Last month, Mike Johnson suffered from a rare outbreak of candor, consistency, and principle. Asked if he was prepared to defund the office of Special Counsel Jack Smith, who is prosecuting Donald Trump, the House Speaker declared simply: “No.” This tactic, he said, would be an affront to the crucial institutional role of special counsels, which he defended in careful, legalistic language.

That was before Trump was convicted in Manhattan by a jury of his peers. The MAGA rage that this verdict has unleashed is sweeping away any such niceties, requiring all Republicans in good standing to show absolute fealty to the noble cause of keeping Trump above the law at all costs.

The result? This week, Johnson announced a broad new effort to use the House’s institutional power to target the Department of Justice and the prosecutions of Trump including via the appropriations process. Johnson also expressly declared that the House will “look at” Smith’s “funding streams.”

Meanwhile, at a press conference Tuesday, Johnson offered a wild-eyed, up-is-down defense of Trump, falsely depicting him as the victim of out-of-control law enforcement, and declaring the American people are in full-scale revolt about it, which is a shameless lie. Take all this together, and it’s clear Johnson calculates he must at minimum be perceived as maximally wielding the levers of institutional power to negate the application of the law to Trump in every way possible.

So what will this defund-Smith effort look like? It’s hard to say without legislative text, which will be forthcoming soon, but Democratic aides expect it to track closely with recent........

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