photo #8453405

Speaker Mike Johnson Declares No Concern Over Possible Obama Testimony Amid Controversy Surrounding Russian Collusion Hoax**Reporter:** What Tulsi Gabbard has done, the DNI chief, in essence, declassifying hundreds of documents that seem to suggest that manufactured intelligence was at play here with the Obama administration regarding this Russian collusion hoax. I've heard Stephen Miller call it a seditious conspiracy; I've heard Tulsi Gabbard call it a treasonous conspiracy. You're a constitutional guy, what do you see in this exactly? How do you term it?**Speaker Johnson:** Well, I don't know how to summarize it by way of description in a snappy phrase, but I will tell you it is deeply problematic. And I was... before I became Speaker of the House, I served on the House Judiciary Committee, which had jurisdiction over a lot of this. And we knew what was happening; we knew intuitively, and we were gathering the evidence as we were investigating all of this ourselves. We knew the Russia collusion thing was a hoax; they used it as a basis to attack the president mercilessly. I served on his impeachment defense teams twice—that would be unheard of in history, that a president would be impeached twice on such spurious claims. But in those processes, as we were preparing for those defenses, as we were investigating with our oversight responsibility in Judiciary, we recognized that the people who are being called out now were involved in a scheme. We knew it was a shameless, false set of accusations. And yet, they perpetuated the lie on the American people, and they looked right into the camera and just lied, clearly. And they knew what they were up to the whole time. So, there must be accountability for that, because what it does ultimately—the greatest threat of all this—is not just what they've done to President Trump as an individual; it's what they're doing to the institutions, even broader than that. They have diminished the people's faith in our system of justice itself, in the institution of the Department of Justice and the institution of the FBI. Those are critical functions that are played in a constitutional republic, and so we're in the process of restoring trust and rebuilding the people's belief in our system of justice itself. And it's an extraordinary challenge that was brought about because people were involved in a sinister plot. And so there must be accountability.**Reporter:** You say there must be accountability. The DOJ will work on the criminal aspect of this. What's the role of the House here specifically? I mean, people want to see subpoenas; they want to see depositions; they want to see whether it be Brennan, Clapper, potentially the former President of the United States. Are you willing to go down that route? Because a lot of people want to see some of these folks questioned under oath.**Speaker Johnson:** Of course. Look, I think we have a responsibility to follow the truth where it leads and to do it in an unbiased fashion, to do the—effectively—the opposite of what that other team did. They were engaged in a partisan political plot to take down their foe in the other party. We need to be about the rule of law and bringing order to the chaos and searching out the truth, because the American people are owed those answers. So we have some very bright, very capable, very strong leaders at Judiciary and Oversight, you know, Chairman Jim Jordan, Chairman James Comer, and the other committees that would be involved. And I do expect that whether there's a special counsel appointed—which some are suggesting—or in conjunction with the House investigations, that we will get the answers and there will be accountability to the extent that we're able to do that, referring people to the DOJ for prosecution and any other measure that is appropriate as we begin to uncover more of the facts.**Reporter:** Does it get tricky at all with the former President, President Obama, looking at what his role in this is and bringing him in for some sort of deposition, potential subpoena?**Speaker Johnson:** Well, listen, I mean, we have no concern about that. If it's uncomfortable for him, he shouldn't have been involved in overseeing this, which is what it appears to us has happened. There's a lot of allegations on the table; our job is to go and follow each of those trails and to find out the truth. So those are very serious allegations with very serious implications, but we're going to have very serious people working on it, and we will get the answers.https://www.facebook.com/share/p/14FtY9kjAKu/