Congressman Mike Kelly is accused of trying to help Sen. Ron Johnson hand former vice president Mike Pence a slate of false electors the day the U.S. Capitol was attacked.

In a radio interview Thursday, the Senator from Wisconsin says that a fake electors document meant to reach Pence allegedly originated from Kelly's office, but Kelly is denying this.

His spokesperson is calling these allegations "patently false" and adds the Congressman "has not spoken to Sen. Johnson for the better part of a decade, and he has no knowledge of the claims Mr. Johnson is making related to the 2020 election.”

This all came about after the January sixth committee investigating the Capitol attack say former president Donald Trump tried to get electors in some states to declare they were the correct members of the Electoral College.

What happened: Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) is now contending a slate of alternate, Trump-friendly electors from Wisconsin and Michigan — a list that a top aide tried to get to then-Vice President Mike Pence on Jan. 6, 2021 — originally came from Rep. Mike Kelly's (R-Pa.) office. Johnson, as he faces mounting criticism from Democratic foes about his role in the matter, continues to say he didn't know the specifics of the document.

A spokesman for Kelly, Matt Knoedler, flatly denied Johnson's allegations. "Senator Johnson’s statements about Representative Kelly are patently false. Mr. Kelly has not spoken to Sen. Johnson for the better part of a decade, and he has no knowledge of the claims Mr. Johnson is making related to the 2020 election," he said.

But here's what Johnson told "The Vicki McKenna Show" happened that morning (audio captured via American Bridge).
- At 11:36 a.m., Johnson says he got a text from Jim Troupis, then a Trump campaign counsel: "Need to get a document on Wisconsin electors to you and the VP immediately. Is there a staff person I can talk to immediately? Thanks, Jim." (Troupis led a lawsuit attempting to overturn Trump's Wisconsin loss.)
- According to Johnson, 6 minutes later he connected Troupis with his chief of staff, Sean Riley, via text. "Jim Troupis meet Sean Riley," Johnson said it read.
- Later that morning, Riley tried to get Pence a list of fake electors from Michigan and Wisconsin. A top aide to Pence rebuffed that effort, the Jan. 6 panel revealed earlier this week.

Kelly, first elected to the House in 2010, tried to file an emergency lawsuit at the Supreme Court to decertify the results of President Joe Biden's win in his state. The court eventually turned that back in a brief one-sentence order.

https://www.politico.com/minutes/congress/06-23-2022/johnsons-latest-16-story/

A handful of House Republicans who strategized with Donald Trump about overturning the 2020 election hotly denied seeking pardons after the Jan. 6 select committee released testimony Thursday stating they’d pursued clemency from the former president after the Capitol attack.

Several top Trump aides during the post-Jan. 6 period, including special assistant Cassidy Hutchinson and aide Johnny McEntee, described outreach to White House officials from multiple members of Congress seeking clemency: Reps. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), Louie Gohmert (R-Texas), Scott Perry (R-Pa.), Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.).

...snip...

At an earlier hearing, the Jan. 6 panel showed an email from attorney John Eastman, one of the key architects of Trump’s bid to stay in power, asking to be placed on Trump’s “pardon list.” He, too, never received a pardon.

Later Thursday, several of the House Republicans vigorously denied asking for pardons for themselves. Gohmert said in a statement he asked for pardons for other people unrelated to Jan. 6. Perry issued his own statement reiterating his denial that he asked for a pardon: “I stand by my statement that I never sought a Presidential pardon for myself or other Members of Congress.”

The documentary film crew subpoenaed by the January 6 committee interviewed former Vice President Mike Pence on January 12, 2021, a day before the House of Representatives voted to impeach then-President Donald Trump for inciting the Capitol riot.

In a clip of the documentary from filmmaker Alex Holder, which was obtained by CNN, Pence is shown an email by a member of his staff that includes the draft House resolution demanding that Pence invoke the 25th Amendment to remove Trump from power, according to the documentary.

Pence tells his aide, "Yeah, excellent" as he is handed the phone with the email. He then offers a pained smirk and asks the aide to "tell Zach to print me off a hard copy for the trip home." Pence then collects himself for the rest of the interview.

The next clip shows Pence saying, "I am always hopeful about America," juxtaposed against the backdrop of crews erecting security fencing around the Capitol building.

“Hey Alexa, what’s another word for ‘creepy’?”

In a demo that has drawn comparisons to dystopian series “Black Mirror,” Amazon revealed that it has developed a way for its Alexa voice assistant to replicate the speech of a dead relative — based on less than a minute of recorded audio of the original person.

The ecommerce giant showed off the new technology Wednesday at its re:MARS conference, Amazon’s global artificial-intelligence event for machine learning, automation, robotics and space. In a video demo shown at the event, a young boy says, “Alexa, can Grandma finish reading me ‘The Wizard of Oz’?” — whereupon a synthesized voice of the grandmother emanates from an Amazon Echo Dot smart speaker.

“As you saw in this experience, instead of Alexa’s voice reading the book, it’s the kid’s grandma’s voice,” Rohit Prasad, Amazon’s Alexa AI senior vice president and head scientist, told attendees.

Donald Trump has shared a poll indicating he would comprehensively beat Ron DeSantis for the 2024 Republican nomination for president amid continuing speculation the Florida governor is planning on announcing his candidacy.

The former president shared the results of a recent Zogby Poll on Truth Social on Wednesday that indicated that he is still an overwhelming favorite to clinch the Republican nomination should he choose to run.

The survey shows Trump has the backing of nearly 54 percent of votes from Republican primary voters—just under five times the amount that second place DeSantis received (11.5 percent).

LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, one of the nation’s top political donors, gathered more than a dozen billionaires or their representatives over Zoom Friday to sound an alarm about the coming elections.

“MAGA leaders intend to use 2022 midterm wins to install Trump in 2024 regardless of the vote,” read a slide of the PowerPoint Hoffman presented to the group, which was obtained by The Washington Post.

He was pitching some of the nation’s wealthiest people on a doomsday idea that has become a growing obsession among the liberal donor community. Another slide, titled “How MAGA midterms can install Trump,” laid out a step-by-step hypothetical scenario: Republicans win statewide offices in key battleground states in 2022 and then change state laws in 2023 to give legislatures control over presidential electors. After the next presidential election, they declare votes from urban centers “tainted” and overrule the popular vote by sending their own slate of electors to Washington.

The goal of the presentation — described by someone familiar with the group who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations — was to raise tens of millions of dollars for groups that the PowerPoint described as being able to increase Democratic turnout, persuade swing voters to vote Democratic and “dissuade” Republican voters from going to the polls.