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House Speaker Mike Johnson said Sunday he does not expect to see “anything like” the violence at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 — but reiterated doubts over the election results in 2020 and said he expects “cheating” in the 2024 election.
“I don't think we'll see anything like that. I certainly pray and hope that's true,” Johnson said in an interview with Margaret Brennan on CBS’ “Face the Nation," when asked 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 the lead architects in the argument against certifying the 2020 election results before becoming Speaker, reiterated that there were “all sorts of concerns about fraud and irregularity” in 2020 though a lot has changed at the state level to ensure free and fair elections in 2024. But the Louisiana Republican, who said he believes former President Donald Trump’s lead on Election Day will be “too big to rig,” also said that he thinks there will be “cheating” in 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 said. “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.”
But he later added, “I think there is going to be some cheating in this election. I think non-citizens are going to vote,” Johnson said.
Johnson contended that the Biden administration — including Vice President Kamala Harris — are responsible for non-citizens voting in U.S. elections because of their border policies. He pointed to Democrats refusing to support the SAVE Act, which was House legislation aimed at preventing illegal immigrants from voting in U.S. elections, as a root point of concern. Non-citizens voting in federal elections is already illegal.
“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 said. “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 extensive litigation over the 2020 proved there was no systemic fraud that affected the outcome. “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," said Bill Barr, who was Trump's attorney general when the 2020 election took place.
Experts also argued that the notion of undocumented immigrants voting is a scare tactic with no basis in fact. For instance, an examination of state records in Virginia showed "as few as three people" have been accused of illegal voting in the state in recent years, and none of them were non-citizens.
But other Republicans continue to reiterate the same concerns over the 2020 election results across the Sunday shows, less than a month until the election. Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance said again that he had concerns with the 2020 election results: "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.) said in a contentious interview with CNN's Dana Bash. “That’s an empirical fact.”
As for security at the Capitol ahead of certifying the 2024 election results, Johnson said that the Capitol Police and Architect of the Capitol have “done extraordinary measures” to prevent anyone 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 said. “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.”
