Arizona Rep.-elect Adelita Grijalva, who is set to be sworn in on Wednesday, said she will confront House Speaker Mike Johnson after waiting nearly 50 days to be seated as a member of Congress.
“I won’t be able to like sort of move on if I don’t address it personally and we’ll see what kind of reaction he has,” Grijalva, a Democrat, told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins on “The Source” Tuesday.
“I’m not exactly sure what I’m going to say,” Grijalva added but said she will stress that Johnson refusing to swear her in for over a month is “undemocratic.”
“It’s unconstitutional. It’s illegal. Should never happen — this kind of obstruction cannot happen again,” Grijalva said.
Grijalva won a special election on September 23 to replace her father, longtime Rep. Raúl Grijalva, who died in March.
The House has been out of session since September 19 and Johnson refused to swear in Grijalva in the chamber’s absence amid the government shutdown.
Last month, Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes, a Democrat, filed a lawsuit seeking to force Johnson to seat Grijalva but Johnson maintained that he is “following the Pelosi precedent,” noting that when Republicans had won similar special elections, then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi waited until lawmakers returned to Capitol Hill following periods of recess.
House lawmakers will finally return to Washington, DC, on Wednesday for a vote on reopening the government.
CNN has reported that without a representative in Congress, residents of Arizona’s 7th Congressional district have been frustrated. When seeking help, they’ve been met with a shuttered congressional office in Tucson and unanswered phone calls.
“813,000 southern Arizonans haven’t had support during this shutdown because of Speaker Johnson’s a lack of transparency and willingness to do his job,” Grijalva told Collins.
Once sworn in, Grijalva is expected to be the decisive 218th member to support a discharge petition and force a House vote on releasing all records related to the late financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Grijalva has asserted that her swearing in has been delayed as an attempt to block a vote on the Epstein files. Johnson has denied the allegation.
Grijalva said Tuesday that they’re “hoping” to expedite a vote on the Epstein files.
“I feel like at this point we’re done sort of tap dancing around what it, the implications of those files really mean,” Grijalva told Collins. “And anyone who is implicated needs to deal with the legal consequences for breaking the law and committing horrific crimes against children and women.”
When asked if there’s a chance that Johnson or the White House tries to stop a vote on the files, Grijalva said, “absolutely.”
“Speaker Johnson has already tried to stop the vote. He sent Congress home a week early in order to avoid a vote,” Grijalva said. “So, absolutely, I think we need to be prepared to call out any obstruction in releasing the files.”
CNN’s Steve Contorno, Ashley Killough and Holmes Lybrand contributed to this report.
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