Lawmaker spun a history of heroics
FRANKFORT, KY.» The Kentucky lawmaker’s résumé included enough material for an award-winning memoir: He was a peacekeeper at the Rodney King riots in Los Angeles, a White House chaplain to three presidents and a 9/11 first responder who gave last rites to hundreds of people at Ground Zero.
But Republican Dan Johnson’s carefully crafted history crumbled this week after an extensively reported story from the Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting. The story tore down his claims and portrayed him as a con man whose deceptions propped up his ministry of a church of outcasts in Louisville and hid a sinister secret: a sexual assault allegation from a 17-year-old girl.
Johnson denied it all, declaring his innocence from the pulpit of the church where he was the self-appointed “pope.” By Wednesday night, he was dead, his body found on the side of a secluded road with a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.
The death of the 57-yearold jolted Republican leaders, who were struggling with a sexual harassment scandal that toppled the state’s first GOP House speaker in nearly 100 years plus three other Republican committee chairmen. Most in the party had turned their back on Johnson, calling for his resignation after the sexual assault allegation and his history of posting racist photos on Facebook that depicted President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama as monkeys.
By Thursday, many were offering messages of sympathy while acknowledging Johnson’s complex life.
“He was passionate about others. I saw it often. Yet he needed help himself,” GOP state Rep. Jim DuPlessis, who sat beside Johnson on the House floor, posted on Twitter.
Johnson’s wife, Rebecca, said her husband was the victim of a “high-tech lynching” and announced she would run to replace him in the Legislature.
On the church’s website, Johnson claimed to have healed sick people during a visit to South America in 1991, including the incredible story of raising a woman from the dead. The miracles were detailed in a letter from David Fischer, pastor of a church in California. Fischer told the investigative reporting center that he did not witness those events and could not point to anyone who had.
Johnson listed his only source of income as workers compensation from New York. He said the money was from injuries while working as a chaplain immediately after 9/11. But the reporting center, after a seven-month effort, could find no evidence that Johnson was in New York that day.