Over the course of the past year, congressman Jim Jordan (R-OH), the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, has engaged in a systematic effort to cast doubt on the integrity of the 2020 U.S. presidential election. He also led efforts to create an image in the minds of Trump supporters of Jan. 6 as the “ultimate date of significance” (his words, repeated several times). He helped spearhead the effort to oppose certification of the election in Congress. He has continued to promote the “Big Lie” even after the events on Jan. 6 and subsequent FBI and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) warnings that this conspiracy is propelling domestic violent extremists.
What follows is a comprehensive Timeline of Rep. Jordan’s public statements (in Congress, in public, on social media, and in media interviews) and his known activities related to the presidential election and the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
The following fifteen highlights are from the Timeline below.
Congressman Jordan took the following actions:
Suggested Democrats will try to steal the election (starting Aug. 22, 2020)
Suggested and directly alleged the election was stolen (starting Nov. 5, 2020)
Endorsed Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell’s call to investigate Dominion and Smartmatic (starting Nov. 15, 2020)
Called for immediate congressional investigations of alleged election fraud (starting Nov. 18, 2020)
Endorsed state legislators’ picking their own electors (starting Dec. 7, 2020)
Said Trump should not concede (starting Dec. 7, 2020)
Started public call to object to certification on Jan. 6 (starting Dec. 13, 2020)
Supported call for “special counsel” to investigate alleged election fraud (starting Dec. 10, 2020)
Called Jan. 6 the “ultimate date of significance” (Dec. 16, 2020)
Met with President Trump and small group of House Republicans to coordinate plans to object to certification on January 6 (Dec. 21, 2020)
Raised Trump supporters’ expectations by saying he hoped a majority of Congress will object on January 6 (Jan. 5, 2021)
Helped lead the effort to vote against certification on January 6 (starting Dec. 13, 2020)
Called for Trump supporters to remain peaceful, but does not say to disperse (Jan. 6, 2021 3:02 PM)
Made false claims about Speaker Pelosi and security preparations for January 6 (starting Feb. 15, 2021)
Revealed for the first time that he spoke with President Trump on Jan. 6 (July 28, 2021)
This course of conduct arguably sets Rep. Jordan apart from every other Republican member of Congress who supported the Big Lie, voted to object to the certification of the election, or engaged in other related activities.
Jordan’s impact on broadcast and social media is extraordinary. He is a frequent guest on Fox News, as well as Newsmax and OAN, and advanced false claims about the election on all three networks. Of the 147 Republican members of Congress who opposed the certification of the election, Jordan was “the most prolific Fox guest,” according to an analysis by Media Matters, a non-profit organization that monitors conservative misinformation. He fielded close to 10% of all appearances by those GOP members since January 6. And while Jordan lost nearly 150,000 Twitter followers in a post-January purge of accounts associated with the QAnon conspiracy, the most of any Republican lawmaker, he retains more than 2 million followers. Many of his tweets have been shared more than 10,000 times and liked over 50,000 times.
On or before Jan. 4, President Donald Trump reportedly decided to award Rep. Jordan the Medal of Freedom. On Jan. 11, Jordan received his Medal of Freedom at the White House in a ceremony with no media present (Hendrix, Tonckens, Venkatachalam 1-2).
GOP Rep. Jim Jordan slammed the “double standards” of Democrats on Wednesday morning as the House moves to impeach President Trump for a second time — noting their own efforts to undermine the 2016 election.
In a fiery speech on the House floor, Jordan (R-Ohio), an ardent Trump confidante, noted that many of the Democrats leading the impeachment charge objected to Trump’s victory over Hillary Clinton.
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The president is accused of inciting an insurrection when thousands of his supporters stormed Congress last Wednesday to interrupt a vote certifying President-elect Joe Biden’s Electoral College victory, leaving five people dead.
Several Republican lawmakers objected to Biden’s victory in key swing states and called for a commission to be established to investigate election fraud, something Jordan is still pushing for.
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“Americans are tired of the double standard. They are so tired of it,” he said.
“Democrats objected to more states in 2016 than Republicans did last week, but somehow we’re wrong?” he went on, noting that Democrats had spent four years investigating Trump but refused to look at an election that millions of people had doubts about.
McGovern immediately pushed back on Jordan, claiming that their 2016 protest vote was intended to “raise concerns about what all of our intelligence agencies had stated clearly that Russia interfered in our election.”
“What the gentleman fails to acknowledge is that we all acknowledged that Donald Trump was the president the day after the election,” McGovern said.
“Hillary Clinton conceded the day after the election and none of us pushed conspiracy theories like some of my friends on the other side of the aisle and has the president that somehow the president won in a landslide. Give me a break,” he went on (Bowden 1).
Donald J. Trump on Wednesday became the first American president to be impeached twice, as 10 members of his party joined with Democrats in the House to charge him with “incitement of insurrection” for his role in egging on a violent mob that stormed the Capitol last week.
Reconvening in a building now heavily militarized against threats from pro-Trump activists and adorned with bunting for the inauguration of President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr., lawmakers voted 232 to 197 to approve a single impeachment. It accused Mr. Trump of “inciting violence against the government of the United States” in his quest to overturn the election results, and called for him to be removed and disqualified from ever holding public office again.
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In the House, Democrats and Republicans who supported his ouster made no attempt to hide their fury at Mr. Trump, who was said to have enjoyed watching the attack play out on television as lawmakers pleaded for help. …
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After four years of nearly unquestioning alliance with him, few Republicans defended Mr. Trump’s actions outright. Those who did resorted to a familiar set of false equivalencies, pointing to racial justice protests last summer that turned violent and accusations that Democrats had mistreated the president and were trying to stifle the 74 million Americans who voted for him.
“It’s always been about getting the president, no matter what,” Representative Jim Jordan, Republican of Ohio, shot across the room at Democrats. “It’s an obsession — an obsession that has now broadened. It’s not just about impeachment anymore, it’s about canceling, as I’ve said. Canceling the president and anyone that disagrees with them” (Fandos “Trump” 3).
The House voted mostly along party lines on Wednesday to create a select committee to investigate the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol, pushing ahead over near-unanimous Republican opposition with a broad inquiry controlled by Democrats into the deadliest attack on Congress in centuries.
The panel, established at the behest of Speaker Nancy Pelosi after Senate Republicans blocked the formation of a bipartisan independent commission to scrutinize the assault, will investigate what its organizing resolution calls “the facts, circumstances and causes relating to the Jan. 6, 2021, domestic terrorist attack.”
The 13-member panel, which has subpoena power, will have eight members named by the majority party and five with input from Republican, and is meant to examine President Donald J. Trump’s role in inspiring the riot. While the measure creating it does not mention him, it charges the committee with looking at the law enforcement and government response to the storming of the Capitol and “the influencing factors that fomented such an attack on American representative democracy while engaged in a constitutional process” (Broadwater “House” 1).
The two House Republicans Speaker Nancy Pelosi barred from a select committee investigating the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol are both staunch defenders of former President Donald J. Trump who backed his efforts to invalidate the election and have opposed investigating the assault on Congress.
Ms. Pelosi said she had decided to disqualify Representatives Jim Jordan and Jim Banks of Indiana because of widespread Democratic dismay about “statements made and actions taken by these members.”
Her decision enraged Republican leaders, who announced that they would boycott the investigation altogether. But Democrats insisted that the pair’s support for the election lies that fueled the deadly attack and their subsequent statements downplaying the violence that occurred that day were disqualifying.
Here is [some] … of what … Jordan] said.
“Americans instinctively know there was something wrong with this election,” Mr. Jordan said, arguing for invalidating electoral votes for Mr. Biden on Jan. 6. “During the campaign, Vice President Biden would do an event and he’d get 50 people at the event. President Trump at just one rally gets 50,000 people.”
Mr. Jordan has repeatedly sought to equate the attack on the Capitol to unrest around last summer’s racial justice protests, and accused Democrats of hypocritically trying to punish Mr. Trump for the riot while refusing to condemn left-wing violence. He signaled that he would use the Jan. 6 investigation to push that narrative.
“I think it’s important to point out that Democrats created this environment, sort of normalizing rioting, normalizing looting, normalizing anarchy, in the summer of 2020, and I think that’s an important piece of information to look into,” Mr. Jordan said this week.
He also said the select committee was a politically motivated effort to harm Mr. Trump, calling it “impeachment Round 3” (Fandos “Why” 1-2).
Representative Jim Jordan, Republican of Ohio, announced on Sunday that he was refusing to cooperate with the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, joining a growing list of allies of former President Donald J. Trump who have adopted a hostile stance toward the panel’s questions.
In an effort to dig into the role that members of Congress played in trying to undermine the 2020 election, the committee informed Mr. Jordan in December [2021] by Letter that its investigators wanted to question him about his communications related to the run-up to the Capitol riot. Those include Mr. Jordan’s messages with Mr. Trump and his legal team as well as others involved in planning rallies on Jan. 6 and congressional objections to certifying Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory.
Mr. Jordan — who in November told the Rules Committee that he had “nothing to hide” regarding the Jan. 6 committee’s investigation — on Sunday denounced the bipartisan panel’s inquiry as among what he called the Democrats’ “partisan witch hunts.”
“It amounts to an unprecedented and inappropriate demand to examine the basis for a colleague’s decision on a particular matter pending before the House of Representatives,” Mr. Jordan wrote in a letter to Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi and chairman of the committee. “This request is far outside the bounds of any legitimate inquiry, violates core constitutional principles and would serve to further erode legislative norms.”
Mr. Jordan was deeply involved in Mr. Trump’s effort to fight the election results, including participating in planning meetings in November 2020 at Trump campaign headquarters in Arlington, Va., and a meeting at the White House in December 2020.
On Jan. 5, Mr. Jordan forwarded to Mark Meadows, Mr. Trump’s chief of staff, a text message he had received from a lawyer and former Pentagon inspector general outlining a legal strategy to overturn the election.
“On Jan. 6, 2021, Vice President Mike Pence, as president of the Senate, should call out all the electoral votes that he believes are unconstitutional as no electoral votes at all — in accordance with guidance from founding father Alexander Hamilton and judicial precedence,” the text read.
Mr. Jordan has acknowledged speaking with Mr. Trump on Jan. 6, though he has said he cannot remember how many times they spoke that day or when the calls occurred.
Representative Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming and the vice chairwoman of the committee, has said that Mr. Jordan is a “material witness” to the events of Jan. 6 (Broadwater “Jim” 2).
Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) just had a very telling little meltdown on Fox News’s “The Ingraham Angle,” ranting against the makeup of the House Jan. 6 select committee staff. His big concern? The committee has brought in too many former prosecutors. This is not a criminal investigation, he says.
Jordan’s criticism is both irrelevant and ignorant; perhaps, more generously, he’s playing provocateur.
The committee has staffed up with 14 or so ex-prosecutors because: a) the task is vast; b) they have the resources to hire well-trained lawyers who have handled complex federal cases; and c) typical congressional staffers just can’t handle such a colossal undertaking. In other words, Jordan and other Trump World lackeys are facing their worst possible nightmare in the mother of all congressional investigations.
Jordan’s rant comes after his infamous, tongue-tied “hummina, hummina” moment when an Ohio reporter asked him on camera if he had spoken to the president on Jan. 6 “before, during or after the attack on the Capitol.” Jordan’s squirming response suggested that he was afraid the reporter was going to pin him down where Jordan didn’t want to be pinned.
It also comes after a Just Security report from August detailed just how central a role Jordan played in aiding and abetting Trump’s misinformation campaign before and after the election, his lead role in spreading Trump’s “Big Lie,” and his furtive efforts to stop the certification of Joe Biden as president.
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In recent weeks, details have emerged about what happened leading up to and on Jan. 6. Many are surprised at how clear the picture is becoming. I’m sure that hasn’t been lost on Jordan and other likely culprits in Trump World.
In the weeks ahead, as that picture becomes ever clearer, I expect the decibel level of the squealing to go higher (Kolesnik 1,3).
Works cited:
Bowden, Ebony. “Jim Jordan Slams Dems’ ‘Double Standards’ at Trump Impeachment Vote.” New York Post, January 13, 2021. Net. https://nypost.com/2021/01/13/jim-jordan-slams-dems-double-standards-at-impeachment-vote/
Broadwater, Luke. “House Opens Jan. 6 Investigation over Republican Opposition.” New York Times, updated July 27, 2021. Net. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/30/us/house-jan-6-capitol-riot.html?action=click&module=RelatedLinks&pgtype=Article
Broadwater, Luke. “Jim Jordan Refuses To Cooperate with Jan. 6 Panel.” New York Times, January 9, 2022. Net. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/09/us/politics/jim-jordan-jan-6-panel.html
Fandos, Nicholas. “Trump Impeached for Inciting Insurrection.” New York Times, updated April 22, 2021. Net. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/13/us/politics/trump-impeached.html
Fandos, Nicholas. “Why Jim Banks and Jim Jordan Were Blocked from the Capitol Riot Panel.” New York Times, updated July 27, 2021. Net. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/21/us/politics/jim-banks-jim-jordan.html
Hendirx, Justin; Tonckens, Nicholas; Venkatachalam, Sruthi. “Timeline: Rep. Jim Jordan, a Systematic Disinformation Campaign, and January 6.” Just Security. August 29, 2021. Net. https://www.justsecurity.org/77852/timeline-rep-jim-jordan-a-systematic-disinformation-campaign-and-january-6/
Kolesnik, Kris. “The Real Reason Jim Jordan Is Ranting against Jan. 6 Committee Staff.” The Hill, February 15, 2022. Net. https://thehill.com/opinion/national-security/594261-the-real-reason-jim-jordan-is-ranting-against-jan-6-committee-staff/
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