When you hear “Mike Johnson” in the same breath as “invalidating votes,” you might think of his role supporting unsuccessful efforts to overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential victory. But on Sunday, the Republican House speaker voiced purported concern about invalidating the votes of millions of Democratic primary voters, raising the specter of unspecified legal challenges to Democrats putting forward a different nominee than Biden against Donald Trump in November.
For starters, there doesn’t appear to be any legal impediment to nominating someone besides Biden (seemingly Vice President Kamala Harris, at this point). Though Biden was the presumptive nominee after winning all but one Democratic contest earlier this year, he hadn’t officially been nominated. That process was expected to take place next month. And despite what some Republicans have claimed, the relevant state ballot deadlines for appearing on the ballot haven’t passed.
And in this historic moment, it’s worth recalling Johnson’s support for invalidating votes in the 2020 election. When he became speaker last year, The New York Times called him “a silent but pivotal partner” in the failed effort, citing, among other things, that he “collected signatures for a legal brief in support of a Texas lawsuit, rooted in baseless claims of widespread election irregularities, that tried to throw out the results in four battleground states won by” Biden. Johnson is a lawyer, by the way.
Relatedly, there’s Johnson’s support for his party’s nominee, who is under criminal indictment for allegedly subverting the 2020 election. Trump’s federal election interference indictment, for example, alleges that, “on the pretext of baseless fraud claims, the Defendant pushed officials in certain states to ignore the popular vote; disenfranchise millions of voters; dismiss legitimate electors; and ultimately, cause the ascertainment of and voting by illegitimate electors in favor of the Defendant.” (Trump has pleaded not guilty in all four of his criminal cases and was found guilty in the New York case, the only one to have gone to trial.)
So while we should expect Johnson to continue supporting baseless legal claims to aid Republicans, right now it’s hard to see any merit to such claims. And even if legitimate issues arise, it will always be difficult to take Johnson seriously as a caretaker for democracy and the rule of law.
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