On Sunday’s State of the Union on CNN, House Speaker Mike Johnson didn’t just hold his ground—he schooled Jake Tapper on the indictment of former FBI Director James Comey. The exchange laid bare how the media continues to ignore the real principle at stake: accountability for high-ranking officials who lie under oath.
The left wing media spent years cheering every bogus indictment against Trump by his political enemies, yet, seems to think that Comey is above the law, and Jake Tapper was no exception.
“Let’s turn to the other big subject in the news here having to do with the indictment of former FBI Director James Comey,” he began, before launching into a hypothetical about presidential powers. “Just looking at the principle at stake here, if you can remove Comey and Trump out of the equation, as a constitutional attorney and the speaker of the House of Representatives, do you believe it’s acceptable for any president to publicly or privately instruct their attorney general to prosecute a political opponent and go as far as firing a U.S. attorney if they don’t bring charges because they don’t think the case is strong enough?”
Johnson didn’t flinch.
“I’m glad you brought up the principle. That is exactly what’s at issue here,” he said. “James Comey lied to Congress, Okay? He took an oath. He said things to Congress that were simply not true. It’s called perjury. A grand jury that is not—a nonpartisan, non-biased grand jury that was assembled—looked at the charges, and they agreed, they voted to bring an indictment of James Comey, not President Trump, not the DOJ, but a grand jury. That’s how our system works.”
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Johnson didn’t mince words about the importance of the rule of law. “It’s a very important principle for us to apply that everybody has to subscribe to the law, even a former FBI director," he said. "And he has lots to answer for. There are many things that he could have been indicted for, but the statute of limitations ran out on so many of those matters. Not here. Perjury is important. You can’t—especially if you’re a high official, appointed or elected official, you cannot raise your hand, take an oath, and lie to Congress. And that’s an important principle, a principle, Jake, for us to advance.”
Tapper, clearly suffering from amnesia because he has forgotten how Democrats openly advocated for Trump to be investigated, indicted, jailed, etc., seemed shocked (shocked!) that Trump has the audacity to express an opinion on going after Comey and other political figures who abused power and broke the law.
“This looks like it was directed by the president,” Tapper insisted.
Johnson didn’t back down, but he flipped the script. “I will take issue with that. I don’t think that’s what he did,” Johnson said. Then he unleashed a damning critique of the Biden-era DOJ: “But what I have cause with, Jake, is the total and utter weaponization of the Department of Justice. And Comey was a primary person responsible for that. They quite literally for four years under the Biden administration turned the entire apparatus of our judicial system against one person. His name is Donald Trump.”
Johnson didn’t stop there. He reminded viewers that Comey’s role in politicizing the Justice Department was unprecedented. “There’s never been a political figure in the history of the world who was so maligned and attacked—certainly not using the legal system of his country to go after him in the way that they did, every way possible," he explained. "You and I would need three hours of a program to go through all the ways that they did that. They weaponized the DOJ. And so that’s what Comey ultimately was the leader of and responsible for. He was one of the primary persons who did that.”
He brought it home with a clear-eyed assessment of Comey’s legal peril: “If he lied to Congress about what he knew and when he knew it, then that is a matter that transcends politics. I think he has to be tried for that. And I expect that the jury in that case will determine that that’s exactly what he did.”
CNN’s Jake Tapper: “As a constitutional attorney and the Speaker of the House of Representatives, do you believe it's acceptable for any president to publicly or privately instruct their Attorney General to prosecute a political opponent and go as far as firing a US attorney if… pic.twitter.com/8fE3Fk04pi
— RedWave Press (@RedWave_Press) September 28, 2025
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