Pennsylvania Republican investigating whether his office handed fake electors to Ron Johnson

After Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) claimed that the slate of fake Trump electors his office passed on to former Vice President Mike Pence came from Rep. Mike Kelly (R-PA), the latter Republican vehemently denied any such thing happened.

However, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Kelly appears to be investigating whether it did.

"'Our current chief-of-staff has begun conducting an internal investigation, which Rep. Kelly is aware of and takes seriously,' Matt Knoedler, Kelly's press secretary, confirmed to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Wednesday afternoon," reported Lawrence Andrea. "Kelly's potential role in the effort to hand Pence false elector paperwork from Wisconsin and Michigan in the minutes before Congress was set to confirm Joe Biden's victory on Jan. 6, 2021, has become a point of contention in recent weeks."

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"Johnson has maintained that the false elector documents, which texts show his staff attempted to deliver to Pence before being told not to, came from Kelly's office. Kelly has denied the accusation," said the report. "But Johnson's office on Wednesday provided the Journal Sentinel with a screenshot of a phone record indicating Sean Riley, Johnson's chief of staff, had a 2-minute phone call with a number associated with former Kelly chief of staff Matt Stroia at 11:58 a.m. Jan. 6." Johnson's office says this conversation was about the electors, although no audio recording exists of it.

The fake electors, which declared themselves in several swing states Biden carried, were part of a plan by pro-Trump attorney John Eastman.

Under an infamous memo Eastman wrote, the fake electors would be given to Pence, who would then claim the states' results were disputed and disqualify the real electors, throwing the election to Trump. Experts have broadly said this plan was illegal — even Eastman himself acknowledged this in private — and Pence himself refused to go through with it.