Representative Jim Jordan is facing the kind of slowly percolating scandal that would bring down other politicians in other times, as new accusers step forward by the day to say the wrestling coach turned politician was aware of sexual misconduct at Ohio State University but did nothing to stop it.
But like the man Mr. Jordan doggedly supports, President Trump, the Ohio Republican has the kind of stalwart supporters who do not lose faith easily, and they are already defending the conservative powerhouse, saying he is the victim of the same “deep state” conspirators — liberal bureaucrats embedded in the government — who are trying to bring down the president.
Mr. Jordan, a 54-year-old congressman in his sixth term, was defiant Friday night [July 2018] on Fox News, in his first extended response to the emerging charges. He disparaged some of the former college wrestlers who have come forward to say he knew of allegations that the team doctor, Richard H. Strauss, had fondled them. He said he could not explain why other more friendly wrestlers had leveled similar charges.
“I never saw, never heard of, never was told about any kind of abuse,” said Mr. Jordan, whose in-your-face brand of politics has made him the choice for speaker of the House by an array of conservative groups. “If I did I would have dealt with it. A good coach puts the interests of his student-athletes first.”
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… Mr. Jordan continued to fan conspiracy theories connecting the emergence of the charges to his aggressive questioning last month of Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein, the man many Trump supporters hold responsible for the Russia investigation.
“I think the timing is suspect when you think about how this whole story came together after the Rosenstein hearing and the speaker’s race,” he said.
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… the president weighed in with his unqualified support. “Jim Jordan is one of the most outstanding people I’ve met since I’ve been in Washington,” Mr. Trump told reporters on Thursday. “I believe him 100 percent. No question in my mind.”
Mr. Jordan served as an assistant coach on the Ohio State wrestling team in the late 1980s and early 1990s, during which time Dr. Strauss is accused of showering with athletes and touching them inappropriately. The university announced in April that it had begun investigating the allegations against the doctor, who killed himself in 2005.
Mr. Coleman and four other wrestlers have now said that Mr. Jordan was aware of the abuse but did nothing to stop it. Another former Ohio State wrestler, Mike Schyck, said in an interview on Friday that he and other former team members planned to “collectively say some things together,” adding that the scandal is not about Mr. Jordan.
But even as more wrestlers step forward, Mr. Jordan’s base has mounted a defense. The conservative news media has questioned the motives and truthfulness of his accusers.
One of those accusers, Mike DiSabato, scoffed at suggestions that his motivation in calling out Mr. Jordan was political or part of a personal vendetta.
“There were two choices for Jim when he was asked about this situation: He could have told the truth that he saw it, he was there, he was in the showers and saunas with us,” Mr. DiSabato said. “He could have told the truth and stood with us, or he could have played politics.”
Mr. DiSabato said he was saddened by the congressman’s response.
“I’m sorry, I love Jim Jordan, but he doesn’t get to call me a liar to the entire world,” Mr. DiSabato said. “He doesn’t get to call the victims of systemic sexual abuse liars. He doesn’t get to act like he wasn’t in the sauna with us every day being subject to voyeurism.”
The allegations have cast a cloud over the congressman at a time when he is ascendant. Mr. Jordan has emerged as one of the president’s staunchest defenders, helping to lead a Republican counterinvestigation of F.B.I. and Justice Department officials who are looking into potential connections between the Trump campaign and Russian election interference. A founder of the House Freedom Caucus, Mr. Jordan has also been floated as a possible successor to Speaker Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, who has announced he will retire at the end of the year (Edmondson “Defiant” 1-3).
In the past few days, Mr. Jordan has evoked his own reputation as a Trump ally and enemy of the so-called deep state — liberal bureaucrats embedded in the government — reminding his base of where his loyalty lies.
“I stood up to the speaker of the House from my home state, to the I.R.S. and to the F.B.I.,” Mr. Jordan told reporters on Wednesday. “To think that I would not stand up for my athletes is ridiculous” (Edmondson “Unshaken” 3).
In a sign that Representative Jim Jordan is unlikely to shake a sexual misconduct scandal anytime soon, five former wrestlers sued Ohio State University this week [July 2018], accusing university officials of knowing that a team doctor was abusing student athletes and doing nothing to stop him.
One of the lawsuits specifically mentions Mr. Jordan, Republican of Ohio, who served as the wrestling team’s assistant coach in the late 1980s and early 1990s, citing news reports that wrestlers had informed him of the abuse. …
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Eight wrestlers have come forward and accused Mr. Jordan of turning a blind eye to the abuse of the team physician, Richard H. Strauss, who killed himself in 2005.
Mr. Jordan has maintained that he never saw or heard any reports of misconduct and has attacked some of the former wrestlers who have spoken out against him.
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The lawsuits, filed on Tuesday, describe abuse that was widespread and often public. Dr. Strauss’s conduct is at the heart of a university investigation spanning 14 different sports teams and more than 150 athletes.
More Ohio State alumni — both former athletes and students — have come forward in recent days to say Mr. Strauss had abused them, Mr. Estey said, either as team doctor or at the university’s student health center. The lawyer said he expected an additional 20 to 25 plaintiffs to sign onto Tuesday’s class action.
Together, the lawsuits say that Ohio State officials received at least three complaints about Mr. Strauss from wrestlers: in 1978, after the captain of the wrestling team told a doctor at the university’s health center that Mr. Strauss had fondled him; in 1993, when a wrestler complained to the team’s head coach, Russ Hellickson; and in 1994, when two wrestlers confronted the university’s athletic director.
The lawsuit also cites a recent interview in which Mr. Hellickson told USA Today that he confronted Mr. Strauss and told him that he was making the athletes “uncomfortable” by showering with them. Mr. Hellickson said the doctor responded that the coach also showered with athletes.
“I said, ‘Not for an hour, Doc,’” Mr. Hellickson said.
Mr. Hellickson has maintained that he did not know Mr. Strauss was abusing athletes, and has defended Mr. Jordan’s role in the matter.
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One of the lawsuits notes that many of the athletes competing for the university were afraid to complain because the university required that they receive physicals from Dr. Strauss before being allowed to compete. Many of those athletes were receiving scholarships.
The plaintiffs in both lawsuits seek unspecified damages, stating that the wrestlers “were prevented and will continue to be prevented from performing daily activities” and have incurred expenses for medical and psychological treatment as a result of the abuse (Edmondson “Lawsuits” 2-4).
The lawsuits filed on Tuesday describe how the misconduct committed by Dr. Strauss was frequently under the guise of medical treatment ...Regardless of the ailment, one lawsuit states, his treatment “almost always included examination, touching and fondling of their genitalia, and it frequently included digital anal penetration under the guise of checking for hernias.”
The university at the time required that athletes submit to a physical, administered by Dr. Strauss, before being allowed to compete, “which meant that systematic sexual abuse from Dr. Strauss was inevitable,” the lawsuit said.
Wrestlers who have spoken about the abuse have said that the doctor’s conduct during physicals was an open secret in the locker room, with athletes referring to him as “Dr. Jellypaws.”
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News reports cited in the lawsuit also detail how the facility where wrestlers practiced, Larkins Hall, was home to a “cesspool of deviancy,” in which men affiliated with the university would ogle athletes in the showers.
Stephen Estey, a lawyer representing four former wrestlers who have filed a lawsuit against the university, said on Friday that he was getting “inundated” with calls from people saying they had been abused by Dr. Strauss. He expects that an additional 20 to 25 plaintiffs will join the lawsuit, and that hundreds of former students will eventually come forward (Edmondson “More” 3-4).
Congressional Republicans are playing a dangerous game in their rush to defend Jim Jordan, the Ohio congressman facing accusations that, as an assistant wrestling coach at Ohio State University, he ignored athletes’ complaints of sexual abuse by the team doctor.
By attacking Mr. Jordan’s accusers, dismissing the accusers as politically motivated and spinning deep-state conspiracy theories — even as the accusations pile up and Mr. Jordan’s denials grow more dubious — lawmakers are opting for tribal loyalty over concern for the public good. While this kind of blind partisanship may feel like a necessity to Republicans in the age of Donald Trump, it has real potential to come back and bite them on their backsides. Also, it’s morally wrong.
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Among Mr. Jordan’s early defenders was President Trump. “I don’t believe them,” he said a couple of days into the uproar. “No question in my mind. I believe Jim Jordan 100 percent. He’s an outstanding man.”
Congressional Republicans have followed the same script, rejecting the very idea that someone of Mr. Jordan’s character would turn a blind eye to abuse. On Tuesday, the conservative House Freedom Caucus voted to officially support Mr. Jordan, its former chairman. The caucus’s current chairman, Mark Meadows of North Carolina, has praised his colleague as “a man of the utmost character, honor, and integrity.”
Representative Steve Scalise, the conference’s chief whip, declared, “I have always known Jim Jordan to be honest, and I’m confident he would stand up for his athletes, just like he’s always stood up for what’s right.” Speaker Paul Ryan too has vouched for Mr. Jordan’s “honesty” and “integrity.” Indeed, the cascade of references to Mr. Jordan’s “honesty” and “integrity” has achieved a Manchurian Candidate-like ubiquity.
If Mr. Jordan was a Democrat, does anyone doubt all these men would be singing a different tune?
Even more troubling are Mr. Jordan’s defenders who have gone on the offense against his accusers. Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky, tweeting admiringly of Mr. Jordan’s “tremendous integrity,” also expressed “faith” in the American people’s ability to “recognize a baseless smear campaign [when] they see it.” Other members have made dark references to the accusers’ “questionable background,” suggesting that true victims would not have waited so long to come forward, and sneering at the notion that adult men could be victimized in such a fashion. (Seriously? Were these guys napping during the #MeToo horror stories?)
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… multiple members have noted that the law firm handling the abuse investigation for Ohio State has contracted with a Washington-based firm that previously did work for the Democratic Party on the infamous Steele dossier. (Don’t you see? It all goes back to Hillary!) Following Republicans down that rabbit hole leads only to madness.
Since first denying that he ever had an inkling of any abuse, the congressman has felt moved to draw a distinction between specific reports of misconduct and bawdy chatter. “Conversations in the locker room are a lot different than someone coming up to you and saying there was some kind of abuse,” he explained to Fox News viewers.
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The congressman clearly fancies himself a fearless crusader willing to stand up to power. But what we have seen of him in the Trump era paints a different picture, of a man absolutely willing to look the other way when things around the workplace get weird and icky.
During the dark days of the “Access Hollywood” tape, as many Republican officeholders were distancing themselves from the nominee, Mr. Jordan made clear that, while he found such vulgar talk unacceptable, he nonetheless would stand by his man.
And stand by Mr. Trump he has, uttering not one critical peep as this president has engaged in such egregious acts as defending neo-Nazis and separating migrant children from their parents. (Even many of Mr. Trump’s most obsequious apologists choked on that one.) As for Mr. Trump’s habitual lying, Mr. Jordan has not simply averted his gaze; he has publicly claimed — even when confronted with specific examples — never to have heard Mr. Trump utter a falsehood. Never. Not once.
As a powerful congressman in his mid-50s, Mr. Jordan has repeatedly failed to stand up to a president whose morally sketchy behavior he witnesses on a daily basis. Can anyone really discount, with 100 percent certainty, the possibility that a 20-something Jim Jordan might have heard but chosen not to pursue horrifying rumors, or even specific allegations, that could have engulfed his entire university in scandal (Editorial 1-4).
Ohio representative and former Ohio State University wrestling coach Jim Jordan aided and abetted in the university's cover-up of sexual abuse within the program, a former team captain said in front of Ohio State legislators on Wednesday [February 2020].
"Jim Jordan called me crying, groveling, begging me to go against my brother, begging me, crying for a half-hour," DiSabato said Wednesday. "That’s the kind of cover-up that’s going on there."
Adam DiSabato, captain of the team during the early 1990s, told members of the Ohio House Civil Justice Committee that Jordan and other officials ignored former Ohio State doctor Richard Strauss's sexual abuse of wrestlers from 1979 to 1997. DiSabato said that Jordan and other team officials knew about open-shower facilities that facilitated sexual harassment and abuse of team wrestlers. Jordan has previously denied the allegation.
Wednesday's testimony is a part of a hearing on legislation that would permit survivors of Strauss's abuse to sue the university for damages. Currently, the statute of limitations disallows them from doing so.
A university study found that Strauss abused at least 177 people during his tenure as the wrestling team’s doctor. Strauss was never charged and died by suicide in 2005.
A former Ohio State wrestler told the university's lawyers in 2018 that, “Based on testimony from victim athletes from each of the aforementioned varsity sports, we estimate that Strauss sexually assaulted and/or raped a minimum of 1,500/2,000 athletes at OSU.”
In November 2019, NBC News reported that around 350 men were suing Ohio State, saying they were abused.
DiSabato and his brother, Mike, were among the initial whistleblowers that prompted the university to launch an investigation in 2018.
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Eight wrestlers have said publicly that Jordan was aware of—and did not do anything to stop—Strauss's systemic abuse.
One former wrestler, Dunyasha Yetts, recounted to NBC News an instance in which he was abused and told Jordan directly. Another former wrestler, Shawn Dailey, later corroborated the story.
“I remember I had a thumb injury and went into Strauss’ office and he started pulling down my wrestling shorts,” he said. “I’m like, what the f--- are you doing? And I went out and told Russ and Jim what happened. I was not having it. They went in and talked to Strauss.”
Yetts said he and his teammates talked to Jordan numerous times about Strauss.
“For God’s sake, Strauss’s locker was right next to Jordan’s and Jordan even said he’d kill him if he tried anything with him,” Yetts said.
DiSabato has said that Jordan gave out a certificate each year called “King of the Sauna,” to the person with the most clever banter while in the shower—a shower where Strauss allegedly performed the bulk of his sexual abuse. Jordan, DiSabato said, hung out in the sauna daily.
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Since these allegations surfaced in 2018, Jordan has apparently tried to cover-up the cover-up.
In May 2019, Mike DiSabato stated in a Title IX lawsuit against Ohio State that Jordan's second cousin aimed to "intimidate and retaliate" against him for speaking out publicly. Later that year, Jordan, his younger brother and another former wrestling coach were accused of witness tampering and intimidation in their attempt to suppress accusations from a former wrestler, according to NBC News (Yang 1-3).
Works cited:
Editorial Board. “Is the G.O.P. Following Jim Jordan over a Cliff?” New York Times, July 12, 2018. Net. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/12/opinion/editorials/republicans-jim-jordan.html
Edmondson, Catie. “Jim Jordan Is Defiant as Allegations Mount, and Supporters Point to ‘Deep State’.” New York Times, July 6, 2018. Net. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/06/us/politics/jim-jordan-sexual-misconduct.html
Edmondson, Catie. “More Than 100 Former Ohio State Students Allege Sexual Misconduct.” New York Times, July 20, 2018. Net. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/20/us/politics/sexual-misconduct-ohio-state.html
Edmondson, Catie. “Two Lawsuits against Ohio State Keep Jim Jordan in the Cross Hairs.” New York Times, July 18, 2018. Net. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/18/us/politics/jim-jordan-ohio-state-sexual-abuse.html
Edmondson, Catie. "Unshaken by Abuse Scandal, Conservatives Are Sticking with Jim Jordan.” New York Times, Jul 11, 2018. Net. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/11/us/politics/jim-jordan-sexual-abuse-scandal.html
Yang, Avery. “Ex–Ohio State Wrestler Says Rep. Jim Jordan Asked Him To Deny Abuse Allegations.” Sports Illustrated, February 12, 2020. Net. https://www.si.com/more-sports/2020/02/12/jim-jordan-accused-cover-up-sexual-abuse-ohio-state
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