House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) said Friday that Democrats will respond with swift legal action if Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) does not seat Rep.-elect Adelita Grijalva (D-Ariz.) on Friday.
Arizona’s Democratic Attorney General has already threatened to file such a case Grijalva against Johnson for refusing to administer the oath of office while the House is out of session during the ongoing government shutdown.
Jefferies suggested the trial move forward if Johnson does not seat Grijalva during a brief pro forma session of the House scheduled for 2 p.m. on Friday.
“This has been going on for several weeks now,” Jeffries told reporters at the Capitol. “And so it is my expectation that, if she is not sworn in today – during the pro forma session today – as the Arizona Attorney General has made clear, to expect swift and decisive legal action.”
Grijalva won a special election on Sept. 23 to replace his late father, Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.), who died in March after more than two decades in Congress. Johnson has said that she will not be sworn in until the entire House is summoned back to Washington to ensure that she gets the “pomp and atmosphere” of a traditional swearing-in ceremony.
“As I have said repeatedly, the House will follow traditional practice by swearing in Representative-elect Grijalva when the House is in legislative session,” Johnson said this week.
Yet there is a recent precedent for administering oath to newly elected House members when Congress is not in town. Johnson sat down two Florida Republicans during a pro forma session in April, a day after winning the special election.
The speaker said he made an exception in those cases because the lawmakers had families in Washington. Democrats don’t buy that argument, saying Johnson is delaying Grijalva’s swearing-in because she promised to. decisive 218th signature On a discharge petition to force a vote on legislation to release government files related to late child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
“It is shameful that he was not sworn in because Speaker Johnson and House Republicans clearly want to continue hiding the Jeffrey Epstein files from the American people,” Jeffries said Friday.
Johnson opposed the Epstein bill, arguing that a better way to investigate his case was through the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, which is conducting its own investigation. But the speaker has denied the allegation that his refusal to swear in Grijalva is at all related to Epstein.
On Tuesday, Chris Mayes, Arizona’s attorney general, wrote a letter to Johnson warning that his office was considering all legal options in an effort to impeach Grijalva as quickly as possible. He said the delay is unconstitutional.
“The effect of your failure to follow normal practice is that Arizona has fallen one delegate short of the number to which it is constitutionally entitled,” Mayes wrote. “And more than 813,000 residents of Arizona’s Seventh Congressional District currently have no representation in Congress.”
