This week brought us the news that Mikey J’s personal finances appear to be in disarray according to his 2022 financial disclosure forms filed with the clerk of the House. It is pictured in full below. 1
The lack of any reported assets has been made much of, so I decided to look for a control case, choosing Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, for comparison. Her full disclosure form is below. 2
The main takeaways are that Mikey J doesn’t have any retirement savings accounts or regular checking accounts above $1000, and that it appears that AOC has no mortgage debt or outstanding loans other than a student loan. It also seems like Mikey J’s wife is no longer disclosing income from her occupation.
Fox News has spun this as Mike Johnson, constitutional lawyer, is just like the common man. That makes him more “relatable.”3
But Johnson's financial situation appears to closely mirror that of a large share of Americans, according to Federal Reserve survey data. Survey data from 2019 concluded that the median account balance for American households is $5,300, and data from 2020 showed just 64% of Americans had enough money readily available to pay for a $400 emergency.
"The Daily Beast is furious that @SpeakerJohnson isn’t rich, corrupt or rich from being corrupt. He doesn’t have shady business deals. He doesn’t trade stocks as a congressman," Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., posted on X. "Cry more, I guess?"
Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, added, "So, to extent accurate, he’s like a lot of Americans right now while also navigating raising a large family? What a monster."
Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., wrote, "So the Daily Beast wants people to be mad that Speaker Johnson isn’t corrupt and hasn’t used his office to enrich himself? This is how out of touch these guys are."
Author Tim Carney joked, "Who let in the poors?!?"
So this leads to the question of exactly how poor is Mikey J’s situation. To investigate further, I looked at Johnson’s FEC public statement of candidacy, which includes a home address. 4 My thinking was that he has a house as his major asset, so like many middle-class Americans, he could be house-rich and liquid asset-poor.
I also did a Zillow search for the possible home address listed on the FEC Statement of Organization for Mikey J.5 Its current estimated value, according to Zillow, is $611,800 and was listed for sale in June 2014 and June 2017, and then the listings were subsequently removed. The home was originally purchased in July 2013.
Next, I sought public ownership records on the property. 6
Now, this gets murky. The sale to James M Johnson (Mikey J’s full name) and Kelly R. L. Johnson is what I would expect—Mikey J’s wife is named Kelly. The next transaction on the property occurred on December 23, 2020, and has the wrong middle initial for Mikey J and lists Judy R Johnson as the co-owner. Mikey J’s father passed away in 2016, so I thought Judy might be his widowed mother, but her name is Jeanne.7 According to the Daily Mail, Mikey J is the eldest of 4 siblings: two brothers, Chris and Josh, and a sister, Laura.8 There are no Judy’s there either unless she is the spouse of Chris or Josh. Johnson is too common a name for me to verify if that is the case.
Looking at the details of the 12/23/20 property transfer, the sales price is listed at $1,010,000, significantly higher than the Zillow estimate and more than double the Zillow valuation of neighboring houses in the development. The buyers are listed as Dirk T Rainwater and Tammy L S Rainwater. Their address appears to be a commercial property that has a sign for a Medicare clinic. Dirk Rainwater is a 54-year-old doctor of internal medicine who graduated from LSU Medical School in 2000. Mikey J graduated from LSU Law School in 1998.
There is a second reported sale of the property on December 29, 2020, also listing the sellers as James N Johnson and Judy R Johnson. The buyers are Timothy S. Horton and Kara H Horton but there are no other details of the sale listed. Tim Horton is also 54, and, according to LinkedIn, Managing Director and partner of Hospitality Investments at Southwest Partners, which owns 80 hotels across 16 states.9 10
I don’t understand the two transaction listings in 2020. Perhaps Rainwater bought Johnson’s house and Johnson is now renting from him, but the price for the sale looks inflated and if that were the case, Johnson would have had to pay off his mortgage on the property and it is still listed as a liability on his 2022 financial disclosure form which is still listing Mikey J’s original 2013 mortgage. And perhaps the Horton transaction never went through. But it seems like everywhere you look, there are things that at least need an explanation in Mikey J’s personal history.
If any of you are real estate professionals or real estate lawyers who can add to this analysis, please do so below. I will be doing a deep dive into Mikey J’s campaign finances next.
***UPDATE***
After lots of further investigation with lots of input from Michael and Katherine, I have resolved the issues with the ownership of Speaker Johnson’s residence. THERE IS NO EVIDENCE OF IMPROPRIETY ON THE PART OF SPEAKER JOHNSON.
The issue is with the property transfer records in the PropertyIQ database. I found this out by searching to see if there was a “James N Johnson and Judy R Johnson” who lived in the area. I came upon an obituary for Judy R Johnson in June 2023, who sadly passed away from dementia. Looking a the obituary, she does not appear to be related to Speaker Johnson. Her Husband is James N. Johnson. I then did a records search to see where she had lived, thinking that given her health, they may have downsized. I worked back through the addresses using the tax assessor records, and one of the addresses is currently owned by Dirk Rainwater and was purchased on 12/28/20. The Zillow listing of that property was close to the price Rainwater paid for it. The inconsistency is confirmed by the plat map books and pages being different on the detailed IQProperty report.
What have I learned from this?
There are lots of publicly available databases out there, and they can and should be used to verify information about the integrity of our public officials. This is critically important when there is so much dark money embedded in our political system after Citizens United.
Databases do have errors, as is the case here. That means we have to find ways to confirm the validity of what we find and think of all possible reasons why we may be drawing the wrong conclusions. I think the takeaway is that it shouldn’t be “trust but verify” but rather “verify before you trust.” What I don’t see is how the error in Property IQ could have occurred.
And on a closing note, I am tracking down some inconsistencies due to what appears to be a missing decimal point in the FEC donor receipts for Mike Johnson’s current cycle fundraising. Yes, in the FEC database that I thought would be purer than Open Secrets, which processes that database. Along with some misclassification of donor organizations. So no new post today. Once bitten, twice shy.
https://disclosures-clerk.house.gov/public_disc/financial-pdfs/2022/10055641.pdf
https://disclosures-clerk.house.gov/public_disc/financial-pdfs/2022/10052480.pdf
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/mike-johnson-bucks-trend-house-speakers-owning-high-dollar-financial-assets-man-people
https://www.foxnews.com/media/claim-speaker-johnson-lives-paycheck-paycheck-makes-him-relatable-say-defenders
https://docquery.fec.gov/cgi-bin/forms/H6LA04138/1502529/
https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/5029-Willow-Chase-Dr-Benton-LA-71006/109779495_zpid/
https://www.propertyiq.com/la/benton/5029-willow-chase-dr/71006-piq210388998
https://en.geneastar.org/genealogy/johnsonjame/mike-johnson
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12671147/Mike-Johnson-Speaker-Republican-McCarthy-Trump.html
https://www.linkedin.com/in/tim-horton-1a562925/
https://dimensionhospitality.com/
It looks like an address mix-up in IQ search. Dirk Rainwater is now the owner according to tax assessment records of a property that was a a previous address of James N Johnson and Judy R Johnson. The property that was transferred was 125 Indian Pt Bossier City LA 71111. When I looked up that address it was sold for around its Zilllow price of $994,300 on 12/28/20.
It is an error in PropertyIQ--the plat map book and page are different in the James N Johnson and Judy R Johnson Properties from the Mike and Kelly Property.
https://bossier.smartcama.com/Assessments/Search?AssessmentNumber=100478&PerformSearch=True&ExactSearch=True
I looked up the tax assessors records which are free online and show the 2023 assessment. Mike and Kelly are still showing as 50:50 owners and there is a market assessment of $429,779