House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) defended JD Vance’s claim that a president can defy court rulings if he does not agree with them.
After a federal judge temporarily blocked Elon Musk from accessing sensitive taxpayer data at the Treasury Department, Vance said in a post on social media that judges “aren’t allowed to control” the executive branch.
“If a judge tried to tell a general how to conduct a military operation, that would be illegal. If a judge tried to command the attorney general in how to use her discretion as a prosecutor, that’s also illegal. Judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power,” he wrote in a post on X.
Pressed on Vance’s remarks at a press conference on Tuesday, Johnson said that he “wholeheartedly” agree.
“Of course the branches have to respect our constitutional order but there’s a lot of game yet to be played. This will be appealed, we’ve got to go through the whole process, and we’ll get the final analysis. In the interim, I will say that I agree wholeheartedly with Vice President JD Vance, my friend, because he’s right,” Johnson said in a clip highlighted by Mediaite.
Johnson added that Elon Musk’s DOGE was chosen by Trump to cut spending because the elected lawmakers in Congress have been unable to do so.
“I met with Elon yesterday about this to get an update and to me it’s very exciting what they’re able to do because what Elon and the DOGE effort is doing right now is what Congress has been unable to do in recent years because the agencies have hidden some of this from us,” he added.
