House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) is echoing President Donald Trump's allegations of fraud in the Los Angeles mayoral race — but admitted Monday he has no evidence to back them up, telling CNN's Manu Raju the claims are "impossible to prove."
Trump fired off a Truth Social post Sunday declaring the L.A. results fraudulent. "Not possible for Spencer Pratt to have lost the L.A. runoffs after the big lead he had," Trump wrote. "3rd World Nation. Rigged Elections!"
Pratt, the former MTV reality star turned Trump-backed mayoral candidate, led the field in the days after the June 2 primary. But as mail and provisional ballots continued to be counted, progressive City Councilmember Nithya Raman (D-Los Angeles) closed the gap and overtook Pratt for the second runoff spot by Sunday, with 83% of the expected vote in.
Incumbent Mayor Karen Bass (D-Los Angeles) has already been projected to advance to the November runoff.
Raju pressed Johnson if he had evidence supporting the fraud allegations — but the speaker failed to offer any.
"I don't — some of these efforts are so diabolical and so far upstream that it is impossible to prove," Johnson said. "But I think everybody knows instinctively something is wrong here."
When Raju asked directly whether the election was "rigged, like the president says," Johnson pulled back from the word itself.
"I'm not saying it's rigged," he said. "I'm saying it stinks to high heaven, and everybody knows that."
Johnson instead pointed to California's vote-counting timeline, arguing the state should be able to deliver results on election night the way other states do — and other countries do. "We have entire nations with huge populations like India that can count their votes in 24 to 40 hours," he said.
He also used the moment to plug the SAVE America Act, a Republican voting-restrictions bill that would require proof of citizenship and a photo ID to vote. Johnson claimed the measure enjoys more than 90% public support and that 70% of Democrats back it — figures he did not cite sources for.
When Raju suggested Republicans were raising fraud claims simply because their candidate lost, Johnson brushed it off. "Every leader of all parties should demand election integrity," he said. "And if somebody is opposing that, you should look at their motives. That's what I'm telling you."
