Yesterday, End Citizens United (ECU) filed a complaint with the Office of Congressional Ethics against Speaker Mike Johnson for repeated financial disclosure violations. The complaint alleges Speaker Johnson failed to report trips he took that were paid for by private entities, sources of his spouse’s earned income, and his spouse’s interest in an LLC she owns, as well as potentially failing to disclose reportable honoraria received by his spouse, and reportable bank accounts and retirement assets.
As Speaker of the House, Johnson has a legal obligation to be transparent with his finances, but has instead chosen to keep the American public in the dark with his sparse financial records.
Daily Beast: Mike Johnson’s Shady Finances Are Already Coming Back to Bite Him
Roger Sollenberger
11/13/23
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When newly minted Republican Speaker of the House Mike Johnson was asked on Fox News last week about why he had never reported having a bank account, Johnson didn’t offer an explanation. Instead, he hammered the point that, as “a man of modest means,” he understood the plight of normal Americans.
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The Daily Beast looked at a variety of records related to Johnson’s finances stretching back more than a decade. And that review not only undercuts Johnson’s suggestions of relatability; it also reveals irregularities in his financial disclosures and public statements about his professional life, finances, and biography.
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A number of these findings also appear in a new ethics complaint from left-leaning nonprofit and transparency advocacy group End Citizens United. That complaint, which was filed with the House Ethics Committee on Monday, lays out multiple potential violations in Johnson’s financial disclosures, including undisclosed gifts and blind spots in his spouse’s income. The Daily Beast has uncovered other inconsistencies about her income, along with new irregularities regarding the source and timing of Johnson’s own earnings as a lawyer for right-wing causes. He has also filed contradictory financial statements about those earnings.
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Tiffany Muller, president of End Citizens United, provided a statement calling it “laughable” that Johnson doesn’t report any savings or retirement accounts, alleging the new Speaker’s murky disclosures are “clearly violating federal laws.”
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“The American people deserve to know whether the Speaker of the House has financial conflicts of interests, but Speaker Johnson is clearly violating federal laws by hiding critical information from the public,” Muller said. “It’s laughable to believe that the person leading government funding negotiations doesn’t have a reportable savings or retirement account. But beyond his own potential financial mismanagement, failing to disclose travel and his spouse’s sources of income is against the law and the Office of Congressional Ethics must investigate and hold him accountable.”
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[…] according to the End Citizens United complaint, some violations appear cut and dried.
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For instance, Johnson did not report gift travel on two financial disclosures, as required. In 2020, Johnson and his wife received an $18,000 all-expenses paid trip to Israel, staying at a five-star hotel on the dime of the 12 Tribes Film Foundation. And in 2022, Johnson spoke at a religious conference in Kentucky, an April Fool’s Day trip covered by the fundamentalist Christian group Answers in Genesis. (Johnson once represented that religious group in a lawsuit.)
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Johnson disclosed those gifts to House Ethics officials, as required. But when those officials approved the trips, they sent letters reminding Johnson that he needed to include the gifts on his financial disclosure that year. In both cases, he failed to report them on his annual disclosures.
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A third trip—where Johnson addressed a secretive and highly influential right-wing organization, previously reported by The Daily Beast—was never disclosed at all.
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As the End Citizens United complaint notes, Johnson received gift travel to speak at an Answers in Genesis conference in 2022, but did not list it on his financial disclosure.
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Most of the violations named in the End Citizens United complaint involve Johnson’s wife, Kelly Johnson, and The Daily Beast has independently uncovered additional irregularities.
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The complaint notes that Johnson’s disclosures sometimes appear to omit sources of his wife’s income, in violation of ethics rules. The complaint also alleges that Johnson omitted his wife’s stake in her private company, another potential violation.
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“If Speaker Johnson’s wife’s interest in the Company is valued at more than $1,000 or generated more than $200 in unearned income, he is required to disclose that interest on his PFDs,” the ECU complaint says, noting that Johnson has never disclosed her interest in this entity, and “has never reported a single asset held by his spouse in any of the eight reports he has filed.”
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The suggestion that she has earned money for speaking through her private company raises ethics concerns, according to the End Citizens United complaint. Congressional filers must disclose the source, type, and amount of their spouse’s “honoraria”—including speaking fees—if it totaled $200 or more in a year. But Mike Johnson has never disclosed honoraria payments to his wife.
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“Together, these statements strongly suggest that the Speaker’s wife has received reportable payments for her speaking engagements and thus, Speaker Johnson should have reported those payments as honoraria,” the complaint states.
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ECU also noted that if Kelly Johnson’s stake in her company is greater than $1,000 and earns her more than $200 annually, that stake must be disclosed. But the LLC doesn’t appear on any of Mike Johnson’s disclosures. While it’s possible that the LLC income is listed as her self-employment, that would indicate she had no income at all from the company in 2022. It might also overlap and conflict with the nonprofit’s own statements about her income.
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