The head of the House Democratic Caucus warned Tuesday that voters should have no faith in Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) to certify this year’s presidential election results because of his role in promoting former President Trump’s false claims about the 2020 contest being “rigged.”
“He doesn’t have a track record that would indicate to the American people that he should be believed,” Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.) said during a press briefing in the Capitol.
The charge came shortly after Johnson, appearing at the same pressroom podium, had vowed to back the certification of the winner of this year’s contest between Trump and Vice President Harris — if the elections are “free, fair and safe.”
“Of course. If we have a free, fair and safe election, we’re going to follow the Constitution,” Johnson told reporters. “Absolutely, yes.”
Democrats have their doubts, noting that in the aftermath of the 2020 election, Johnson promoted Trump’s baseless claims that the election was “rigged” by a conspiracy of corrupt election officials, foreign governments and underhanded software companies.
“The allegations about these voting machines, some of them being rigged with this software by Dominion, there’s a lot of merit to that,” Johnson said at the time.
Last year, Dominion secured a $787.5 million settlement from Fox News in a defamation suit after the broadcaster aired claims that the company had tilted the results toward President Biden.
Johnson, a former constitutional lawyer, also led the effort to get fellow House Republicans to endorse an amicus brief backing Texas’s legal challenge of the 2020 results in Pennsylvania — a case dismissed by the Supreme Court.
And it was Johnson who devised the legal justification for challenging Trump’s defeat, which accused some states that had altered their voting rules during the pandemic of acting unconstitutionally — an argument adopted by many Republicans in the Capitol. He was among 120 House Republicans who voted against certifying Biden’s victory in both Arizona and Pennsylvania.
Given that record, Aguilar suggested Johnson’s stipulation about a “free, fair and safe” election is setting the stage for another challenge if Trump loses.
“He was the chief architect of the House Republican legal strategy to turn back a free and fair election. So the metric that he’s using is a little curious,” said Aguilar, who was a part of the select committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol by a mob of Trump supporters.
“And so I think that gives us all a bit of heartburn.”
Johnson’s office declined to comment on Aguilar’s warning, pointing to the Speaker’s remarks earlier in the day.
Heading into November’s contest, Trump is already raising questions about election security, and Johnson has backed multiple pushes from the former president casting doubt about integrity at the polls.
Last week, the Speaker brought a vote on a package coupling government funding with a bill to require proof of citizenship to register to vote — a measure pushed heavily by Trump. Noncitizen voting is already illegal and is rare.
On Monday, Johnson shared a Truth Social post from Trump alleging Democrats “are getting ready to CHEAT” by aiming to get Americans who live overseas to cast ballots.
And since becoming Speaker, Johnson has defended his support for Texas’s challenge of the 2020 results.
“The plain language of the Constitution has never changed,” Johnson said in an interview with “Face the Nation” last year after winning the gavel. “And what happened in many states by changing the election laws without ratification by the state legislatures is a violation of the Constitution. That’s a — that’s a plain fact that no one can dispute.”
Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.), the vice chair of the House Democratic Caucus, said the Republicans making claims of “stolen” elections should either provide some hard evidence or quit raising doubts about the country’s election outcomes.
“Standing here today, Republicans still cannot explain who purportedly stole the election, nor how it was done. Because the election wasn’t stolen,” Lieu said.
“I’m confident that our election officials across America are doing their public service,” he added. “They’re going to run elections in a fair and impartial manner.”
Emily Brooks contributed.