Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, promoting a California sheriff who was once a member of a far-right extremist antigovernment group that has been called “instrumental” in the January 6 insurrection, on Wednesday demanded making “crimes criminal again” just one day after traveling to the Criminal Courts Building in lower Manhattan to stand up for Donald Trump. The indicted ex-president faces 34 felony charges in his election subversion, business records falsification, and “hush money” trial.
“We’ve got to make crimes criminal again,” Speaker Johnson told reporters at a “Back the Blue” Police Week news conference Wednesday, paraphrasing Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco. “I mean, it’s just common sense. And I think everybody in the country who looks at this objectively understands that anybody who’s not involved in the radical woke progressive left understands clearly that you gotta maintain the peace.”
Sheriff Bianco had been invited to speak at the House GOP event. In 2021, NPRreported he “defended” his membership in the Oath Keepers extremist group, which he insisted stands “for protecting the Constitution.”
READ MORE: Johnson Would Contest 2024 Election Results Under the Same ‘Circumstances’
“If you love America, if you’re proud to be an American and you support the Constitution, you are labeled as an extremist,” Bianco said.
Speaking at the House GOP Back the Blue event Wednesday, Bianco launched an attack on the left.
“Over the past decade or so, the rule of law has been severely eroded by a sick and twisted progressive social experiment, fraudulently called criminal justice reform. In this alternate universe, law enforcement officers are the bad guys, criminals are somehow victims of society. We cannot have a country without respect for law enforcement and adherence to the law and order of our country. There must be consequences for criminal behavior. It is time to make crime a crime again.”
The Speaker on Wednesday also slammed Attorney General Merrick Garland, declaring, “the Department of Justice has clearly been politicized. Some of us consider this actually to be a weaponized DOJ and Merrick Garland is in charge. He is the Attorney General at the top, and I think that they have, they have used our system of justice against political opponents, of course, the most prominent of which is Donald J. Trump. I was with him yesterday in Manhattan, and many in the press have asked, ‘Why did you go there?’ Because I’m a former litigator, I’m a I’m an attorney. This is an egregious violation. a travesty of justice. They are using the judicial system for political purposes and this is something that framers warned us against.”
The Associated Press on Tuesday reported Speaker Johnson had become “the highest-ranking Republican to show up at court, embrace the former president’s claims of political persecution and attack the U.S. system of justice.”
READ MORE: ‘Grave Danger’: Trump’s ‘Raw Display’ of Power at Court Alarms Conservative
“It was a remarkable moment in modern American politics: The House speaker amplifying Trump’s defense and turning the Republican Party against the federal and state legal systems that are foundational to the U.S. government and a cornerstone of democracy,” the AP continued. “Johnson, who is second in line for the presidency, called the court system ‘corrupt.'”
“The speaker is leading a growing list of Republican lawmakers who are criticizing the American judicial system as they rally to Trump’s side, appearing at the courthouse to defend the party’s presumptive presidential nominee. Trump is accused of having arranged secret payments to a porn actress to hide negative stories during his successful 2016 campaign for president.”
Watch the videos above or at this link.
