U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) looks at U.S. President Donald Trump speaking in the Oval Office as Trump signs the Secure America Act, at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., June 10, 2026. REUTERS/Evan Vucci
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) called it “a little silly” to ask whether he would commit to a peaceful transfer of power if Republicans lose the House next week.
Johnson made the remark Tuesday in Orangeburg, New York, a week before the Nov. 3 midterm elections.
“I wanna ask you, do you commit to having a peaceful transfer of power come January regardless of what the results are?” MS NOW reporter Mychael Schnell asked.
“It’s a little silly you have to ask the question,” Johnson replied. “Of course, we’ll have a peaceful transfer of power, but it will not be transferring because we are going to keep the majority, and I’m gonna be the Speaker of the House.”
That question dates to the last time power changed hands, and Johnson played a central part in it. On Jan. 6, 2021, a mob stormed the Capitol as Congress counted electoral votes, and The New York Times reported that Johnson was “the most important architect of the Electoral College objections” Republicans raised that day.
“Look. You know my background. I’m a constitutional law attorney,” Johnson told Schnell.
Johnson brought that same background to the effort to overturn the 2020 election. Before entering Congress, he was a constitutional lawyer and organized a brief, signed by 125 other Republicans, backing a Texas lawsuit that asked the Supreme Court to throw out results in states won by then-candidate Joe Biden.
“Stay strong and keep fighting, sir!” Johnson wrote on X days after the 2020 election, describing a call he made to President Donald Trump.
“Next question,” Johnson said in October 2023, after ABC News reporter Rachel Scott asked about his 2020 role as Republicans booed.
“The Constitution says when a state certifies the election of members of Congress, and they administer the oath,” Johnson said Tuesday. “That’s what I’ll be doing on January 3 to everybody who’s there.”
On Oct. 23, a day after Attorney General Todd Blanche told reporters, “I’m not trying to not have an election certified,” the Justice Department sued to block certification of Alaska’s Senate race if Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-AK) loses, the Wall Street Journal reported. That is the step Johnson’s promise rests on.
Blanche said on CNN on Oct. 25 that the suit aims to keep voters from confusing the senator with a second Dan Sullivan on the ballot. Trump told reporters he directed the lawsuit, the Journal reported.
“There’s a number of states that we’re looking at,” Blanche told reporters Oct. 22, according to Democracy Docket.
Blanche also refused to rule out trying to stop certification after the election, NBC News reported. He said the department did not intend to “improperly interfere” with that process.
The department has already asked a federal judge to block California from counting ballots from 20,000 voters it claims are noncitizens, Democracy Docket reported.
“There was this misperception that there’s this separation and independence between the Department of Justice and the White House,” Blanche said on a New York Post podcast Oct. 21. He said “they accused me of not suffering from independence,” adding, “I don’t.”
“We have to blur some of the faces of persons who participated in the events of that day because we don’t want them to be retaliated against and to be charged by the DOJ,” Johnson said in December 2023 of Jan. 6 security footage House Republicans were releasing, ABC News reported.
His office walked that back the same day, saying the Justice Department already had the raw footage, ABC reported.
“Originally we were trying to blur some of the faces to protect the innocent, you know, people who were there and just happened to be walking through the building,” Johnson told Newsmax in April 2024. By then, federal authorities had charged 1,265 people over the attack, the magazine reported.
“The president’s made his decision. I don’t second-guess those,” Johnson said in January 2025 of Trump’s pardons of Jan. 6 rioters, including people who attacked police officers.
On the eve of the attack’s fifth anniversary in January, Johnson’s office said the law requiring a plaque to honor the officers who defended the Capitol was “not implementable,” the Associated Press reported. The finished plaque was sitting in a Capitol basement utility room.
“I may not like some of those outcomes, but that’s our system,” Johnson said Tuesday, adding that “for anybody to suggest otherwise is absurd.”
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