On the latest episode of NBC News’ “Meet the Press,” host Kristen Welker highlighted concerns from Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff, who decried the FBI raid on an elections office in his home state of Georgia in pursuit of a Donald Trump conspiracy theory. Asked to respond, House Speaker Mike Johnson said he found the senator’s criticisms “comical.”
The Louisiana Republican said Georgia was “example A” of election “schemes” in the 2020 race. When Welker reminded her guest that there were statewide recounts in Georgia that showed Trump losing fair and square, and that there were no legitimate questions about election integrity in the 2020 race, Johnson said, “That’s your opinion.”
Except, of course, the underlying question has nothing to do with opinions and everything to do with evidence and facts.
Two days later, asked about Trump’s support for a federal takeover of election administration, the House speaker continued to endorse conspiratorial concerns about “some of the blue states,” before he raised some new and specific concerns.
“We had three House Republican candidates who were ahead on Election Day in the last election cycle, and every time a new tranche of ballots came in, they just magically whittled away until their leads were lost,” Johnson said. He added, “It looks, on its face, to be fraudulent. Can I prove that? No.”
The House GOP leader has a long record of endorsing bizarre beliefs that he can’t prove, including declaring at a 2024 press conference, “We all know, intuitively, that a lot of illegals are voting in federal elections.”
But this latest example is especially offensive. To hear Johnson tell it, preliminary vote totals gave some Republican candidates optimism, until a more complete picture showed them losing. This, in his mind, suggests the results were “fraudulent,” which is ridiculous.
We’re not talking about magic, we’re talking about routine vote tallies in a democracy.
The House speaker went on to talk about public skepticism of election results, seemingly indifferent to the fact that he himself was further eroding public confidence in the system by peddling nonsense he admits he can’t prove.
The broader problem, however, isn’t limited to Johnson pushing bizarre claims. Rather, what matters more is the congressman’s broader record.
In the wake of Trump’s 2020 defeat, for example, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a crackpot lawsuit intended to invalidate state election results that Republicans didn’t like. It was Johnson who took the lead, not only in endorsing that ill-fated lawsuit, but also in getting his GOP colleagues to sign on to an amicus brief in support of the Texas case.
The New York Times reported that the lawyer for the House Republican leadership told Johnson at the time “that his arguments were unconstitutional.” The future speaker proceeded anyway. The same Times article referred to Johnson as “the most important architect of the Electoral College objections” on Jan. 6, 2021, which were intended to keep Trump in office despite his defeat.
While trying to recruit other members to his cause, Johnson sent the rest of the GOP conference an email. As NBC News reported, the subject line read “Time-sensitive request from President Trump.”
“President Trump called me this morning to express his great appreciation for our effort to file an amicus brief in the Texas case on behalf of concerned Members of Congress,” Johnson wrote in the December 2020 email. “He specifically asked me to contact all Republican Members of the House and Senate today and request that all join on to our brief,” he continued. “He said he will be anxiously awaiting the final list to review.”
Or, put another way, Johnson was a member of Congress, but he effectively took on the role of a member of Trump’s political-legal operation, becoming the then-president’s point man on Capitol Hill while Trump was trying to seize illegitimate power.
This came on the heels of a radio interview in which the Louisiana congressman echoed a discredited conspiracy theory involving Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez and Dominion Voting Systems — nonsense that even many Trump acolytes no longer feel comfortable repeating.
In the same on-air appearance, Johnson also falsely told the public, “In Georgia, [the 2020 election] really was rigged. It was set up for the Biden team to win.”
It was after this that Johnson voted with other Republicans to reject the results of the 2020 election.
None of this is ancient history. We’re talking about events from five years ago.
This week, the House speaker is offering the political world a timely reminder about how brazen an election denier he still is.
This post updates our related earlier coverage.
