Speaker Johnson will meet with Trump as the Republican House leader fights for his job

WASHINGTON (AP) — House Speaker Mike Johnson will meet on Friday with Donald Trump for a press conference on election integrity at the presumed Republican presidential nominee’s Mar-a-Lago club, a Trump campaign official said.

The joint appearance comes as the embattled Johnson is fighting for his job as House speaker in the face of a threat of ouster from hard-line Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a top Trump ally.

Johnson, of Louisiana, told GOP lawmakers at a private meeting early Tuesday he had spoken with Trump the night before, but he shared no details of their talk.

Another person familiar with the planning said Johnson and Trump will have a “joint announcement” on Friday but provided no other details.

The new Republican speaker, once skeptical of Trump, became a key supporter. He led one of the main legal challenges to the 2020 election in the run-up to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by the mob of Trump’s supporters trying to stop certification of Democrat Joe Biden’s victory over him.

Since becoming the House speaker, after the ouster last fall of Kevin McCarthy, Johnson has tried to keep a close relationship with Trump. The two speak regularly as Johnson works to keep critics at bay.

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The issue of election integrity has been an obsession for Trump since he lost the 2020 election, even though elections are broadly secure and every state in the union certified its 2020 results that were sent to Congress.

Greene met with Johnson at the Capitol on Tuesday as she works to force a snap election to remove him from office.

Johnson offered to give her a spot on a proposed “kitchen cabinet” of advisers to the speaker, Greene said as she left the nearly hourlong session, but she said she was more interested in how he handles several issues before Congress, particularly aid for Ukraine, which she opposes. She has not publicly discussed when she may bring up the motion to vacate and told reporters she does not yet have a “red line” for bringing up the action.

Johnson’s planned meeting with Trump was first reported on CNN.