Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) on Tuesday denounced the alleged death threat against House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) by a man who was previously convicted of crimes related to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.
But the Speaker did not condemn President Trump’s move to pardon the suspect, along with hundreds of others, earlier in the year.
“I don’t know any of the details of this at all. I don’t know who’s been alleged to have been involved in this,” Johnson told reporters in the Capitol. “I will say that anybody — anybody — who threatens political violence against elected officials or anyone else should have the full weight and measure of the Department of Justice on their head.
“I trust that that will happen — I hope it will,” he added. “We are intellectually consistent about that, obviously.”
Over the weekend, law enforcement in New York arrested Christopher Moynihan, a 34-year-old resident of Clinton, N.Y., on charges of sending texts in which he threatened to kill Jeffries during an appearance in New York City.
“Hakeem Jeffries makes a speech in a few days in NYC I cannot allow this terrorist to live,” the texts read, according to the charging complaint filed in New York state court. “Even if I am hated he must be eliminated. … I will kill him for the future.”
Moynihan was charged with making a terrorist threat, a felony, and is scheduled to appear in court Thursday.
He was among the hundreds of Trump supporters who stormed into the Capitol on Jan. 6 in a failed effort to keep Trump in office despite his 2020 election defeat. Moynihan was convicted of charges that included the obstruction of an official federal proceeding, and was sentenced in February 2023 to 21 months in prison.
Trump, on the first day of his second term, pardoned Moynihan along with more than 1,500 other people who were convicted of crimes related to the Capitol rampage. The blanket pardon has belied the Republicans’ claims to be the party of law and order, and Democrats — who were outraged by the pardons at the time — are now pointing to Moynihan’s alleged threat as evidence that Trump’s move has threatened public safety.
“Since the blanket pardon that occurred earlier this year, many of the criminals released have committed additional crimes throughout the country,” Jeffries said in a statement Tuesday. “Unfortunately, our brave men and women in law enforcement are being forced to spend their time keeping our communities safe from these violent individuals who should never have been pardoned.”
The threat arrived as the scourge of political violence has been a frequently recurring topic in Washington, fueled by the attempted assassination of Trump on the campaign trail last year and, more recently, by the assassination of Charlie Kirk, a conservative activist, at an outdoor event in Utah last month.
Johnson, asked about the wisdom of Trump’s pardons, declined to weigh in. The Speaker instead condemned political violence in all its forms, while accusing the left of being the instigator of most political violence in the country.
“The violence on the left is far more prevalent than violence on the right. Don’t make me go through the list. You all know it,” Johnson said. “All of these assassination [attempts] — the assassination culture that’s been advanced now — this is the left, in almost every case, that is advancing this and not the right. So let’s not make it a partisan issue.”
For years, the Department of Justice had tracked violence based on political ideology and posted its findings on its website. The most recent version of the study found that, beginning in 1990, far-right extremists were responsible for 520 homicides driven by ideology, versus 78 committed by far-left extremists.
The DOJ recently removed the study from its website.