In 2010, Johnson began contributing opinion pieces to the opinion website Breitbart. In 2011, he was hired as a full-time worker for conservative media website
TheBlaze.[3]
In 2012, Johnson became a staff writer at
BuzzFeed.[4] In July 2014, BuzzFeed found 41 instances of plagiarism in Johnson's writings, comprising almost ten percent of his work. He was subsequently fired from BuzzFeed and apologized for the plagiarism.[5]
In September 2014, Johnson became digital director at the National Review (NR).[6]
In March 2017, Johnson was suspended by the IJR after his involvement in an article which asserted that judge
Derrick Watson's partial blocking of
Executive Order 13780 was connected to former president
Barack Obama's visit to Hawaii. Johnson had been warned that the IJR could potentially be promoting a conspiracy theory, but assigned the story anyway.[7][8] That same month, Johnson was reported to have been verbally abusive and driven numerous staffers away from the IJR due to his management style;[8] he was subsequently demoted.[9]
In August 2017, Johnson wrote an article containing the most controversial tweets of what he thought was the Boston
antifa Twitter account, but what was a fake account intended to lampoon antifa. Initially an editorial note was added, and the article was later removed.[10][11][12]