Senate Republican Wants To Hold Hearings On A 9/11 Conspiracy Theory

Sen. Ron Johnson is actively investigating 9/11.

A day after the Wisconsin Republican went on a far-right podcast promoting conspiracy theories about the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people, a spokesperson for Johnson said the lawmaker is currently seeking information and documentation in order to hold hearings on the event nearly 25 years later.

He would do so in his capacity as chair of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, one of Congress's most storied and powerful panels with far-reaching jurisdiction that gives its chair wide latitude to probe a diverse array of matters. It has in the past probed war profiteering, organized crime and the 2008 global financial crisis.

In a podcast interview Tuesday with MAGA personality Benny Johnson, Ron Johnson asserted that one of the buildings around the World Trade Center complex in New York was brought down via “a controlled demolition” in the aftermath of the collapse of the twin towers.

Building 7 at the World Trade Center complex collapsed hours after the initial attack when al Qaeda terrorists hijacked commercial airliners and crashed them into both towers of the World Trade Center. The smaller office building could not withstand hours of uncontrolled fire after flaming debris rained down on the building.

However, its collapse has long been subject to rampant conspiracy theories from so-called 9/11 truthers, suggesting that Building 7 was demolished via planted explosives alone, or that it was, along with the twin towers, deliberately destroyed by the federal government or other entities in an attempt to place the blame on al Qaeda.

The building’s tenants, which included an outpost of the Central Intelligence Agency, have made it a locus for conspiracists, with the phrase “jet fuel can’t melt steel beams” becoming an enduring internet meme.

Citing a documentary that promoted these conspiracy theories about the attack, Ron Johnson went on to say the investigation into the collapse conducted by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, which is part of the Department of Commerce, was “corrupted.”

“What actually happened on 9/11? What do we know? What is being covered up?” he asked. “My guess is there's an awful lot being covered up in terms of what the American government knows about 9/11.”

The terrorist attacks on Sept. 11 also included two other hijacked planes, one that flew into the Pentagon and another that crashed into a field outside Shanksville, Pennsylvania, after a fight between passengers and the terrorists. They have all been subject to countless congressional hearings, with an independent bipartisan commission that investigated the attacks and the security and intelligence breakdowns that allowed them to take place.

The oversight has mostly focused, though, on the failure of the George W. Bush administration to prevent the attacks as well as any culpability among figures in the Saudi Arabian government.

Ron Johnson, who also described the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol as the subject of “a massive cover-up of exactly what happened,” acknowledged in his interview with Benny Johnson that he is considered “a conspiracy theorist.”

“But,” the Wisconsin senator added, “that’s how they keep things covered up.”

It’s not clear what Ron Johnson’s timetable would be for holding hearings, with the spokesperson saying only it would “depend on what information/documentation is obtained by our office.”