PRESS RELEASE Contact: press@congressionalintegrity.org
For Immediate Release
Date: October 16, 2024
Washington, D.C. – With the 2024 presidential election a few short weeks away, the person who may be in charge of presiding over the certification of the election results has proven himself to have a long history of election denial and Trumpism. Americans can’t trust Speaker Mike Johnson to follow the law and certify the election.
Congressional Integrity Project executive director, Kyle Herrig, issued the following statement:
“Mike Johnson is clearly poised to do Trump’s bidding and Trump’s bidding only. He spent all year pursuing the wrong priorities, failing to address any of the important issues facing Americans across the country. Instead, he has allowed the House to waste time investigating Trump’s political opponents and acting as an arm of Trump’s campaign.
With only 20 days until the election, Johnson continues to refuse to commit to accepting the outcome unconditionally and spends his time on cable news pushing false conspiracy theories. American voters don’t have any confidence that Mike Johnson will accept the results of the election should Trump lose.”
Read more about Mike Johnson’s continued threats to democracy, as an architect of election denial, below.
Mike Johnson Is A Threat to Democracy and the 2024 Election
Mike Johnson Has Refused To Accept the Outcome of the 2024 Election Unconditionally. When asked if he would commit to observing regular order in the certification process of the 2024 election, Johnson stipulated that he would follow the constitution only “if we have a free, fair, and safe election” in his eyes – conditions which he has never ascribed to the 2020 election.
Mike Johnson Is Already Pushing False Conspiracy Theories About the 2024 Election. Just like in 2020, Johnson has been pushing conspiracy theories about election fraud months before the 2024 election. He recently told reporters, “I think there is gonna be some cheating in this election. I think non-citizens are gonna vote.” MAGA Republicans, led by Trump and Johnson, have been pushing a conspiracy theory about non-citizens voting all summer long. In July 2024, Johnson pushed through a dangerous, unnecessary bill fueled by MAGA election conspiracy theories known as H.R. 8281, or the SAVE Act. The bill, which was supported by the think tank behind Project 2025, would have required documentary proof of American citizenship to register to vote in federal elections – even though a citizenship requirement is already constitutionally mandated – to promote fear-mongering and push Trump’s lies about non-citizen voting. As the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights concluded, “The SAVE Act is both unnecessary and dangerous. Our electoral system already deploys processes to ensure that our elections are secure and that only eligible voters are participating in our democracy. Voters in every state are already required to affirm or verify their citizenship status when registering to vote. State election officials already have in place existing systems to verify an individual’s voter eligibility and ensure voter rolls are accurate.”
Johnson Continues to Reject The 2020 Election Results. For four years, Mike Johnson has continuously denied the results of the 2020 presidential election. After the 2020 election, he said it was “rigged,” telling reporters, “I don’t concede anything.” Years later, Johnson has continued to claim that election interference took place in 2020. In an episode of his podcast airing in July 2023, Johnson claimed: “we have got to get on top of this right now to make sure it doesn’t happen again in the future. […] if this is not election interference, how are we supposed to think about this? […] And we’ll never know, we can never unwind history to know what an effect that had. That’s just one example of so many.” He declined to comment on the issue several times in the time period surrounding his speakership bid, telling reporters, “My position is very well-known.” As recently as October 2024, Johnson has refused to say that Donald Trump lost in 2020.
Mike Johnson: Architect of Election Denial
Mike Johnson Was In Close Contact With Trump After The 2020 Election, Encouraging Him To “Stay Strong And Keep Fighting!” The day after Joe Biden was declared the winner of the election, Johnson said he called Donald Trump and told him: “‘Stay strong and keep fighting, sir! The nation is depending upon your resolve. We must exhaust every available legal remedy to restore Americans’ trust in the fairness of our election system.’” Johnson stayed in regular communication with Donald Trump in the weeks between the 2020 election and the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. Shortly after the election, Johnson tweeted, “President Trump called me last night and I was encouraged to hear his continued resolve to ensure that every LEGAL vote gets properly counted and that all instances of fraud and illegality are investigated and prosecuted.”
- Johnson Was A Close Ally of The President During The Trump Administration & Defended Him At Both Impeachment Trials. Johnson was a trusted member of Trump’s inner circle and frequently traveled with Trump on Air Force One during his term. Johnson proudly served on the defense team for both of Trump’s impeachment trials in the Senate. During Trump’s first impeachment, Johnson made nearly 50 TV appearances to defend the president.
Mike Johnson Led The Legal Effort In The House To Overturn the 2020 Election. As the New York Times reported, Johnson was “the most important architect of the Electoral College objections” in the House. Johnson pressured his colleagues to support the Texas lawsuit that sought to overturn the election on the unconstitutional premise that the expansion of vote by mail during the pandemic was illegal. Johnson managed to collect signatures from more than 60 percent of House Republicans. Johnson boasted on Twitter of Trump’s approval of his efforts, calling the Texas suit “the big one” that would enable Trump to remain in office.
Mike Johnson Urged Trump Supporters To “Fight!” On The Morning Of January 6, 2021, and Voted Against Certifying The Election Results. On the morning of January 6th, Johnson tweeted “We MUST fight for election integrity, the Constitution, and the preservation of our republic!” Later that day, Johnson voted to overturn the 2020 election, refusing to certify the results in Arizona and Pennsylvania.
Mike Johnson Rejected Accountability For The Violence On January 6th, Calling Investigative Efforts A “Third Impeachment.” Johnson voted against creating a 9/11-style commission to investigate the attack on the U.S. Capitol complex on January 6, 2021. He has also refused to hold key figures accountable for the violence that day, voting against holding Steve Bannon in contempt of Congress for refusing to comply with a subpoena from the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol. Johnson even attacked Democrats for holding hearings on January 6 and investigating the attack, referring to them as a “third impeachment,” and “pure political theater.”
Mike Johnson Helped Spread Trump’s Conspiracy Theories About Dominion Voting Machines. Johnson amplified Trump’s conspiracy theories about Dominion voting machines: “[T]he allegations about these voting machines – some of them being rigged by this software by Dominion – look, there’s a lot of merit to that, and when the President says the election is rigged, that’s what he’s talking about…”
Johnson Cited The Extreme Independent State Legislature Theory As Rationale For His Efforts To Overturn the 2020 Election. During an episode of Johnson’s podcast discussing the January 6th Committee hearings, Johnson pointed to the fringe independent state legislature theory as rationale for his efforts to overturn the election. The extreme legal theory purports that state legislatures have sole authority over elections, declaring court-ordered and non-legislative changes to election law unconstitutional. Johnson echoed this interpretation, telling his audience: “So what happened, though, in the months preceding the 2020 presidential election? Is it all those rules and procedures, all those long-established detailed rules and procedures that are used in the states to determine their electors were changed in a number of the states? Okay. Now, here’s the key, not by the legislatures, but instead by a variety of other officials, you had some governors, some Secretaries of State, some elections, officials, judges, and even private parties, they changed the rules without constitutional authority.”
Mike Johnson Baselessly Claimed That FBI Director Chris Wray Was “Hiding Something” About The FBI’s Role In January 6th Based On His “Body Language” During Testimony. During an episode of Johnson’s podcast discussing FBI Director Chris Wray’s appearance before the House Judiciary Committee, Johnson alleged that Wray was “hiding something” about the FBI’s presence in the Capitol on January 6, echoing a conspiracy theory spread by right-wing extremists implying that federal agents had a role in orchestrating the insurrection: “They’ve been very evasive. And he did it again today. But I think you could tell by the way he answered that question. And certainly by his body language, he’s hiding something. […] he could just concede the truth of it, but he’s unwilling to do it. And what that does, of course, is it draws more suspicion, it just plays right into this narrative that has developed because of the evidence that the FBI is in on it, you know, it makes him look corrupt. And maybe there’s nothing wrong with that. But we don’t know. And that in itself is a problem…”
Mike Johnson Is A MAGA Loyalist Bent On Pushing The Wrong Priorities
Mike Johnson Is One Of Trump’s Top Defenders. Johnson has been described as “a trusted member of Trump’s inner circle” and as “one of President Donald Trump’s most ardent supporters in the House of Representatives.” Johnson frequently traveled with Trump on Air Force One during his term and proudly served on the defense team for both of Trump’s impeachment trials in the Senate. During Trump’s first impeachment, Johnson made nearly 50 TV appearances to defend the president. Although he has not formally endorsed Trump for 2024, Johnson continues to aggressively defend the former president despite his legal woes, attacking Democrats after January 6 for focusing on investigating the attack, referring to it as a “third impeachment” and accusing Joe Biden of “weaponizing” the Department of Justice to indict Trump.
Johnson Has All The Wrong Priorities – House Republicans Spent Their Majority Defending Trump, Attacking Their Political Enemies, & Pushing the Project 2025 Agenda. Instead of addressing Americans’ vital priorities, House Republicans are serving as an arm of the Trump campaign, attacking their political enemies and amplifying the MAGA Project 2025 agenda. They spent hundreds of hours and interviewed dozens of witnesses as part of a bogus impeachment investigation into President Biden that turned up nothing. When that fizzled out, they immediately pivoted to attacking Vice President Harris. Just last week, MAGA Oversight Republicans invited two authors of Project 2025 and an anti-immigrant white nationalist to testify at a committee hearing focused solely on attacking the Biden-Harris administration. Johnson’s top efforts include pursuing baseless investigations into the FBI while serving on Jim Jordan’s MAGA Judiciary Committee and investigating supposed radical leftist influence on public education. He even spread conspiracy theories about federal involvement in school board meetings that have long been disputed by fact-checkers as wholly unsubstantiated.
At every turn, Johnson has deferred to Trump instead of the American people for governing priorities. Just this month, Johnson discussed government funding with Trump ahead of a key deadline, and, despite multiple natural disasters tearing apart communities in the Southeast, Johnson ignored President Biden’s calls for more hurricane recovery aid.
House Republicans held at least 50 hearings focused on the southern border as of – but instead of coming to the table with solutions to help fix our immigration system, Johnson refused to take action and exploited the crisis for political gain. While Republican senators were negotiating a bipartisan border security measure, S. 4361, former President Trump made numerous statements opposing any solution, openly stating that inaction on the border is better for his campaign. Speaker Mike Johnson immediately answered Trump’s call to action and declared the Senate border deal “dead on arrival,” effectively destroying the bill’s chances of passing and Senate Republicans voted down the legislation. Instead of engaging and negotiating, Republicans want to use border policy as an endless crisis issue to campaign on.
- Johnson Serves on The Hardline MAGA Republican Study Committee & Is A Member of the Far-Right Freedom Caucus. Johnson currently serves on the hard-right Republican Study Committee (RSC), which has released a steady stream of radical proposals to slash and privatize Medicare and Social Security, limit access to voting, oppose infrastructure funding, and ban abortion nationwide as early as six weeks into pregnancy. The most recent RSC budget, introduced in March 2024, would fully repeal the Inflation Reduction Act, damaging the economy by ripping away trillions of dollars in climate investments. The RSC budget would also cut Americans’ health care by ending coverage protections for over 100 million Americans with pre-existing conditions, banning Medicare from negotiating drug prices or issuing inflation rebates for drug company price hikes, and ending co-pay cost caps for seniors. Johnson is also a member of the far-right Freedom Caucus, which has pushed a budget proposal to defund the FBI.
- Johnson Supported Impeaching President Biden And Has Close Ties To MAGA Oversight Chair James Comer. Johnson spent much of the 118th Congress working to impeach President Biden. He holds close ties with Oversight Chair James Comer, who led the utterly baseless impeachment inquiry, and invited Comer to appear on his own podcast at the end of August 2023, where he called Comer, “one of my good friends for the past seven years” and a “super talented guy.”