Mike Johnson hid 'key problems' at Christian law school that led to $5M loss: report

Prior to becoming a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, newly-elected Speaker Michael Johnson (R-LA) spearheaded a plan to establish a Christian-based law school in his home state that never saw the light of day and led to a $5 million loss because he allegedly hid key problems with its establishment.

In a deep dive by the Washington Post that lends itself to questioning Johnson's attention to detail and for overselling the unsellable, the report notes his drive to create the school even after a critical feasibility study poured cold water on the idea.

As the report notes, Johnson's biography makes no mention of the ill-fated school that cost Louisiana College, now known as Louisiana Christian University, a substantial amount of money for the planned Shreveport campus.

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According to the Washington Post's Michael Kranish and Isaac Stanley-Becker, "For more than a year, Johnson — the dean of the not-yet-opened law school — had been telling donors and the public that the institution, which would focus on training Christian attorneys in northwest Louisiana, was not only achievable, but inevitable."

In an interview in 2010, he told a local paper, "From a pure feasibility standpoint. I’m not sure how this can fail because … it looks like the perfect storm for our law school.”

However, there was an adverse feasibility study that Johnson, as the newly-appointed dean, was apparently not aware of.

According to the Post, "The 2013 memo suggests, however, that when given a leadership opportunity, Johnson oversold his project’s prospects and failed to divulge key problems until after he left the job. In the memo, he blamed others for the problems,writing that the project collapsed because of larger issues at Louisiana College. He also faulted administrators for failing to send him the feasibility study, and said that a crisis involving the college’s accreditation agency undercut his effort to have the law school win operational approval."

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"Joe Aguillard, the president of Louisiana College later offered an alternative explanation of events," the Post is reporting.

"Aguillard said that Johnson’s resignation was a selfish decision to pursue a 'dream job,' according to the memo,which was obtained by The Post.Aguillard also blamed Johnson’s resignation 'for the Law School’s present delays in opening its doors.' After leaving the school, Johnson said in a memo that he had accepted a job at a conservative legal institute in the Dallas area," the report added.

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