WASHINGTON — Before House Speaker Mike Johnson was elected to public office, he was the dean of a small Baptist law school that didn’t exist.
The establishment of the Judge Paul Pressler School of Law was supposed to be a capstone achievement for Louisiana College, which administrators boasted would “unashamedly embrace” a “biblical worldview.” Instead, it collapsed roughly a decade ago without enrolling students or opening its doors amid infighting by officials, accusations of financial impropriety and difficulty obtaining accreditation, which frightened away would-be donors.
There is no indication that Johnson engaged in wrongdoing while employed by the private college, now known as Louisiana Christian University. But as a virtually unknown player in Washington, the episode offers insight into how Johnson navigated leadership challenges that echo the chaos, feuding and hard-right politics that have come to define the Republican House majority he now leads.
I hope this trend of people faking entire histories, going as far as creating fake companies, churches and charities, by politicians, never breaks out of the US.
There’s a handful of national level politicians now that are known to have straight up fake resumes and they are just the tip of the iceberg.
I don’t recall ever seeing this anywhere outside the US.
Plenty of lies and hiding history, sure, but this wholesale fabrication of histories? That’s a first.
Rand Paul, the fake doctor.
I was just watching American Greed where making huge lies about your qualifications that can be easily checked seems to be too common (i.e. a guy who said he had a physics degree and worked for a nuke plant but never had one).
If I recall correctly, that douche that was almost expelled from the House this week has been pretending his mother died on 9/11 in the towers.
She actually died in hospice care in 2016.
I don’t think this one was fake, just a failed venture that never got off the ground.