Following End Citizens United’s (ECU) previous complaint and reporting by the Daily Beast, ECU filed a supplemental complaint calling for an investigation by the Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE) into Speaker Mike Johnson for several additional violations related to his personal financial disclosures (PFDs). The complaint alleges he failed to report his spouses’ earned income, his travel, and the debts owed to him.
“The more you dig into Speaker Johnson’s finances, the more questions you get than answers. It all comes back to the central question: what is he trying to hide?” said Tiffany Muller, President of End Citizens United. “The Office of Congressional Ethics must investigate his repeated apparent offenses and hold him accountable—the American people deserve nothing less.”
The violations:
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Speaker Johnson failed to report Louisiana Right to Life as a source of his spouse’s income on three separate PFDs.
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By law, filers are required to report the source and type of their spouses’ income that aggregated over $1,000. As reported by the Daily Beast, his wife joined the Louisiana Right to Life staff as their North Louisiana Director in August of 2018.
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Despite her role, Speaker Johnson did not include Louisiana Right to Life as a source of income for his spouse until 2021, three years after she started in 2018.
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His failure to properly report his family’s income barred his constituents from important information about his finances.
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When accepting officially-connected travel paid for or reimbursed by a private entity that exceeds the statutory threshold, House Members are required to file two separate reports. In 2019, that threshold was $390. Members must obtain approval from the Ethic Committee in advance of accepting travel and then they are required to disclose the travel on their annual PFDs.
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In 2019, Speaker Johnson delivered the keynote address at the Council for National Policy’s conference in New Orleans. He did not obtain advance approval of any privately sponsored travel for the event from the House Ethics Committee nor did he disclose the travel on his 2019 PFD. Although it’s possible Speaker Johnson paid for the trip personally or with his campaign funds, recent reporting strongly suggests that is not the case, as the Council for National Policy has a history of paying the travel expenses when Members of Congress attend its events.
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It is instead much more likely that Speaker Johnson received reportable gift travel and failed to disclose the expenses as required. Given the costs of travel, renting a hotel room, and a likely substantial registration fee, the expenses more than likely were well above the statutory threshold of $390.
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If this trip was gifted to Speaker Johnson, he blatantly violated federal law by not seeking advance approval of the trip and by not disclosing the travel on his 2019 PFDs.
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When filing financial reports, members of Congress are required to disclose debts owed to the filer, if they are owed more than $1,000 by anyone other than a close family member and are charging interest on the debt. When reporting these debts, the filer must disclose the name of the person or entity, their city and state of residence, the value of the debt, and the value of the interest received.
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In 2017, Speaker Johnson reported a debt owed to him of up to $50,000 and listed the debt as an “attorney fee award earned in 2016.”
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He failed to disclose the name of the person or entity that owed him the debt as well as the city and state of their residence. He also completely failed to disclose the existence of the debt on his 2016 report, despite the fact that the fee was earned in 2016.
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If the debt owed was a reportable asset, his failure to properly disclose the required information is a direct example of Speaker Johnson attempting to hide his financial interests from the public.
Click HERE to read the complaint.
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