Speaker of the House Mike Johnson says he has a “duty” and “responsibility” to contest the results of the presidential election if there is a question about the process complying with the U.S. Constitution and vowed to do so again this year as he did in 2020, if the same “circumstances were presented.” The U.S. Supreme Court refused to take up the 2020 case with Johnson’s claims, and his argument was dismissed by a constitutional expert as being on “the far-right fringes of American legal thought.”

Johnson joined an increasing number of top GOP lawmakers this past week who were asked if they will accept the results of the 2024 election, especially if the presumptive Republican nominee, Donald Trump, loses. Up until the 2020 election amid Donald Trump’s interference, the United States had enjoyed the regular, peaceful transfer of power for more than 200 years.

Before being elevated to Speaker, Johnson was a little known Louisiana Republican back-bencher who happened to be the “congressional architect of the effort to overturn the 2020 election, advocating an interpretation of the Constitution so outlandish that not even the Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority could swallow it,” according to Michael Waldman, a constitutional attorney and president of the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law.

That effort came in the form of an amicus brief to the U.S. Supreme Court, signed by 126 Republican members of the House of Representatives, including Johnson.

READ MORE: ‘On Day One’: Trump Vows to End Protections for LGBTQ Students

“Johnson was the legal mastermind behind the doomed push to decertify the election results in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin,” Waldman wrote in October of 2023 after Johnson became Speaker of the House. “He pressured colleagues to sign on to his effort, warning them ominously that Trump would be ‘anxiously awaiting the final list to review.'”

In a lengthy interview with Politico published Friday, Johnson was asked if he had any “regrets” about his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election that Joe Biden won.

“No, I don’t,” Johnson told Politico. “My point in the amicus brief — people often ask me about this and they never read the brief — was a very simple and very profoundly important legal question. And that is, was the plain language of the Constitution violated in the days that led up to the 2020 election? And it very clearly was, because the language of the Constitution says plainly the state legislatures are the bodies in each of the states that determine the process by which electors are chosen. In a presidential election year, it’s a critically important thing.”

The U.S. Supreme Court, Waldman notes, refused to hear the case. He wrote that Johnson’s legal argument is “an obscure idea on the far-right fringes of American legal thought. Many of you now know the name — the ‘independent state legislature theory.’ Johnson argued that state legislators are the sole state-level decision-makers in federal elections, and that no one else can exercise any form of discretion, oversight, or agency to administer an election. It’s a baseless, ahistorical, dangerous, and completely bonkers reading of the Constitution.”

Johnson claims that only state legislatures have control over the specifics of elections management. But in most states the Secretary of State is – by law – responsible for the elections and how they are managed.

Johnson doubled down in his claims, suggested that the Supreme Court shirked its responsibility, and even suggested they did so because the real answer was too “profound” and “unsettling” for the nation to grapple with.

“Now remember my background as a constitutional law attorney,” declared Johnson, who frequently likes to remind reporters of his work before becoming a congressman. “For 20 years, I litigated constitutional questions in the courts. And to me, this was just such a plain and very important question to be answered. The only mechanism we had to present that to the highest court in the land, the Supreme Court, was to attach it along to that Texas case that was going to be before the court. That’s why the amicus brief was filed there. The Supreme Court dodged the question. Perhaps they calculated that the answer was so profound, it would be so unsettling, and it was not worth them addressing, but well.”

The Speaker made clear he would do the “exact” same thing again.

READ MORE: Bannon Will Be ‘Going to Prison’ After Criminal Contempt Conviction Upheld, Experts Predict

“And so you asked me if I regret that? I don’t. I would do the exact same thing today if the circumstances were presented, because I feel like I have a duty. I’m an officer of the Congress and I have a responsibility. We take an oath to uphold the Constitution, and if it’s plainly on its face not being followed, I have an obligation as an officer of this body to present that to the judicial branch.”

Waldman went on to write, “Johnson’s election denial isn’t mere ‘one could argue’ lawyerly guff. Johnson has ties to a movement that incorporates election denial into evangelical Christianity. Members of the movement held prayer sessions in which they asked for divine intervention to reverse the 2020 result.”

“Mild-mannered Mike Johnson is a no-holds-barred, hold-on-to-power-at-all-costs election denier,” Waldman concluded. “How could this matter in 2024? It seems clear the election deniers won’t wait until the actual election this time. Their bid to subvert the results will start well before ballots are cast and counted. Johnson may preside over key proceedings.”

Indeed, as Newsweek reported Friday, former Trump “fixer,” attorney Michael Cohen, is warning of a Republican “plot” to “steal the election.”

“Their plot to steal the election if they don’t win has already been set in motion,” Cohen warned on his podcast. “Open your eyes. It’s already being set in motion.”

READ MORE: ‘Literally Willing to Take Bribes’: Report of Trump Promise to Big Oil Fuels Concerns

Donald Trump says the day he enters the Oval Office for a second term he will end anti-discrimination protections for LGBTQ+ students implemented by the Biden administration.

Serving up a scattershot series of complaints with the hosts from the Philadelphia-based right-wing talk radio show “Kayal and Company” on Friday, Trump compared LGBTQ+ protections to a “cuckoo’s nest.”

“A lot of things don’t make sense, having to do with what they’re doing, from the border to all of the men playing in women’s sports. I mean, the world is like a cuckoo’s nest right now with what they do,” Trump declared.

One of the hosts alleged President Joe Biden has engaged in “manipulation” of Title IX, the federal civil rights law that prohibits sex-based discrimination in schools that receive federal funding. She claimed parents now have to “pinch some pennies” to be able to afford private Christian schools for their children, to remove them from the enhancements that go into effect this summer.

“Many schools are grappling with what they’re going to do,” she said, “because as of August 1, as you know, because of Biden’s manipulation of Title IX, these kids, the school boards, have no choice, they’re meeting right now they, many of them perplexed, and they don’t know what to do, Mr. President, because they’re so upset over this that at August 1 a biological boy can change in a locker room.”

READ MORE: ‘Rejection of Trump’: 1 in 5 Indiana GOP Voters Just Cast Their Ballot for Nikki Haley

Trump replied, “It’s crazy. Crazy.”

“We’re going to end it on day one,” Trump vowed. “We’re going to change it on day one. It’s going to be changed. We’re going to end it. That’s right.”

“The whole thing is crazy. Look, it’s like men playing in women’s sports. It’s like open borders for the world to come in. Send all their prisoners. We’ll take as many as you can give us. Send all their people from mental institutions.”

“We’ll get that changed. Tell your people not to worry about it. It’ll be signed on day one. It will be terminated,” Trump promised, vowing to end the LGBTQ+ protections which include protections for sexual orientation and gender identity.

On his first day in office, President Biden implemented “the most far-reaching of any federal protections yet” for LGBTQ+ people, according to NPR.

In an explainer on the new expanded rules, Ms. Magazine reports “The 2024 regulations prohibit discrimination not only on the basis of sex, but also on the basis of sex characteristics, pregnancy or related conditions, sexual orientation, and gender identity.”

According to GLAAD, which is tracking “the Biden administration’s executive orders, legislative support, speeches and nominations that affect LGBTQ people and rights,” President Biden has made 337 “moves” in 1206 days.

Listen to a short clip below or at this link.

ICYMI: @realDonaldTrump joined @NickKayal & @DawnStensland sharing his perspective on Title IX…

Watch below or listen on @Audacy pic.twitter.com/wzx0QxKPJ7

— Talk Radio 1210 WPHT (@1210WPHT) May 10, 2024

READ MORE: Bannon Will Be ‘Going to Prison’ After Criminal Contempt Conviction Upheld, Experts Predict

A Fox News panel discussing the Trump New York criminal trial debated whether or not the indicted ex-president could attack the judge’s daughter, with former Bush 43 press secretary Ari Fleischer insisting he should, and claiming doing so would not violate the terms of the gag order.

“President Trump needs to stop calling the judge ‘conflicted.’ He needs to explain why he’s conflicted,” Fleischer said Friday to a panel that included former Trump press secretary Kayleigh McEnany. “Every day of the trial he goes in there, he says, ‘the judge is conflicted, conflicted bigger than I’ve ever seen anywhere in my life.’ He doesn’t explain how or why. He needs to say that the judge’s daughter works for a Democratic political consulting firm that does anti-Trump business. He needs to explain it. Otherwise, it’s just an assertion with no proof. And the President if he’s going to say it, back it up. Explain.”

“I think that’s a violation of the gag order, is it not?” a Fox panelist replied.

“No, he can criticize the judge,” McEnany responded.

READ MORE: Bannon Will Be ‘Going to Prison’ After Criminal Contempt Conviction Upheld, Experts Predict

“Not the judge but the family,” the panelist added.

“But when he says the judge is conflicted, you can still explain how and why, and I think comply with a gag,” Fleischer insisted.

The panelists then agreed Donald Trump has been “measured” in his remarks.

National security attorney Brad Moss weighed in on social media, posting the relevant portion of the gag order and writing that Fleischer “effectively recommends Trump violate the terms of the gag order.”

The gag order in part reads: “Defendant is directed to refrain from” … “Making or directing others to make public statements about (1) counsel in the case other than the District Attorney, (2) members of the court’s staff and the District Attorney’s staff, or (3) the family members of any counsel, staff member, the Court or the District Attorney, if those statements are made with the intent to materially interfere with, or to cause others to materially interfere with, counsel’s or staffs work in this criminal case, or with the knowledge that such interference is likely to result.”

Despite Trump’s repeated attacks, an ethics panel last year cleared Judge Juan Merchan of any issues surrounding his daughter’s work.

On Monday, Judge Merchan warned Trump he may throw him in jail if he violates the gag order again.

Watch below or at this link.

Fleischer: Trump needs to talk about Judge Merchan’s daughter.

McDowell: I think that violates the gag order

Kayleigh: No, he can criticize the judge pic.twitter.com/CLgNxNpg6B

— Acyn (@Acyn) May 10, 2024

READ MORE: ‘Undisguised Corruption’: Critics Slam Trump for ‘Selling the White House’ to Big Oil