How Mike Johnson and House Republicans could deny their own election defeats to save Trump
Since becoming Speaker of the House, Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA) has caused concern that if Republicans hold the House in 2024, he will refuse to certify a President Joe Biden victory.
Johnson was an avid supporter of the 2020 election overthrow attempt, shopping a lawsuit by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton around the House in an attempt to garner support from other GOP members. The suit accused Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin of making last-minute changes to their elections to skew the results.
When asked if he was an election denier, Johnson told CBS' "Face the Nation" the idea that he denies the 2020 election is "nonsense." But when asked if he believed Biden was the 2020 winner, he refused to answer.
Writing for Newsweek, Tom Rogers called Johnson "not only an election denier, but a ringleader of that effort."
Speaking to "Morning Joe" on Friday, Rogers explained that there's a very real concern that, even if Democrats win back the House in 2024, Republicans could refuse to accept those results and step aside.
"We have a situation here where Republican election deniers have learned a lot from last time," said Rogers. "I think we've got to focus more now on what they could do going forward as much as what they did last time.
"Obviously, the 'victimhood king' fantasy is that the election was stolen, and that has become a core tenet of the Republican Party now. If you think about what they could do going forward — where the guardrails last time were the federal and state courts — what could they do where those guardrails don't apply? That's where it gets really scary."
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He said that Democrats are favored to take the House back, but "if we have a number of close House races," Republicans could refuse to step aside when Congress is supposed to be sworn in on Jan. 3, 2025.
It means that on Jan. 6, 2025, Congress could block the election certification of the president too.
"That outcome can be one that, instead of being dictated by the big reform that came about over the last couple years, so-called Election Reform Act, which everybody thought could safeguard our ability to make sure it wasn't easy for Congress to overturn a clear Electoral College victory," said Rogers.
The problem with the set of rules outlined in the Electoral College Reform Act is that the House must approve them. So, a Republican Congress could go "rogue," he explained, and perpetuate "its own control."
Neither action is reviewable by the courts, he explained.
See the full conversation in the video below or at the link here.
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