In April 2026, a rumor spread that U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., had refused to meet with a group of military veterans who sought to ask him to stop funding the U.S. war on Iran, and that the veterans had then been zip-tied and arrested.
The claim circulated on Facebook (archived):
The post read, in part, "Speaker Johnson would not come out of his office. He would not send a staffer. He would not accept the flag. He had Capitol Police zip-tie them and haul them off instead."
A video of the arrests also appeared on Instagram. Further, Snopes readers emailed and searched the website seeking to verify the rumor.
As we outline below, it was true that a group of veterans from various organizations had gathered in the Cannon House Office Building, a congressional building, demanding to meet with Johnson to ask him to help end the war in Iran.
Johnson was not aware the veterans intended to meet him, according to a spokesperson for the speaker — meaning he did not knowingly refused to speak to them. As such, we've rated the claim a mixture of true and false information.
We reached out to participating groups in the protest asking about the details of the protests: About Face Veterans, Veterans for Peace, the Center on Conscience and War, the Fayetteville Resistance Coalition, Military Families Speak Out and 50501 Veterans. We await responses from most of them and will update this report should we hear back.
Mike Prysner of the Center on Conscience and War told Snopes in a telephone conversation that the group asked to see Johnson and nearly 70 protesters were arrested shortly after voicing that demand. (Prysner was among them.) The CCW also recounted the event in a statement on its website. The statement did not say the protesters had requested in advance to meet with Johnson.
Capitol police told Snopes in an emailed statement they arrested 66 protesters.
How the protest occurred
Around noon on April 20, a group of veterans — members of the organizations cited above — gathered in the rotunda of the Cannon House Office Building in Washington. In what Prysner and the CCW website described as a "civil disobedience action," the group held a flag-folding ceremony and asked to talk to Johnson. A video on the X account of About Face showed the event (archived):
Another video shows a protester saying, "We call on Speaker Mike Johnson to meet with us right now to receive this folded flag and take accountability for what he has done."
Very quickly thereafter, Capitol police asked them to leave the premises. When they did not comply, police began to arrest them. A Reuters video showed the protesters being arrested as they chanted (archived):
In the Reuters video, the protesters can be heard chanting, "Not another nickel, not another dime, we won't pay for Trump's war crimes."
"Demonstrations are not allowed inside Congressional Buildings, so when they started to protest and refused to stop, we began arresting them," Capitol police told Snopes in an emailed statement.
Asked how many people they arrested, Capitol police said, "66 was the final number."
Citing the Code of the District of Columbia, Capitol police said protesting is illegal inside congressional buildings.
Section 22–1307 of the D.C. code on "Crowding, obstructing, or incommoding" reads:
(b)(1) It is unlawful for a person, alone or in concert with others, to engage in a demonstration in an area where it is otherwise unlawful to demonstrate and to continue or resume engaging in a demonstration after being instructed by a law enforcement officer to cease engaging in a demonstration.
(2) For purposes of this subsection, the term "demonstration" means marching, congregating, standing, sitting, lying down, parading, demonstrating, or patrolling by one or more persons, with or without signs, for the purpose of persuading one or more individuals, or the public, or to protest some action, attitude, or belief.
A spokesperson for Johnson told Snopes on the telephone his office did not receive a request to meet ahead of time.
For further reading, Snopes examined a rumor that soldiers were defying orders to deploy to Iran.