Michigan businessman Perry Johnson is now the second Republican presidential candidate threatening legal action against the RNC after not qualifying for Wednesday night’s first debate. After not making the cut, Johnson called the process “corrupted, plain and simple,” and said via news release Tuesday that he’s planning to take legal action against the RNC. “It is clear that from the beginning, the RNC knew who they wanted on the stage and who they wanted to ban from the stage,” Johnson said. Earlier on Tuesday, fellow Republican longshot Larry Elder threatened his own legal action against the RNC after he claimed he was told he failed to qualify despite supposedly meeting the criteria. Johnson similarly claimed that he “hit every metric put forward by the RNC”—but a debate insider told the Detroit Free Press that one of the polls he cited wasn’t eligible. To make the cut, candidates had to poll at just one percent in three national polls, or at one percent in two national polls plus the same in at least one early-state poll. They also had to have a minimum of 40,000 unique donors, and sign a pledge agreeing to support the eventual party nominee.
