Speaking in a press conference regarding how he will handle the three Democratic members of the House of Represenatives who stormed the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility in Newark, New Jersey, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson said they will likely be stripped of their committee assignments and might even be expelled from Congress.
As background, three Democrats stormed the Delaney Hall Detention Center in Newark, with one of them even caught on camera assaulting federal agents, on Friday, May 9. Since then, much controversy has swirled about how to deal with them, with everything from arrest to expulsion from Congress on the table.
It was in that context that Speaker Johnson addressed the matter on Wednesday, May 14, during a press conference. When asked about how to deal with the members of Congress who stormed the facility, he began by saying, “Well, look, there’s three possible disciplinary actions that Congress, the House can take.”
Continuing, he noted that one option is to kick them off of their committee assignments, indicating as he explained it that he thinks doing so would be appropriate. He said, “Okay, you can, since you’re a member, and [this] probably does seem appropriate here, you can kick them off committees. That’s a new tradition begun by the Democrats in recent years.”
Building on that, Speaker Johnson noted that expelling them from Congress is also on the table, if unlikely, given that it requires a 2/3 vote from Congress, which is unlikely to be forthcoming given the small margin of control Republicans have. He said, “And you can expel someone from Congress. Now, expulsion requires a two-thirds vote. That’s not likely because the margins are small on both sides.”
Adding to that, however, he noted that the Repulbican leadership in the House is still considering what move would be appropriate, but is cognizant of the fact that the three Democrats clearly violated the law. He said, “But you know, we’re looking at what is appropriate. Look, I think, I think it’s pretty clear that the law was violated.”
Changing subjects a bit, he noted that a woke judge was just arrested and faces significant consequences for trying to hide an illegal alien, saying, “You might have noticed the Wisconsin judge that was trying to conceal the illegal alien that was going to be apprehended by ICE a federal grand jury indicted the judge, I think that was late yesterday, and I’m told that she’ll be brought up on charges, maybe facing potentially six years in jail and $350,000 in fines because she obstructed the proceedings, obstruct justice and and was engaged in other activities.”
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Concluding, noting that such criminal penalties are the third option and returning to the matter of expulsion, he said, ” So, look, this, what, what these House Democrats did is in that extent, that same lane, the same vein of what the judge is being indicted for. So I think there’s some I think there’s some legal ramifications to play out here, and we’ll see how many expulsion on the table. We’re talking through all the possibilities.”
Watch him here:
Featured image credit: screengrab from the embedded video