House Speaker Mike Johnson on Sunday defended a House committee push to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, as well as refused to affirm President Joe Biden won the 2020 election, asserting the Constitution was "clearly violated."
In a contentious interview on CBS' Face the Nation, Johnson, R-La., was grilled on his circulation of a legal brief challenging the outcome of the 2020 election in a number of states.
"By CBS editorial standards [that] makes you an election denier," host Margaret Brennan declared.
Johnson fired back that Biden was "certified as the winner."
"What the argument that we presented to the court, which is our only avenue to do so, was that the Constitution was clearly violated in the 2020 election," he argued. "It's Article Two, Section One, and anyone can Google it and read it for themselves."
"The Constitution was violated in the run up to the 2020 election, not always in bad faith, but in the aftermath of COVID, many states changed their election laws in ways that violated that plain language," he added.
"That's just a fact. We presented that argument and that those facts to the court, and it was never directly addressed … but that was the only vehicle we had to present that issue squarely to the court."
Brennan pressed Johnson, asserting "Your colleague Liz Cheney, your former colleague, wrote, 'Mike Johnson and our Republican leaders had played a destructive role.' You, she says, 'convinced 125 other Republican members of Congress to sign on to an amicus brief that many never read that made numerous false factual and constitutional claims.'"
Johnson punched back: "I don't spend much time responding to Liz Cheney's criticism these days. Liz Cheney worked with the Democrats on the Jan. 6 select committee to make all of this even more politicized than it was."
Brennan also pressed Johnson on a House Homeland Security Committee's effort to impeach Mayorkas.
"We've been asking… Secretary Mayorkas since he took office, to enforce the law, to do his job, and he's done exactly the opposite," Johnson insisted.
"Our… Homeland Security Committee has done its job," he asserted. "They have a constitutional responsibility, a legal responsibility, to investigate what is happening with the agency that they have oversight for. They've done that for a year, very methodically, carefully, in detail. And they've documented all that."
Johnson said he believes Mayorkas is an "abject failure," while noting it's "not because of impotence."
"I believe he has done this intentionally," he charged. "I think these are intentional policy decisions that he's made. And I think there must be accountability for that. And I can tell you, the vast majority of Americans agree with us on that point."
Fran Beyer ✉
Fran Beyer is a writer with Newsmax and covers national politics.
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