Fox News chief congressional correspondent Chad Pergram pressed House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) on whether he’s “concerned” about allegations against Rep. Cory Mills (R-FL) amid multiple Democrats resigning from Congress under clouds of controversy.
“Why wouldn’t you do something against Mr. Mills?” Pergram asked Johnson, after noting that a House Ethics panel was weighing sanctions against Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick before she resigned from Congress.
Cherfilus-McCormick was found guilty of 25 out of 27 ethics violations for embezzling millions of dollars. The Department of Justice in November charged Cherfilus-McCormick, her brother, and others with stealing COVID relief funds and campaign violations. She’s denied all wrongdoing.
Eric Swalwell also recently resigned from Congress and dropped from the California gubernatorial race after facing multiple accusations of sexual misconduct, including rape and drugging.
“These are all individual cases. That would be absurd,” Johnson told Pergram after being asked about the lack of effort to remove the representative.
Mills is being investigated by the House Ethics Committee over allegations of “sexual misconduct and/or dating violence,” as well as campaign finance violations. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) introduced a resolution on Monday to expel Mills from Congress.
According to a report from The Washington Post, police wanted to arrest Mills last year over the alleged assault of a woman. Body camera footage and documents revealed that a lieutenant ordered officers not to arrest Mills after his accuser changed her story after speaking to Mills. The congressman has denied all wrongdoing.
Johnson stressed that Mills deserves his “due process.”
He said:
We are always concerned when allegations of inappropriate behavior and certainly sexual misconduct are made against members. If you talk to Representative Mills, and he’s entitled to do that, he has said that all of these allegations are untrue. He is working through that. There is a due process that he is allowed and they’re going through that process as have all the other members. It took Sheriff Alissa McCormick, it took over two years for them to work through that in a deliberative fashion so we support that process [and] we don’t prejudge anything. I can decry how horrific allegations are but until they’re proven, they’re only allegations.
Pegram then asked Johnson if he’s been “approached” by House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) about Mills.
“Have you not been approached by Mr. Jefferies? No conversation between the two sides, one for one, nothing like that?” he asked.
“No, it would be totally unjust and a violation of the due process that I’m describing to you for party leaders to get together and say, hey, one for one, we’ll kick one out, you kick one out. That’s not how this works. Each one of these cases had to be evaluated under its individual merits. And that’s what we’ll do here,” Johnson said.
The speaker did not answer CNN’s Manu Raju when asked whether he would support Mills’s reelection campaign.
Johnson said Mills is “cooperating” and wants to prove his innocence.
“My understanding is Representative Mills is cooperating, unlike Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick. I would expect that the outcome would be much sooner,” he said. “So he’s very upset about some of the allegations that have been made. He says that he wants to prove his innocence, and he has the opportunity to do that.”
Watch above via CSPAN.
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