The day after JD Vance was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2022, he received a congratulatory text from Charles Johnson, a blogger and entrepreneur who has zealously promoted right-wing conspiracy theories.<\/p>\n
Johnson assumed the posture of a wise mentor, cautioning the first-time officeholder to choose his staff carefully and repeatedly pressing him on his committee assignments. \u201cGot to keep you out of trouble,\u201d wrote Johnson, who now describes himself as a government informant seeking to protect the United States from foreign influence.<\/p>\n
Their correspondence over the next 20 months \u2014 extending into the weeks before former president Donald Trump picked Vance as his running mate \u2014 offers a glimpse of the Republican vice-presidential nominee\u2019s off-the-cuff musings, often matching his public expressions but voiced with much less polish. Vance was just as casual in discussing America\u2019s foreign alliances as he was in evaluating his own private alliances with the GOP\u2019s moneyed class. With Johnson, he pondered responsibility for the sabotage of the Nord Stream gas pipelines and crudely described his aversion to the Ukrainian government and refusal to consider its pleas for U.S. assistance.<\/p>\n
\u201cDude I won\u2019t even take calls from Ukraine,\u201d he told Johnson in October, about three weeks after House Republicans blocked additional aid to help Kyiv repel the Russian invasion. \u201cTwo very senior guys reached out to me. The head of their intel. The head of the Air Force. Bitching about F16s.\u201d<\/p>\n
In response to questions about his correspondence with Johnson, Vance spokesman William Martin said the two were never close and don\u2019t share the same politics. \u201cChuck Johnson spam texted JD Vance,\u201d Martin said. \u201cJD usually ignored him, but occasionally responded to push back against things he said.\u201d<\/p>\n
The texts, sent over the encrypted messaging app Signal and provided by Johnson to The Washington Post, show the 40-year-old senator engaged in the kind of freewheeling communication ordinarily tightly controlled by congressional staff.<\/p>\n
As a newly minted senator, Vance solicited Johnson\u2019s views on many topics, including UFOs (\u201cWhat is your read\u201d), the Republican Party\u2019s relationship with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (\u201cWhat is GOP Bibi problem?\u201d) and the death of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein (\u201cDo you think Epstein actually killed himself?\u201d). When Johnson suggested that the senator should work to restrict foreign ownership of U.S. housing, Vance responded with a \u201cthumbs up\u201d emoji.<\/p>\n
The mostly friendly conversation with Johnson reflects how Vance gravitates to people on the political fringe \u2014 a cohort emboldened by Trump\u2019s insurgent campaign in 2016 and highly active online in the years since. After Trump picked Vance as his running mate on July 15, Johnson has been criticizing his onetime interlocutor and threatening to release their communications. He said he has grown disillusioned with Vance, especially over the senator\u2019s favorable view of the Israeli prime minister, and now supports President Biden and Vice President Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee.<\/p>\n
Johnson has spread fantastical claims about a wide range of politicians and journalists and has made comments casting doubt on the Holocaust. He was banned from Twitter in 2015 for soliciting donations aimed at \u201ctaking out\u201d Black Lives Matter activist DeRay Mckesson. He argued at the time that he was referring to journalistic sleuthing, and his account was restored under the platform\u2019s new owner, Elon Musk.<\/p>\n
Johnson has provided information to the FBI in recent years about some of his associates and maintains that his access to far-right circles has allowed him to expose wrongdoing and serve the public good, saying, \u201cMy admittedly controversial associations have allowed me to get entry to some of the most fringe spaces, but my commitment to our country hasn\u2019t wavered.\u201d<\/p>\n
Vance is perhaps the most high-profile emblem of a new breed of conservative politician willing to entertain and endorse provocative or offensive figures. Trump has displayed similar impulses, including in 2022 when he dined at his Mar-a-Lago Club with Nick Fuentes, an outspoken Holocaust denier.<\/p>\n
Unlike Trump, however, Vance has turned his ideological permissiveness into a political philosophy \u2014 an open embrace of the unvetted and the indecent aimed at undermining conventional norms of truth and decorum. Vance has defended his vision as a big tent representing how many Americans actually think. Democrats have described his approach as \u201cweird,\u201d a label that Harris allies have increasingly applied to the Trump ticket.<\/p>\n
Vance has bragged about being \u201cplugged into a lot of weird, right-wing subcultures.\u201d He wrote a positive blurb for a book by Jack Posobiec, the far-right activist who advanced the \u201cPizzagate\u201d conspiracy theory. And he has defended Alex Jones, the right-wing radio host who spread lies about the Sandy Hook school shooting.<\/p>\n
\u201cBelieving crazy things is not the mark of whether somebody should be rejected,\u201d Vance said in a 2021 speech to the conservative Teneo Network that was recently published by ProPublica. \u201cBelieving important truths should be the mark of whether we accept somebody, and if they believe some crazy things on the side, that\u2019s fine. We need to be okay with nonconventional people.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the texts, Vance often seemed skeptical of Johnson \u2014 not because of his associations with far-right causes but rather because of his self-presentation as a spook. \u201cIf you are who you say you are then don\u2019t you have my phone tapped?\u201d Vance wrote last fall, adding an emoji signaling that he was laughing so hard he was crying.<\/p>\n
Still, the messages suggest Vance valued Johnson\u2019s opinions. The two were introduced over email in 2019 by a Republican fundraiser, according to correspondence shared with The Post, but Johnson, who helped start the facial recognition company Clearview AI, said they had spoken previously. Though their conversation was generally amicable, they argued about Israel in the messages. Vance pushed back on Johnson\u2019s criticism of Netanyahu, falsely characterizing some of the prime minister\u2019s past positions.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf the GOP listened to Bibi we wouldn\u2019t have invaded Iraq, wouldn\u2019t have done nation building in Afghanistan, and wouldn\u2019t be threatening a war with Iran,\u201d he wrote. In fact, Netanyahu supported the U.S. invasion of Iraq and had pushed for regime change in Iran, telling Congress in 2002, \u201cIt\u2019s not a question of whether Iraq\u2019s regime should be taken out but when should it be taken out; it\u2019s not a question of whether you\u2019d like to see a regime change in Iran but how to achieve it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Vance said he thought more of Netanyahu\u2019s government than of Americans who support interventionist foreign policy. \u201cPublicly and privately not a single rep of the Israeli government has sounded as insane as our neocons,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n
His defense of Israel and scorn for neoconservatives shows Vance saying privately what he often says publicly. But he let his guard down with Johnson, responding to the suggestion that he read an article about the influence of Sheldon Adelson, the late Republican megadonor, by saying, \u201cI\u2019m pretty sure he gave me shit.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNever met him,\u201d Vance wrote last year. \u201cHes dead. Don\u2019t care.\u201d<\/p>\n
Adelson died in January 2021, months before Vance entered the race for U.S. Senate in Ohio. But his widow, Miriam Adelson, contributed $2,900 to Vance\u2019s campaign, federal records show, and she recently gave $5 million to a pro-Trump super PAC, with promises to contribute more this year.<\/p>\n
A spokesman for the Adelson family, Andy Abboud, said Miriam Adelson spoke Monday to Vance following a Post inquiry about the senator\u2019s message to Johnson. \u201cShe is unfazed,\u201d Abboud said. \u201cShe will continue to have a good relationship with JD Vance.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the messages, Vance pushed back on Johnson\u2019s accusations that he was beholden to donors and other allies, including his law school mentor, Yale professor Amy Chua. When Johnson suggested that Vance was channeling Chinese and Israeli interests, Vance replied, \u201cChua doesn\u2019t tell me anything.\u201d He added: \u201cI am pretty sure I don\u2019t even know another Chinese american.\u201d Chua declined to comment.<\/p>\n
At times, the conversation was one-sided, with Johnson repeatedly texting Vance his social media posts without eliciting any response. Late last year, they argued after Johnson challenged Vance\u2019s criticism of the sale of U.S. Steel to a Japanese corporation. \u201cStop sending me weird messages,\u201d Vance told Johnson. \u201cI find your threatening tone enraging.\u201d<\/p>\n
But occasionally, Vance took the initiative with Johnson, reaching out last fall to ridicule the mental state of a pro-Ukraine activist. In a nod to Johnson\u2019s purported work for the U.S. government, Vance suggested he should \u201chave the spooks up the doses of Xanax among the rank and file,\u201d an insinuation that Washington was engineering popular support for Ukraine. The following month, he asked for Johnson\u2019s take on a former intelligence official\u2019s claims that the U.S. government had evidence of alien spacecraft.<\/p>\n
In response to a tweet Johnson sent him about Epstein\u2019s death, Vance asked whether he thought it was a suicide, as New York City\u2019s medical examiner concluded, and added of the sex offender: \u201cAlso haven\u2019t followed story closely but he seemed like a genuinely bad dude.\u201d<\/p>\n
On June 24, as several media outlets reported that Vance was among Trump\u2019s top choices for vice president, Johnson wrote to him: \u201cCongratulations. Good luck.\u201d<\/p>\n
Vance responded six days later. \u201cFor what?\u201d he asked. \u201cYou assume too much!\u201d<\/p>\n
Johnson warned: \u201cDon\u2019t take it when it\u2019s offered. It\u2019s a trap.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHaha,\u201d Vance wrote back. \u201cDoubt it\u2019s offered. We\u2019ll see.\u201d<\/p>\n
On July 15, the day Trump announced his selection, Johnson sent Vance a message: \u201cLots of reporters asking into you.\u201d<\/p>\n
Aaron Schaffer contributed to this report.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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