Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) launched a blistering attack Tuesday against House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), accusing him of bowing to Democrats and undermining Trump-aligned Republicans by blocking her attempt to force transparency on FBI counterintelligence investigations into political candidates.
The feud began Monday when Stefanik took to X to slam Johnson, saying he was “getting rolled by House Dems” as they attempted to strip her provision from the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). Her proposal would require the FBI to notify Congress whenever it opens a counterintelligence probe into a presidential or federal candidate.
Stefanik has championed the measure for years in response to the FBI’s now-discredited “Crossfire Hurricane” investigation into the 2016 Trump campaign — an investigation later blasted by the DOJ inspector general for serious misconduct and political bias. She argues that transparency is essential to prevent the same abuses from happening again.
On Tuesday, Stefanik escalated her criticism, directly accusing Johnson of siding with Democrats, including far-left Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), against Trump supporters in Congress.
“Speaker Johnson is blocking my provision to root out the illegal weaponization that led to Crossfire Hurricane, Arctic Frost, and more,” Stefanik wrote. “He is siding with Jamie Raskin against Trump Republicans to block this provision to protect the deep state.”
She warned Johnson that the NDAA is “DOA unless this provision gets added in as it was passed out of committee,” signaling that a major showdown is looming inside the GOP.
Johnson fired back hours later, insisting Stefanik’s claims were completely inaccurate. “All of that is false,” he said, adding that he was unsure why Stefanik didn’t simply call him. “I texted her yesterday. She’s upset one of her provisions is not being made, I think, into the NDAA,” Johnson said. “I wrote her and said, ‘What are you talking about?’ This hasn’t even made it to my level.”
Stefanik — who recently announced she is running for governor of New York — quickly countered that Johnson’s denial was yet another attempt to dodge responsibility.
“Just more lies from the Speaker,” she said, confirming she had received the text message. “This is his preferred tactic to tell Members when he gets caught torpedoing the Republican agenda.”
She dismissed Johnson’s claim that the issue hadn’t reached his attention. “It wasn’t on your radar? This is the ONLY provision in the bill to root out the deep state rot,” she wrote.
The clash underscores mounting tensions inside the House GOP as Trump-aligned lawmakers demand aggressive action to dismantle what they see as entrenched anti-conservative bias inside federal agencies. Stefanik, one of Trump’s most vocal allies in Congress, has made rooting out “illegal weaponization” of government one of the central issues of her governorship campaign.
Johnson, meanwhile, is increasingly facing pressure from conservatives who accuse him of compromising with Democrats rather than imposing accountability on the federal bureaucracy.
With the NDAA deadline approaching, the fight between Stefanik and Johnson is poised to become a major test of Republican unity — and of whether the party will follow through on its pledge to rein in the FBI and confront the “deep state” once and for all.
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