With the midterm elections now just four months away, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA) is facing the prospect of becoming House minority leader and watching as a new Democratic-controlled Congress begins investigating and potentially impeaching Donald Trump for the third time.
However, Johnson may be exploring an alternative method of staying in power and protecting Trump to boot.
According to legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin, writing in the New York Times, there is a “disaster scenario” with which Johnson could finagle things to guarantee the GOP stays in power and keeps Trump from being booted from office. The scenario was shared with Toobin by Rep. Joseph Morelle (D-NY).
How would that work?
As Toobin explains, imagine a scenario where the Democrats are victorious in November. Trump would then declare the elections fraudulent and refuse to acknowledge their win.
At that point, Johnson would fire current House Clerk Kevin McCumber, a non-partisan official who served both Democratic and Republican speakers over the years.
Johnson would replace McCumber with a GOP partisan who would declare Republicans to have won seats that were actually won by Democratic candidates.
“While the speaker does have the unilateral power to remove the clerk, his choice for a permanent replacement would have to be approved by a vote of House members,” Toobin continued. “Mr. Morelle said that in that case, Speaker Johnson might not be able to persuade his slim Republican majority to replace Mr. McCumber.”
“You’d have a number of members who are retiring, who I think would no longer be beholden to Johnson or the president, who I think would take a very, very dim view of efforts to overturn the election,” Morelle added.
If Johnson were successful with such a plan, the GOP would retain the House majority, and Trump would be spared the inevitable investigations and impeachment. And he could continue to do this in each future election, allowing Republicans to have permanent control of the House and keep Trump in power indefinitely.
Sound far-fetched? It is, but you can’t put anything past the crooks who currently control the Republican Party. They’ve repeatedly proven that they are the lowest of the low and don’t mind cheating in order to win.
