Donald Trump backs Speaker after winning Congress hearings on election fraud
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Donald Trump has backed the embattled Republican House Speaker after he agreed to hold a series of congressional hearings on election interference.
The former president met Mike Johnson at his Florida resort on Friday where the pair pledged to work together on “election integrity”, which will include televised committee sessions over the next two months on US voting security in the US.
According to Mr Trump – who continues to falsely claim victory in the 2020 presidential election – the hearings will “provide the American public an opportunity to hear sworn testimony and get clarity on” election issues, including mail-in voting and voter registration.
Republicans are pushing for tighter rules on voting procedures and on Friday Mr Trump and Mr Johnson pledged to introduce legislation that will require people who register to vote in a federal election to prove that they are an American citizen.
Mr Trump has wrongly claimed that large numbers of non-citizens frequently vote in US elections.
Despite the new bill, the practice of non-citizens voting in US elections is already illegal.
Mr Trump’s show of support for Mr Johnson comes as he faces a possible leadership challenge after only six months as speaker, led by Trump-ally and Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene.
The pair appeared side by side at Mar-a-Lago in a vivid display of how Mr Johnson, and the Republican party in Congress, are now freighted to Mr Trump’s needs ahead of November’s presidential vote, including his claim that the 2020 election was stolen.
Mr Trump has claimed without evidence that mail-in voting is subject to widespread fraud. Last December he called for postal voting to be abolished,. He suggested last month that “any time the mail is involved, you’re going to have cheating”.
The former president and Mr Johnson put on a show of unity on Friday, despite their differences over Ukraine aid, which Mr Trump opposes, and the re-authorisation of foreign surveillance legislation, which Trump encouraged Republicans to reject earlier this week, but passed the lower chamber on Friday.
Mr Trump said: “He’s doing a really good job under very tough circumstances and I appreciate that he came to Mar-a-Lago.”
In a post on Trump’s Truth Social platform, the former president said Mr Johnson had agreed “to hold a series of public committee hearings over the next two months which will provide Members the opportunity to fact-find in advance of potential legislation to further safeguard our elections from interference.”
The public hearings would be held to allow the House to scrutinise how the federal government is preventing illegal immigrants and non-citizens from voting in the 2024 presidential election.
It comes amid a row between Mr Trump and President Biden over the US’s border security with immigration set to be a key battleground before November.
Mr Johnson said the legislation would put the US “on a par with virtually every other democracy around the world that also prohibits non-citizen voting” and would expunge non-citizens already on voter rolls.
He added that it was a “critical thing to do at a very critical time.”
But the planned law was immediately attacked by Democrats. Progressive congresswoman Pramila Jayapal called the idea “ludicrous”.
“The reality is that they have done everything that they can on the Republican side to undermine election integrity,” Ms Jayapal said.
“This is the obligatory kiss the ring of the cult of Trump that the speaker is undertaking.”
At the meeting, Mr Trump also addressed his imminent hush money criminal trial in New York, which a judge on Friday refused to postpone on the grounds of publicity about the case.
Asked at Mar-a-Lago if he planned to testify, Mr Trump said: “Yeah I would testify, absolutely,” adding that he considered his court appointment “a scam that’s not a trial”.
