Speaker Johnson’s 2020 election challenge raises questions for 2024

What will Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) do? 

That’s the quiet question bouncing around Washington this month as the parties race furiously toward Election Day — when both the House and White House are up for grabs — and former President Trump is already laying the foundation for challenging the results if he loses. 

Johnson will retain the Speakership through year’s end regardless of the election outcome, guaranteeing he’ll play a major role in whatever happens immediately afterward. And that function will assume outsized significance if Trump contests a loss, Republicans keep House control and Johnson preserves his Speakership next year, which would put him in place to gavel in Congress’s certification of the presidential results on Jan. 6, 2025.

Four years ago, when Trump challenged President Biden’s victory, Johnson was a key part of the fight. Not only did he back his White House ally, he also crafted the legal rationale for disputing Trump’s defeat, which accused some states of changing voting rules during the COVID pandemic in violation of the Constitution — an argument adopted by many Republicans in the Capitol. 

This time around, Johnson is no longer the backbencher he was in 2020, but he may be battling to remain Speaker in the face of attacks from conservatives within his own ranks — a fight in which Johnson’s position on a potential election challenge could be a key factor in whether he keeps his job.

Johnson has been adamant that he’ll play fair, vowing a strict adherence to the law regardless of the election results — a message he and his office amplified this week. 

“I’m going to follow the Constitution. Article 2 of the Constitution is very clear, Congress has a very specific role and we must fulfill it,” Johnson said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.” “I’ve demonstrated over and over that we are going to do the right and lawful thing. So you can count on that. We’re going to do our job.”

In the same interview, however, Johnson refused to acknowledge that Trump lost the 2020 race — ”This is a gotcha game that’s played and I’m not playing it,” he said — despite noting that Biden is president. The comments drew headlines and fueled concerns from Trump critics that Johnson would put his loyalty to the former president above the Constitution.

Those critics — including virtually all Democrats — were furious with Johnson’s role in Trump’s 2020 challenge, which led directly to the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. And heading into next month’s razor-tight elections, they have little doubt where Johnson would come down if Trump contests a loss to Vice President Harris. 

“Everyone should have their eyes wide open about Mike Johnson, and they should know that this guy cannot be anywhere near the Speaker’s gavel on Jan. 6 of 2025, because you can just guarantee that he will be conspiring with Donald Trump to try to gum up the election results,” said Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.). “You can guarantee that there will be mischief.”

Johnson’s Republican allies have widely dismissed the warnings from across the aisle, characterizing the Speaker as an honest actor ready to uphold the law. They maintain that Johnson, a former constitutional lawyer, had every right to voice his legal opinion following the 2020 contest.

“Everybody’s got a right to appeal through courts,” a House Republican, who requested anonymity to discuss the sensitive topic, told The Hill. “But once those are worked through we shake hands and accept who the winner is.”

They have also defended Johnson by pointing out that there’s no political incentive for the Speaker to divide his party by publicly contradicting Trump so close to Election Day. 

“I think that Mike Johnson is a good man, he’s gonna do the right thing,” the House Republican said. “It’s like, you don’t want to honestly just pick a fight with the former president … right now. So he’s just trying to be tactful.”

Democrats, however, suspect more devious intentions. They’re pointing to Johnson’s comments last month when he vowed to uphold the Constitution — “if we have a free, fair and safe election.” Democrats said Johnson used the qualifier to suggest the possibility that the process will be rigged.

Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), who led the special investigation into the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol by a mob of Trump supporters, warned that Johnson’s rhetoric heading into Election Day sounds a lot like the language Trump used in casting doubt on the integrity of the process four years ago.

“In this democracy, where we normally settle our differences at the ballot box, it’s a real challenge for us when our leaders are sending signals that, ‘I lose only because it was stolen or that something was fraudulent with the process.’” Thompson said. 

“It’s not good for our democracy; it’s not good for our country,” he continued. “And if Speaker Johnson is using that same language now, then he poses a clear and present danger to the orderly transfer of power.”

Democrats acknowledge that they’ll have little leverage to dictate the certification process if they remain in the House minority next year. With that in mind, they’re using the threat of election “dirty tricks” as a campaign message as they seek to flip control of the lower chamber. 

“Democrats are campaigning not just for a win but for a landslide,” Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), a constitutional law professor who sat on the Jan. 6 panel, told The Hill. “We want election vote totals that are so clear and robust that they can’t be stolen away by trickery and corruption.”

Even some Republicans are critical of the way things transpired after the 2020 elections, when nearly the entire cast of House GOP leadership voted to overturn the results without any evidence to back Trump’s claims of widespread fraud. Johnson, at the time, had promoted Trump’s baseless assertions that the election was “rigged” by a conspiracy of corrupt election officials, foreign governments and crooked software companies.

Those GOP voices are quick to acknowledge the antidemocratic nature of the “stop the steal” campaign, though some are also pushing back against the Democratic argument that the threat is more pronounced this year with Johnson as Republican leader. One called that claim “fearmongering.”

“Anytime you’ve got members of Congress talking about not certifying the election, it’s a problem. But it’s not a bigger problem now than it was four years ago,” said a second House Republican, who similarly requested anonymity. “The narrative that it’s a bigger problem today than four years ago is fearmongering.”

At a rally in Michigan last week, Trump doubled down on the false claim that he won the last election, telling the audience: “We did great in 2016 and a lot of people don’t know that we did a lot better in 2020. We won. We won. We did win. It was a rigged election.” And toward the end of the vice presidential debate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) refused to answer whether Trump lost the election, saying “I’m focused on the future.”

A few House Republicans are already making moves to distance themselves from a potential crusade against the 2024 election results.

Six GOP lawmakers — all of whom hail from battleground districts — signed a bipartisan commitment last month pledging to respect the winner of the election that is certified by Congress in January 2025 after “all legal means to challenge election results in the courts have been exhausted.”

Republican Reps. Don  Bacon (Neb.), Brian Fitzpatrick (Pa.), Mike Lawler (N.Y.), Lori Chavez-DeRemer (Ore.), Nick LaLota (N.Y.) and Anthony D’Esposito (N.Y.) signed the pledge. All six represent districts Biden won in 2020.

Despite that pledge, Democrats are still worried about the postelection landscape if Trump loses to Vice President Harris and launches an effort against the results. 

“The Constitution says a lot of things that these guys have thumbed their nose at. So I’m not sanguine at all about how Mike Johnson would preside over a session that would confirm Donald Trump’s defeat,” Huffman said. “I don’t think he could bring himself to do it.”