It's a campaign he orchestrated in the days after his May 31 conviction on 34 felony counts in New York, starting with a phone call to the man he wanted to lead it: Speaker MIKE JOHNSON. Trump was still angry when he made the call, according to those who have heard accounts of it from Johnson, dropping frequent F-bombs as he spoke with the soft-spoken and pious GOP leader.
Johnson sympathized with Trump's frustration. He'd been among the first batch of Republican lawmakers to appear alongside Trump at the Manhattan trial. He'd been harping on DA ALVIN BRAGG's case and the alleged broader abuse of the justice system since before he took the gavel. The speaker didn't really need to be convinced, one person familiar with the conversation said: Johnson, a former attorney himself, already believed the House had a role to play in addressing Trump's predicament.
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