Mike Johnson’s legal background includes representing 'extreme' militant movements — 'often for free'

In contrast to MAGA firebrands like Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia) and Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Florida), House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) isn't known for being abrasive, brash or flamboyant. Johnson has even been described as "soft-spoken," but that doesn't make him a moderate.

After Johnson's confirmation as speaker, many articles took a close look at his far-right Christian nationalist views — which he has promoted as both a politician and a lawyer.

Johnson's legal background is the focus of a Daily Beast report published on December 5.

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According to reporters Roger Sollenberger, Riley Rogerson and Sam Brodey, Johnson hasn't been shy about representing extremists as an attorney — including Christian nationalists who openly promoted violence.

"Johnson's ardent religious beliefs and Christian nationalist ideology brought him to serve, often for free, clients affiliated with some of the nation’s most extreme anti-abortion and anti-LGBTQ groups in the country — including agitators connected to militant movements with a penchant for violent expression," the journalists explain. "The Daily Beast's review turned up one former Johnson client who said the government 'should be a terror' to abortion providers and the LGBTQ community, another who opposed the condemnation of domestic terrorist attacks on abortion clinics, and another client who went on to record himself endorsing the hanging of government officials while in the thick of the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol."

One of Johnson's clients, according to the reporters, was anti-gay activist Grant E. Storms.

Sollenberger, Rogerson and Brodey report, "According to Storms, it was Johnson specifically who persuaded New Orleans officials to grant a permit for his 2003 demonstration against that year’s Southern Decadence festival, the city's annual Labor Day Bacchanal celebrating gay culture, known locally as 'gay Mardi Gras'…. The event was marred by violence, when an anti-gay assailant attempted to murder a man with a five-inch steak knife. Storms denied that the attacker was a member of his organization, Christian Conservatives for Reform. But Storms himself was charged with battery in a separate event that weekend, after getting into a pushing match with a security guard who refused to let him record video inside a nightclub."

READ MORE: Mike Johnson says separation of church and state is a 'misnomer'

Read the Daily Beast's full report at this link (subscription required).