This blog originally appeared at Daily Beast.

Speaker Mike Johnson has previously represented individuals with troubling views, including one who expressed support for killing gay people and another who advocated for the government to be a terror to the LGBTQ community.

Speaker Mike Johnson has downplayed his pre-Congress career, presenting himself as a modest constitutional lawyer advocating for conservative Christian causes.

“I’m deeply thankful for the ministry and your steadfastness,” Johnson expressed in August, responding to the commendations from evangelical figure Jim Garlow. “It provides tremendous encouragement for me and others laboring in these occasionally challenging areas of the Lord’s vineyard.”

While Johnson might have been expressing dissatisfaction with Congress, an examination of the new speaker’s past clients sheds light on the challenging nature of some of those corners in his legal career.

Johnson’s fervent religious convictions and Christian nationalist ideology led him to offer his legal services, frequently pro bono, to clients associated with some of the country’s most radical anti-abortion and anti-LGBTQ organizations, including individuals linked to militant movements with a tendency for violent expression.

A scrutiny by The Daily Beast uncovered one of Johnson’s past clients who advocated that the government “should be a terror” to abortion providers and the LGBTQ community. Another client opposed condemning domestic terrorist attacks on abortion clinics, while yet another client recorded himself endorsing the hanging of government officials during the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

The said former client currently heads a militant organization associated with a notorious incident in the anti-abortion movement, involving the 2009 murder of a Kansas abortion doctor. Moreover, this plaintiff’s father sought Johnson’s assistance in 2003 to obtain a permit for an anti-LGBTQ protest, which eventually resulted in the attempted stabbing of a gay man.

In that instance, Johnson’s client, Grant E. Storms, an anti-gay activist and former radical Christian preacher, gained national attention in 2012 when he admitted to engaging in inappropriate behavior in his van near a playground in Metairie, Louisiana. Storms faced charges of indecent exposure and received a three-year probation sentence.

While Johnson didn’t handle Storms’ criminal case, Storms revealed in an interview with The Daily Beast that Johnson had provided extensive legal services for him during the early to mid-2000s, and all of these services were offered pro bono. Storms considered Johnson a friend.

“We were comrades on the journey,” Storms said. “He consistently supported us.”

In all instances, Johnson indeed supported them. Though his fervent anti-abortion and anti-LGBTQ positions remained largely unnoticed nationally for years, they gained attention after he assumed the speaker’s position in October. Johnson has referred to abortion as “a holocaust,” expressed support for criminalizing gay sex, and openly emphasized his Christian nationalist affiliations, stating on Fox News that his beliefs on “any issue under the sun” are guided by the Bible.

The Daily Beast submitted a comprehensive comment request to Johnson’s office, seeking clarification on his perspectives regarding specific former clients and their actions or affiliations. In response, a spokesperson from the speaker’s office provided a statement underscoring a fundamental aspect of the attorney-client relationship.

“After practicing law for more than 20 years, Johnson has defended the First Amendment rights of numerous clients. It’s essential to recognize that representing a client in a First Amendment dispute doesn’t imply an endorsement of everything the client has said or done before or after a case,” stated the spokesperson in response to The Daily Beast’s inquiry.

“Attorneys are not held responsible for their clients’ actions or choices, especially after their legal relationship ends. However, Johnson consistently chose to represent clients and causes, often pro bono, that aligned with his ideological stance. While he could argue these cases on a First Amendment basis, Johnson frequently took on clients with anti-gay and anti-abortion positions, similar to his openly held views. His clients’ use of violent rhetoric didn’t seem to deter Johnson at the time, and he has not taken the opportunity to condemn their actions, words, or involvement in the insurrection,” responded the spokesperson.

The spokesperson did not respond to a follow-up inquiry about whether Johnson would provide comments on the specific details in this report.

This examination of Johnson’s legal career highlights the need for further exploration into his past and the extent of his involvement with some of the nation’s most militant religious movements.

Grant Storms informed The Daily Beast that his initial connection with Johnson occurred in the early 2000s through Alliance Defending Freedom, a prominent activist group striving to institutionalize conservative Christian principles in legislation.

ADF presents itself as a charitable organization committed to safeguarding religious freedom; however, it has embarked on a worldwide campaign to undermine LGBTQ and abortion rights. Following law school, Johnson joined ADF and served there for almost a decade as a lawyer and spokesperson.

Storms remembered reaching out to Johnson to seek assistance in removing what he deemed “indecent” imagery from an advertisement he saw at a bus station, claiming it depicted men engaging in sexual activity. At that time, Storms was a prominent figure in Louisiana, known for his fervent Christian activism. Johnson offered his pro bono support for various legal issues Storms faced, one of which gained national attention and resulted in a hate crime.

Storms claimed that Johnson played a key role in securing a permit for his 2003 protest against the Southern Decadence festival, an annual celebration of gay culture in New Orleans. Storms, known for influencing the passage of stricter decency laws in Louisiana, gained national attention for providing lawmakers with videos he personally recorded of men engaging in public sex. He asserted that both local officials and the Department of Homeland Security were initially opposed to his demonstration, but Johnson helped overcome these objections.

The Associated Press extensively reported on the protest, which unfortunately turned violent when an assailant, unrelated to Christian Conservatives for Reform, attempted to murder a man with a five-inch steak knife. Storms faced charges of battery in a separate incident that weekend, involving a pushing match with a nightclub security guard who denied him permission to record video inside the establishment.

In a recorded confession, the assailant confirmed his intent to attend Storms’ event with the purpose of killing a gay man, as stated by the police. However, it remained unclear whether the victim he targeted was actually gay. The assailant faced charges of attempted first-degree murder and a felony hate crime but passed away before the trial.

In an interview with The Daily Beast, Storms consistently condemned the attack and expressed opposition to any violence against LGBTQ and abortion rights communities. Reflecting on his past, Storms acknowledged that his passionate rhetoric at the time, often featured on his five-day-per-week radio show (which he believes included Johnson on several occasions), might have inadvertently contributed to an atmosphere that incited harmful actions by certain individuals.

“When things were at their peak, always in the news, and everyone talking about it—right in the midst of our protest, a gay person got stabbed,” he acknowledged, conceding that some of his rhetoric around the event “didn’t come out right.”

“Every public figure has to be careful with their rhetoric, and as you get older you have to be more and more careful,” Storms expressed, reiterating his view of the LGBTQ lifestyle as “a perversion.”

However, Johnson did not distance himself from Storms after the violence of the protest. In fact, he became more closely associated with the preacher. Eight months later, Johnson represented Storms in another legal case concerning permits, this time for anti-abortion rallies in Jefferson Parish.

In the interim, Storms made headlines again when he seemingly endorsed the mass killing of gay people at a religious fundamentalist conference in Wisconsin.

During the event, known as the “International Conference on Homo-Fascism,” hosted in Milwaukee by a group called Wisconsin Christians United, Storms delivered an hour-long address filled with fiery rhetoric. He extensively discussed his perceived “battle” against the Southern Decadence Festival, where a stabbing had occurred weeks earlier, claiming it was a “great breakthrough” from the Lord. Storms repeatedly used violent imagery, cautioning his Christian audience that gay individuals “want to kill you” and “have to eliminate us,” drawing parallels between his crusade and Jonathan’s biblical battle against the Philistine army.

Storms, according to a transcript of the speech, enthusiastically recounted the biblical story, stating, “That first slaughter which Jonathan and his armor bearer made was about 20 men. Wheeeww! Come on. Let’s go. God has delivered them all into our hands. Hallelujah!” He then accompanied his words with sounds imitating explosions: “boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.”

“There are 20. Whew. Ca-Ching. Yes. Glory. Glory to God. Let’s go through the drive-thru at McDonald’s and come back and get the rest,” Storms remarked, according to the transcript.

After the occasion, the LGBTQ rights organization Fair Wisconsin accused Storms of mimicking ‘sounds like gunfire as if he were shooting gay people’ and ‘seemingly endorsing the murder’ of gay individuals. Subsequently, Storms filed a defamation lawsuit against Fair Wisconsin. The Wisconsin Supreme Court later deemed the suit frivolous, affirming $87,000 in sanctions against his attorney—distinct from Johnson.

In a conversation with The Daily Beast, Storms initially characterized these incidents as ‘hilarious,’ emphasizing that they were symbolic gestures aimed at opposing the LGBTQ+ agenda rather than advocating literal harm to gay individuals. The means of opposition mentioned included legal avenues and protests.

When passages from his statements, such as ‘It’s us or them. There’s no in between. There’s no having this peaceful co-existence,’ were quoted by The Daily Beast, Storms acknowledged that he might have been ‘a little bit over-the-top.’ Over time, he expressed understanding as to why an external group could have ‘misinterpreted’ his remarks as endorsing mass murder.

“I must grapple with my words and how they’re perceived, but I remain committed to advocating for everyone’s right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

However extreme Storms’ language might have been, Johnson still chose to represent him.

Several months after Storms sued Action Wisconsin, Johnson assisted him in suing Jefferson Parish. Concurrently, he drew a parallel between another religious case he was involved in and “spiritual warfare.”

“The ultimate objective of the adversary is to stifle the gospel,” Johnson asserted in an interview with the Shreveport Times in April 2004. “This is a form of spiritual warfare.”

Storms informed The Daily Beast that the two individuals lost contact sometime after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, which was several years before the playground incident involving masturbation that thrust him back into the national spotlight.

Despite Storms’ confession, he attempted to contest the witness account of the exposure charge, which he again disputed in his interview with The Daily Beast. Nevertheless, the judge sentenced him to three years of probation, considering his admission that it was the third time he had engaged in the act in the park that week.

If Johnson did indeed lose contact with Storms in 2005, he somehow found a connection to Storms’ son, Jason Storms. Johnson and the ADF represented Jason Storms in another Milwaukee case in 2009.

In that case, Johnson contended that his plaintiffs, a group of anti-abortion extremists, had been hindered in the exercise of their free speech rights by a federal court injunction in the Eastern District of Wisconsin against protests at abortion clinics.

That ominous word—intimidation—is a concept Johnson’s clients may understand well.

Jason Storms is the leader of Operation Save America, formerly Operation Rescue, which has been called the nation’s largest militant anti-abortion group. Jason Storms also partook in the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, posting a social media video of himself on the building’s scaffolding shortly after the breach.

Operation Rescue shot to infamy when it was tied to the slaying of a Kansas abortion provider in 2009—the same year Johnson filed the lawsuit. Today, OSA and its militant allies still believe women who get abortions should be charged with murder—a step up from more mainstream anti-abortionists who would only place that burden on the doctor.

This summer, Storms said abortion might only be ended in the U.S. through civil war. He routinely draws widespread media coverage for camping outside of abortion clinics and urging women against ending their pregnancies, frequently alongside his wife and their 10 children.

Earlier this year, a member of OSA was charged in connection with a bomb scare at a Milwaukee-area Pride event, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported. In October, the Sixth Circuit of Federal Appeals upheld a 2022 restraining order against the group, after unruly demonstrations in Tennessee.

But in 2009, Johnson—on behalf of the ADF—represented Jason Storms alongside a group of virulent anti-abortion extremists when they sued the city of Milwaukee over a court injunction at abortion protests. That crew included anti-LGBTQ activist Robert Breaud and Jim Soderna, both of whom have their own storied past.

In 1999, Soderna entered his name in the public record as opposing a Milwaukee city council resolution “against domestic terrorism in the form of violence against health-care providers, especially those providing family planning services.” Meanwhile, Breaud—a self-described former “homosexual”—ran a 1999 failed campaign for the Louisiana state House as a Republican. Per an article from The Times-Picayune, which is not publicly available online but accessible through the Lexis Nexis publication database, Breaud said the government “should be a terror to the evildoer”—quoting the apostle Paul in the Bible—further specifying, as Paul did not, that the evildoers were gay men, lesbians, and abortion providers.

Breaud, a nurse and musician, spread his homophobic message via an original song called “It’s Not OK to be Gay.” A 2007 video of Breaud shows him strumming a guitar and singing, “It’s not OK to be gay. It’s not OK to be perverted. It’s not in your DNA. What you need is to be converted.” A spoken-word interlude describes Breaud’s former lifestyle as “unholy, unnatural, unsatisfying, unfulfilling.”

But in the 2009 abortion case, Johnson represented Breaud regarding a different piece: an anti-abortion composition called “Baby Song,” which Breaud had rendered at a “disturbing” volume outside of a clinic, drawing a police citation.

Breaud also went on to publicly boycott Starbucks over CEO Howard Schultz’ 2013 support of gay marriage, saying in a Christian News Network interview that he would tell Schultz, “You’re promoting sin. You’re helping destroy young people’s lives.”

Johnson’s Milwaukee lawsuit was bolstered by affidavits from Jason Storms’ father-in-law, militant anti-abortionist Rev. Matthew Trewhella. Trewhella—who two years prior was represented by ADF in a separate matter in Ohio—previously defended the murder of abortion doctors as “justifiable homicide.” And in 1994, Trewhella was recorded urging parents to give their children firearms training and advocating for religious congregations to launch militias, The New York Times reported.

By 2009, Trewhella had served 14 months in prison for obstructing clinics. He ran an Operation Rescue splinter group, called Missionaries to the Pre-Born, which also featured Jason Storms. Missionaries to the Pre-Born has been described as “one of the most dangerous and violent of the direct action anti-abortion groups active in the United States.”

The city settled the Milwaukee suit. Johnson’s co-counsel, Fintan Dooley, told The Daily Beast that he was happy with the settlement at the time, though they didn’t win fees. Dooley, a Democrat, also pleaded ignorance about any ties to violent groups among the plaintiffs and Trewhella.

But the year of that lawsuit, Operation Rescue was tied to the murder of Kansas abortion provider Dr. George Tiller. The killer had been in touch with a group official about Tiller’s whereabouts, and claimed to be a member. While the group denounced the slaying and the attacker’s claims to membership, Tiller was a top target of Operation Rescue’s ire for years—in 2002, they relocated their headquarters to Wichita specifically to pressure his clinic—and its leader at the time had previously called the murder of abortion providers a “justifiable defensive action.”

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Twelve years later, Jason Storms was part of another siege. On Jan. 6, 2021, Storms and two other OSA members “set up the Lord’s beachhead” at Trump’s rally in Washington, D.C., according to an OSA blog post two days after the attack. The post marveled that “many saints were encouraged by the bold and plain declarations of the Law/Word of God,” declaring that it was “a great and exhausting time.”

What the post did not mention, however, was that Storms participated in the sacking of the Capitol. He posted a social media video of himself on the scaffolding shortly after the building was breached, admiring the insurrection as “Revolution 2.0” and crowing, “Yeah, baby!” in reply to a bullhorned call to “Hang ’em high!”

Dooley, Johnson’s co-counsel, told The Daily Beast that he was “disappointed but not surprised” to learn about Jason Storms’ involvement in the attack.

Grant Storms told The Daily Beast that he “supported” his son attending the rally, but, like Dooley, he condemned Trump and the Republicans who still support him—specifically including Johnson.

“Trump went nuts,” Grant Storms told The Daily Beast. “Anyone can see he tried to overturn the election. He belongs in jail.”

Like Grant Storms, Dooley spoke admirably about Johnson, noting his intellect and the influence he had on his own legal work.

But asked what he would say to Johnson regarding the speaker’s own unrepentant efforts to overturn the 2020 election and his continued support of Trump, Dooley soured.

“Pardon me while I puke, Mr. Johnson,” he said.