By BRIAN SLODYSKO, FARNOUSH AMIRI and ERIC TUCKER (Associated Press)
WASHINGTON (AP) — Rep. Jim Jordan has such a popularity as a political brawler that former House Speaker John Boehner as soon as mentioned he’d by no means met somebody “who spent more time tearing things apart.”
Now, almost a decade after Boehner stepped down within the face of a conservative revolt, it’s Jordan who’s attempting to carry the Republican Party collectively to win the speaker’s gavel.
A favourite of former President Donald Trump and darling of the occasion’s rabble-rousing base, Jordan’s path to the U.S. authorities’s third-highest workplace is in no way sure in a House Republican convention riven by battle following the ouster two weeks in the past of former Speaker Kevin McCarthy. To win, Jordan will want assist from almost each House Republican, having few votes to spare in a chamber they solely narrowly management.
Should Jordan succeed, it could assist cement the far proper’s takeover of the Republican Party and set off contemporary battle with Democrats over the dimensions and scope of presidency. But a Jordan speakership would additionally include baggage that might current a problem to Republicans as they labor to carry their House majority in subsequent yr’s election, an effort that may seemingly hinge on drawing assist from average voters in swing districts.
Some members of Congress — together with some in his personal occasion — label Jordan an extremist unworthy of the speakership, pointing to his energetic function in Trump’s bid to cease the certification of the 2020 presidential election, in addition to his refusal to honor a congressional subpoena about the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol. Further in his previous, Jordan continues to be questioned over his alleged data of sexual abuse within the wrestling program at Ohio State University — accusations he adamantly denies.
Former Rep. Liz Cheney, who helped lead the Jan. 6 investigation and was ousted from GOP management by conservatives, has warned that giving Jordan the gavel may even pose a risk to democracy itself.
“If the Republicans decide that Jim Jordan should be the speaker of the House,” Cheney mentioned throughout a current speech, “there would no longer be any possible way to argue that a group of elected Republicans could be counted on to defend the Constitution.”
Jordan has defended his bare-knuckled strategy as rooted in precept, a message that resonates with conservatives who’ve lengthy accused GOP leaders of capitulation.
“One person says disruption,” Jordan informed The Associated Press in 2017. “We like to say we’re doing what we told the voters we were going to do.”
Jordan, a 59-year-old father of 4, was born close to Dayton in western Ohio. He was a four-time state wrestling champion in highschool and a two-time NCAA champion on the University of Wisconsin within the Eighties. That helped him land a training job at Ohio State University earlier than his election to the Ohio legislature within the mid Nineteen Nineties.
His conservatism and zeal for a political battle have been evident in early clashes with GOP legislative leaders, in addition to with Republican Gov. Bob Taft.
When he determined to pursue a state Senate seat in 1999, he confronted opposition from the GOP institution and from Boehner, then a four-term congressman, who supported a rival. Jordan simply gained, ousting a veteran state consultant with almost 60% of the vote. Jordan was elected to Congress a number of years later, in 2006.
After the tea occasion wave swept Republicans to energy in 2011, the roles reversed, and Jordan was among the many conservatives who have been continuously Boehner’s tormentors.
Jordan was the founding chairman in 2015 of the House Freedom Caucus, a gaggle of conservative hardliners who finally pressured Boehner to step apart. More than eight years later, members of the group have been instrumental in McCarthy’s removing, a surprising final result testomony to the group’s outsized energy.
But it’s Jordan’s previous as a wrestling coach — a sport he described as “good for a society” — that has posed one in all his greatest political liabilities.
In 2018, a number of former athletes he coached at Ohio State got here ahead to explain a lurid environment surrounding the varsity’s wrestling program when Jordan was an assistant coach. The allegations centered round sexual misconduct by Richard Strauss, a physician who was on the school and medical workers.
Jordan would “even make comments: ‘This guy better not touch me,’” Dunyasha Yetts, one of many wrestlers, informed AP in 2018.
A subsequent investigation discovered Strauss, who died by suicide in 2005, groped or sexually assaulted almost 200 college students, lots of them wrestlers in search of medical care. Since then, much more former wrestlers Jordan coached have come ahead to say that Jordan was conscious of the physician’s conduct however did nothing to cease it — an allegation that Jordan vehemently denied.
“It’s false. I never saw, never, heard of, never was told about any kind of abuse,” Jordan informed Fox News in 2018, suggesting that the allegations towards him have been politically motivated. “What bothers me the most is the guys that are saying these things, I know they know the truth.”
Adam DiSabato, a former Ohio State wrestling captain and brother to one of many early whistleblowers, provided an unsparing evaluation throughout a 2020 legislative listening to in Columbus. DiSabato testified that he repeatedly urged Jordan and others on the teaching workers to intervene.
“Jim Jordan called me crying … begging me to go against my brother,” DiSabato mentioned, referring to a name he mentioned he acquired after the abuse allegations first grew to become public. “He’s throwing us under the bus — all of us. He’s a coward.”
Ohio State has since doled out tens of hundreds of thousands of {dollars} in settlements. Jordan’s political committee paid $84,000 to a conservative public relations agency in 2018 to assist handle the fallout, marketing campaign finance disclosures present.
Unlike many in Congress, Jordan has not adopted among the flashier trappings of workplace, showing often in a blue button-up and gold tie, sans jacket and together with his shirt sleeves rolled up. Nor, not like lots of his friends, does Jordan seem to have skilled a dramatic enchancment in his private funds whereas serving in Congress, public monetary disclosures present.
When Jordan first entered Congress, his spouse, Polly, earned a modest wage from a western Ohio college district whereas he relied on a mid-five-figure earnings from a deferred compensation plan. His most up-to-date disclosure, filed final yr, present Jordan’s web value has improved solely barely, because of his $174,000 wage as a congressman and royalties from a political memoir.
“It’s true, retail legislative activity for him, so there’s no like, ‘I’m gonna buy a house in Washington and live there,’” mentioned Ohio Senate President Matt Huffman, a longtime ally. “He’s doesn’t have any interest in that.”
Jordan’s ability set proved notably helpful within the politically charged years after Trump gained the White House.
His allegiance was on full show in the course of the Justice Department’s investigation into potential coordination between Russia and Trump’s 2016 presidential marketing campaign, when he used his platform on the House Judiciary Committee to rail towards the probe as politically motivated and to assault the regulation enforcement officers who supervised it.
In recognition of Jordan’s rising affect, Republicans moved him to the House Intelligence committee in the course of the first impeachment proceedings towards Trump in 2019. And when Republicans gained the House in final yr’s election, Jordan secured the chairmanship of the Judiciary Committee, one of the vital prestigious posts in Congress — and one well-suited to his combative model.
In tense hearings this yr, Jordan has sparred with Cabinet secretaries, FBI officers and ambassadors alike, accusing all of them of collaborating in a “weaponization” of presidency towards conservatives. Jordan involves the hearings with a wrestler’s mindset, attempting to anticipate his opponents’ strikes forward of time throughout preparatory periods in his Capitol Hill workplace.
Jordan can be among the many Republicans main the impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden. Republicans say the investigation is required to root out whether or not the Biden household corruptly profited from their connections in Washington.
But it was within the interval after Trump misplaced the election to Biden in 2020 that Jordan’s strongest connections to Trump have been solid. Jordan repeatedly forged doubt on the result of the competition whereas organizing the House Republican response.
Documents obtained by Congress via its investigation of the assault supply a window into Jordan’s involvement in Trump’s bid to remain in workplace.
Days after the election, Jordan traveled with fellow GOP Rep. Scott Perry to Pennsylvania to fulfill with the Republican state House speaker, the place the 2 congressmen “raised some questions regarding what I’ll call the legal process,” then-Speaker Bryan Cutler informed investigators.
On Dec. 21, 2020, Jordan was amongst these attending a White House assembly centered on pressuring then Vice President Mike Pence to make use of his ceremonial function presiding over the electoral faculty to overturn the election, in response to paperwork from the investigation.
Jordan additionally hosted a Jan. 2, 2021 convention name with the White House to debate logistics for Jan 6, together with Republican plans to object to the election’s certification, in response to name logs and testimony from Cassidy Hutchinson, an aide to Trump’s chief of workers Mark Meadows.
White House name logs additionally present that Jordan known as Trump twice on Jan. 6 — each earlier than and after the assault.
During his speech that day, which preceded the Capitol assault, Trump singled out Jordan for reward.
“There’s so many weak Republicans. And we have great ones. Jim Jordan and some of these guys, they’re out there fighting,” Trump mentioned. “The House guys are fighting.”
In the times after the Capitol was attacked, Jordan raised the potential for getting presidential pardons for members of Congress, although by no means immediately requested for one, Hutchinson informed the congressional committee.
Per week later, Trump introduced Jordan with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor.
Source: www.bostonherald.com”