The new leader of one of the chambers of Congress that will certify the winner of next year\u2019s presidential election helped spearhead the attempt to overturn the last one, raising alarms that Republicans could try to subvert the will of the voters if they remain in power despite safeguards enacted after the 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Mike Johnson, the Louisiana congressman who was elected speaker of the House of Representatives on Wednesday after a three-week standoff among Republicans, took the lead in filing a brief in a lawsuit that sought to overturn Joe Biden\u2019s 2020 presidential election win. That claim, widely panned by legal scholars of all ideologies, was quickly thrown out by the U.S. Supreme Court.
After the 2020 election, Johnson also echoed some of the wilder conspiracy theories pushed by then-President Donald Trump to explain away his loss. Then Johnson voted against certifying Biden\u2019s win even after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
Johnson\u2019s role three years ago is relevant now not only because the speaker is second in the line of presidential succession, after the vice president. The House Johnson now leads also will have to certify the winner of the 2024 presidential election.
\u201cYou don\u2019t want people who falsely claim the last election was stolen to be in a position of deciding who won the next one,\u201d said Rick Hasen, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. On Wednesday, he flagged another worry about Johnson, who is a constitutional lawyer.
\u201cJohnson is more dangerous because he wrapped up his attempt to subvert the election outcomes in lawyerly and technical language,\u201d Hasen said.
Last year, Congress revamped the procedures for how a presidential win is certified, making it far harder to object in the way that Johnson and 146 other House Republicans did on Jan. 6, 2021. But there is a conservative school of thought that no legislation can control how Congress oversees the certification of a president\u2019s win \u2014 all that counts is the Constitution\u2019s broad granting of power to ratify the electoral college\u2019s votes.
The House in January 2025 will be filled with the winners of the previous November\u2019s election, so there\u2019s no guarantee a Speaker Johnson would remain in power. To be sure, it would be difficult for the speaker to change any of the results. The vice president — who would be Democrat Kamala Harris at the time \u2014 presides over the joint House and Senate session in a ceremonial role and calls votes if there are enough objections to do so.
Still, the goal of Trump supporters in 2020 was to advance any legal argument against Biden\u2019s win to a Supreme Court where conservative justices have a 6-3 edge, three of whom were nominated by Trump. A speaker who supported Trump\u2019s last effort to stay in power would be well-positioned to do so again if the former president is the GOP nominee next year and loses the election.
On Tuesday night, after Johnson was nominated to his new post by the House GOP caucus, he smiled and shook his head as the rest of the caucus laughed and booed at a reporter\u2019s question about his role in trying to halt certification of the 2020 results. \u201cNext question,\u201d Johnson said. \u201cNext question.\u201d
Democrats kept the issue center stage as the speaker vote on the floor proceeded Wednesday.
\u201cThis has been about one thing,\u201d Rep. Pete Aguilar said. \u201cThis has been about who can appease Donald Trump. House Republicans have put their names behind someone who has been called the most important architect of the electoral college objections.\u201d
\u201cDamn right,\u201d someone called from the Republican side of the House.
Later, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., noted that Biden had won the 2020 election. Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor-Greene yelled, \u201cNo, he didn\u2019t.\u201d
Johnson\u2019s ascension came after Trump on Tuesday torpedoed the candidacy of Rep. Tom Emmer, who signed onto Johnson\u2019s brief in the lawsuit to overturn Trump\u2019s loss but ended up voting to certify Biden\u2019s win after the attack on the Capitol. The former president called Emmer a \u201cRINO\u201d \u2014 or Republican In Name Only \u2014 on his social media platform, Truth Social, and said Emmer \u201cwasn\u2019t MAGA,\u201d a reference to his Make America Great Again slogan.
Johnson is a former attorney for the religious rights group Alliance Defending Freedom who was first elected to the House in 2016, the year Trump won the presidency. An active member of the House Judiciary Committee, he gained notice as one of the leading Republican questioners of witnesses during Trump\u2019s first impeachment in 2019.
He remained one of Trump\u2019s chief defenders through the 2020 election. On Nov. 7, 2020, four days after Election Day, he posted on Twitter that he had told Trump, \u201cStay strong and keep fighting, sir!\u201d In an interview on a Shreveport, Louisiana, radio station 10 days later, he repeated a debunked claim about an international conspiracy to hack voting machines so Trump would lose.
\u201cIn every election in American history, there\u2019s some small element of fraud, irregularity,\u201d Johnson said in the interview. \u201cBut when you have it on a broad scale, when you have a software system that is used all around the country that is suspect because it came from Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, when you have testimonials of people like this, it demands to be litigated.\u201d
Johnson then organized more than 100 House Republicans to sign onto an amicus brief filed in support of a lawsuit from Texas\u2019 Republican Attorney General, Ken Paxton, asking the U.S. Supreme Court to invalidate Biden\u2019s wins in four states that gave him his winning margin in the Electoral College \u2014 Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Many legal analysts were aghast at the litigation, which was quickly rejected by the high court.
On his social media streaming show, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who is facing charges in Georgia for trying to overturn the election results there, praised Johnson on Wednesday for refusing to accept Trump\u2019s 2020 election loss.
\u201cHe seems to be right on everything, including the things I\u2019m interested in, which is he didn\u2019t accept the election rollover,\u201d said Giuliani, who also praised Johnson for supporting the lawsuit by the Texas attorney general.
In an interview with The New Yorker in December 2020, Johnson dialed down his election rhetoric.
\u201cI don\u2019t see a grand conspiracy,\u201d he said of the allegations of voter fraud. \u201cWhat I see is a lot of chaos and confusion across the land, and the result is that this election will have this giant question mark hanging over it.\u201d
On Jan. 6, just before Trump\u2019s supporters overran the Capitol, Johnson tweeted: \u201cWe MUST fight for election integrity, the Constitution, and the preservation of our republic! It will be my honor to help lead that fight in the Congress today.\u201d
Hours later, after the attack, Johnson condemned the violence on Twitter. But he still voted with about two-thirds of House Republicans to overturn Biden\u2019s wins in Arizona and Pennsylvania. He remains close to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, a fellow Republican who strategized with Trump over how to overturn his defeat before Jan. 6.
Trump\u2019s supporters in trying to overturn the election have not fared well in elections since the violent assault on the Capitol, with a slate of conspiracy theorists attempting to assume positions overseeing elections in key swing states all losing their races last year. Instead, they have excelled at winning internal party contests and taking control of some state parties. Now they also have claimed one of the nation\u2019s most powerful political positions.
Joanna Lydgate, chief executive officer of States United Democracy Center, a nonpartisan group organizing against election deniers, said Johnson\u2019s ascension was alarming: \u201cHow can you run the people\u2019s House if you don\u2019t believe in the will of the people?\u201d
Noting the speaker\u2019s role in \u201cthe peaceful transfer of power\u201d between presidential administrations, Lydgate warned, \u201cWhen those in power don\u2019t take our democracy and the will of the people seriously, it can have dire consequences.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n