Home Speaker Mike Johnson stated Sunday he doesn’t count on to see “anything like” the violence on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 — however reiterated doubts over the election ends in 2020 and stated he expects “cheating” within the 2024 election.
“I don’t think we’ll see anything like that. I certainly pray and hope that’s true,” Johnson stated in an interview with Margaret Brennan on CBS’ “Face the Nation,” when requested if he expects violence like in 2021.
“There’s a lot of great work that’s been done at the federal, state and local level to prevent the chaos that ensued after 2020, the Covid election year, when all the states were changing their laws and regulations.”
Johnson, one of many lead architects within the argument in opposition to certifying the 2020 election outcomes earlier than changing into Speaker, reiterated that there have been “all sorts of concerns about fraud and irregularity” in 2020 although so much has modified on the state degree to make sure free and honest elections in 2024. However the Louisiana Republican, who stated he believes former President Donald Trump’s lead on Election Day will probably be “too big to rig,” additionally stated that he thinks there will probably be “cheating” within the 2024 election.
“The good thing is, and I think everybody should be encouraged, that since that time, most of the state legislatures went to work to shore up their systems to ensure that those kinds of things didn’t happen in the future,” Johnson stated. “And I think that that’s going to give us a high degree of certainty, and certainly hope that this will be a free and fair and legal election. I think everybody on both sides should be praying and hoping for that, and that’s what I hope and expect.”
However he later added, “I think there is going to be some cheating in this election. I think non-citizens are going to vote,” Johnson stated.
Johnson contended that the Biden administration — together with Vice President Kamala Harris — are liable for non-citizens voting in U.S. elections due to their border insurance policies. He pointed to Democrats refusing to help the SAVE Act, which was Home laws geared toward stopping unlawful immigrants from voting in U.S. elections, as a root level of concern. Non-citizens voting in federal elections is already unlawful.
“I believe, by my count, we have about 16 million illegal aliens in the country since [Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro] Mayorkas and Harris and Biden opened the border wide,” Johnson stated. “And because of that, there’s concern, because those people are distributed all around the country, as you know, there’s concern some of those people will try to participate in the elections.”
Democrats and others have argued that the intensive litigation over the 2020 proved there was no systemic fraud that affected the result. “I made it clear I did not agree with the idea of saying the election was stolen and putting out this stuff which I told the president was bullshit,” stated Invoice Barr, who was Trump’s lawyer common when the 2020 election occurred.
Specialists additionally argued that the notion of undocumented immigrants voting is a scare tactic with no foundation in actual fact. As an illustration, an examination of state information in Virginia confirmed “as few as three people” have been accused of unlawful voting within the state lately, and none of them had been non-citizens.
However different Republicans proceed to reiterate the identical considerations over the 2020 election outcomes throughout the Sunday exhibits, lower than a month till the election. Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance stated once more that he had considerations with the 2020 election outcomes: “I’ve said repeatedly I think the 2020 election had problems. You want to say rigged, you want to say he won, use whatever vocabulary term you want.”
“If you look at what happened in Pennsylvania, Arizona and other jurisdictions in 2020, they did not follow election procedures passed by the state legislature,” Byron Donalds (R-Fla.) stated in a contentious interview with CNN’s Dana Bash. “That’s an empirical fact.”
As for safety on the Capitol forward of certifying the 2024 election outcomes, Johnson stated that the Capitol Police and Architect of the Capitol have “done extraordinary measures” to forestall anybody from invading the Capitol.
“They’ve hardened the facilities around the building to prevent anything in the future from foreign terrorists or anyone else who might want to, you know, try to invade the Capitol. That’s taken care of,” Johnson stated. “But I think the greater issue and the bigger story is that you’ve had really great work done in most of the states to shore up their systems and to make sure that we have a free and fair election.”