredacted emails from Anthony Fauci that, I've been trying to do that for three years, and they're still not giving those things up. So I'm sure they were somewhat skeptical that the federal government probably wouldn't even honor the rules of discovery on this thing as well. So, again, it's it's a step."

"[W]e really do need to expose exactly what happened here. Why did they sabotage the use of virtually every generic drug?" Johnson went on to ask. "Trump mentioned hydroxychloroquine. So they had to destroy that right off the bat, even though they were talking about that being effective against the SARS-like virus back in 2004, 2005. It was in their playbook to use hydroxychloroquine. But they had to sabotage that then."

Ben Whedon is an editor and reporter for Just the News. Follow him on X, formerly Twitter.