On Jan. 6, 2021, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) texted with a Wisconsin-based attorney heading up legal efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in the state, the lawmaker acknowledged on Tuesday. “You can’t even call it participation,” Johnson told NBC News, adding he “wrote a couple texts” to lawyer Jim Troupis both before and after the senator’s staff unsuccessfully attempted to deliver fake elector papers to then-Vice President Mike Pence. “What would you do if you got a text from the attorney for the president of the United States?” Johnson asked. “You respond to it.” The senator made the admission after a speech to the Milwaukee Rotary Club on Tuesday morning in which he downplayed the severity of the Capitol attacks. “The ‘armed insurrectionists’ stayed within the rope lines in the Rotunda,” he scoffed, making air-quotes with his fingers. “I’m sorry—that’s not what an armed insurrection would look like.” (There is ample evidence that firearms, among other weapons, were carried by protesters that day.) Johnson added that the rioters “did teach us how you can use flagpoles, that kind of stuff, as weapons.” A spokesperson clarified that the senator was “in no way condoning this action.”