Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes (D) is threatening to sue House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) for refusing to swear in Rep.-elect Adelita Grijalva (D-Ariz) to the House.
During an appearance on CNN, Mayes accused Speaker Johnson of holding the state “hostage” to avoid releasing government files related to the late child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.
“I really think that we are going to have no other choice, Laura, except to take Speaker Johnson to court if he refuses to respond to us, if he doesn’t quickly swear in Adelita Grijalva, again depriving her of the ability to help her constituents,” said Mayes:
We’ve had some flooding out here in Arizona. She has no way to help those people in southern Arizona who have been impacted by that flooding. So many other things that she can and should be doing as an elected member of Congress, and so if I have to, I’ll take him to court. You know, again, there’s no legitimate reason for him to refuse to swear her in right now. No other reason that I can think of except that perhaps she’s the final vote to discharge the Epstein files, and it’s not fair for Mike Johnson to be holding the state of Arizona hostage because he doesn’t wanna release the Epstein files.
Mayes is still waiting to be sworn in, nearly a month after she was elected to the House in a special election to succeed her father, Raul Grijalva, who passed away in office earlier this year. (RELATED: Congressman Raúl Grijalva Dies At 77 After Battle with Cancer)
While the representative-elect was given the keys to her congressional office on Tuesday, she quickly discovered there were no working phone lines, internet, or computers.
In a letter to Johnson on Tuesday, Mayes demanded that Grijalva “be allowed to assume her seat without further delay,” or face “prompt legal action.”
“You and your staff have provided ever-shifting, unsatisfactory, and sometimes absurd stories as to why Ms. Grijalva has not been sworn in,” she wrote. “We thus demand that Ms. Grijalva be immediately sworn into office and admitted to her rightful seat. We ask that within two days of the date of this letter, you provide this Office with your assurance of when and where that will take place, which must be immediate and prior to the date the House comes back into regular session. Should you fail to provide such assurance, we will be forced to seek judicial relief to protect Arizona and the residents of its Seventh Congressional District.”
Read the full letter below:
Speaker Johnson has canceled weeks of previously scheduled votes and kept the House in recess amid the government shutdown as he aims to pressure Senate Democrats into accepting the GOP-crafted, House-passed “clean” stopgap bill to fund the government through Nov. 21.
He has declined to swear Grijalva in during the brief “pro forma” sessions that the chamber holds for constitutional appointment reasons, and he has said he will swear in Grijalva when the House is back in regular session.
“As I have said repeatedly, the House will follow customary practice by swearing in Rep-elect Grijalva when the House is in legislative session,” Johnson said in a statement.
NO Your damn shutdown ruins ALL OK
Pretty sure you mean Grijalva……..
“Mayes is still waiting to be sworn in, nearly a month after she was elected to the House in a special election to succeed her father, Raul Grijalva, who passed away in office earlier this year. (RELATED: Congressman Raúl Grijalva Dies At 77 After Battle with Cancer)”
Her purpose for him denying the swearing in is faulty in that a dumbo installed judge is blocking the (alleged) Epstein list. His response that normally they are sworn when they are actually at work holds water. The dumbrats are holding the government hostage with just another ploy to waste our tax money to better their position, fock the country (as usual).