Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, an attorney by trade who also used to teach as an adjunct professor at Evangelical Virginia institution Liberty University’s online government courses and was once hired to be the dean of a law school that never actually ended up opening, shared the vast breadth and depth of his interpretation of legal statutes on Thursday with Punchbowl News’s Jake Sherman, telling the veteran Capitol Hill journalist that “marital infidelity is not against the law.”
The sagely insight into the bailiwicks of justiciable criminal conduct came in response to Sherman questioning whether Republican Texas Congressman Tony Gonzales’ should remain in the House of Representatives after admitting on Wednesday to having sexual relations with a subordinate who later tragically committed suicide. It also wasn’t the premise of Sherman’s question since he immediately rephrased, reminding Johnson that it’s against House Ethics rules if it involves a staffer.
“Well of course, yeah. That’s being addressed. There is an investigation at Ethics. The OCC is on it, all those steps have already been taken and apparently were underway… It looks like it’s moving quickly. They announced that right after the election… I’ve always been consistent, whether you’re talking about Republicans or Democrats, we let the processes play out,” Johnson, who once put together a lengthy “opinion” that (indirectly) called for Nancy Pelosi to be charged with a felony for ripping up a copy of convicted felon President Trump’s speech after his lie-filled 2020 State of the Union address. That was back when he was middle-management and the GOP were in the minority, not when he’s the speaker barely holding together a low-single-digit margin on a constant precipice.
Johnson was a bit less decisive on his willingness to answer the question of whether Gonzales had denied the affair to him prior to this week. “I’m not going to get into private conversations. But I’ve told him to be forthright. Apparently now he’s doing that.” So yeah, Gonzales probably did deny it.