Conservative former Justice Department prosecutor Gregg Nunziata — who served as policy counsel to the Senate Republican Policy Committee, and later as general counsel and domestic policy adviser to Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) — slammed House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) for saying Democrats’ motivation for opposing the SAVE Act is that “they count on cheating. They count on illegals voting.”
While it is illegal for undocumented immigrants to vote in federal elections, President Trump and many other Republicans continue to claim that vast numbers of non-U.S. citizens could influence future presidential elections, though findings from the nonprofit Center for Election Innovation and Research show “noncitizen voting occasionally happens but in minuscule numbers, and not in any coordinated way.”
[NOTE: The CEIR report says “sweeping allegations about noncitizen registrations or voting appear to arise from misunderstandings, mischaracterizations, or outright fabrications about complex voter data.”]
When MAGA-aligned U.S. Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) amplified Johnson’s comments on social media (see below), Nunziata replied: “This is just a grotesque lie that does great damage to our country. You can support the SAVE America Act (you’d be wrong) without pretending that dissenters are disingenuous cheaters.”
This is just a grotesque lie that does great damage to our country. You can support the SAVE America Act (you’d be wrong) without pretending that dissenters are disingenuous cheaters.
I’m constantly told that @SpeakerJohnson and @BasedMikeLee are sincere Christians who take… https://t.co/cQJkSlzkZ2
— Gregg Nunziata (@greggnunziata) April 9, 2026
Nunziata added: “I’m constantly told that @SpeakerJohnson and @BasedMikeLee are sincere Christians who take their duties of stewardship seriously, but the evidence suggests otherwise.”
He added: “There are a lot of bad actors on the political scene, in both parties, but @SpeakerJohnson deserves special criticism. It’s hard to think of a person who has so completely abdicated a crucial role, while spewing constant, corrosive, untruths.”
Nunziata added: “I’m for voter ID. I’ll even cop to being for making it harder to vote. But the campaign for the SAVE America act is thoroughly dishonest, corrosive to our democracy, and servile to a president that has tried to steal elections. Shame.”