AMAC Exclusive by Shane Harris
Jim Jordan once thoroughly embarrassed Adam Schiff in his own committee hearing, telling the California Democrat that “our indulgence wore out with you a long time ago.” He was a regular celebrity at Trump White House parties and is a constant thorn in the side of House Democrats. And now, he has Nancy Pelosi shaking in her high-fashion boots.
Last week, Pelosi made headlines when she rejected the nomination of Jordan and Republican Jim Banks of Indiana to serve on her commission to “investigate” the January 6th Capitol riots. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, who nominated Jordan and Banks, called the move an “egregious abuse of power” that would “irreparably damage this institution.”
Shortly after those comments, McCarthy announced that he would be pulling all five of his picks to serve on the Select Committee, and that Republicans would be conducting their own investigation.
Jordan issued his own rebuke of Pelosi for her actions, saying that “Speaker Pelosi just admitted the obvious, that the January 6th Select Committee is nothing more than a partisan political charade.”
In recent years, Jordan has cultivated a reputation as a successful opposition leader to many of the most radical Democrat policies, willing to take on any fight and expose the lies and hypocrisy of Washington elites. It is easy to see why Pelosi would be reluctant to give him a high profile platform on her January 6 committee.
Prior to the 2016 election, Jordan played an instrumental role in questioning former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton over her role in misleading the public about terrorist attacks in Benghazi that left four Americans dead.
During a hearing before a House select committee organized to investigate the incident, Clinton claimed that she had not lied when she stated that the deaths were the result of a protest rather than a terrorist attack. However, Jordan pointed to personal emails from Clinton to her family members that appeared to indicate Clinton knew the Benghazi incident was a terrorist attack at the time she publicly stated it was only a protest. “You can’t be square with the American people” Jordan said, going on to explain that the truth could have negatively affected then-President Barack Obama’s reelection chances because “Libya was supposed to be… this great success story for the Obama White House and the Clinton State Department.”
Jordan was also pivotal in exposing Democrat dishonesty surrounding the now-debunked Russian collusion allegations against President Trump and his 2016 campaign. During Robert Mueller’s testimony before Congress, Jordan grilled the former special counsel on why he chose not to dig deeper into the origins of the false accusations against President Trump. “The President [was] falsely accused of conspiracy,” Jordan said at the hearing in 2019. “At the end of that 22 months, you find no conspiracy and what [do] the Democrats want to do — they want to keep investigating. They want to keep going… maybe a better course of action is to figure out how the false accusations started.”
Jordan proved himself to be a particularly effective spokesman in opposing Democrats’ first impeachment effort against President Trump. Time and again, Jordan went toe to toe with Democrat Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, repeatedly exposing weaknesses in the Democrat impeachment case. After Trump was acquitted in the Senate, Jordan was heralded as a hero by many conservatives.
Before leaving office, President Trump awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom – the highest honor a president can bestow on a civilian.
During the Democrats’ second impeachment attempt, Jordan was once again a leading defender of President Trump, lambasting Democrats for trying to “cancel the President” by proceeding with a shaky impeachment case just one week before Trump left office. In an op-ed published by Fox News, Jordan argued that Democratic efforts to impeach Trump were really about the fact that “Democrats don’t want President Trump to run for office again” because “they’re scared of him.” Once again, the impeachment effort failed in the Senate.
Throughout the coronavirus pandemic, Jordan made a name for himself by consistently holding government officials like Dr. Anthony Fauci accountable during oversight hearings. During one exchange earlier this year, Jordan pointedly asked Dr. Fauci “When do Americans get their freedoms back?” while pushing the nation’s top epidemiologist to provide a more specific timeline for when Americans could stop wearing masks. When Fauci refused to provide an answer, Jordan continued pursuing the line of inquiry in a back and forth that eventually led Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D-CA) to yell at Jordan “You need to respect the chair and shut your mouth!”
Once it became clear that the virus which causes COVID-19 likely escaped from a virology lab in Wuhan, China – after Democrats and Dr. Fauci repeatedly dismissed that very theory for well over a year – Jordan also led the charge in House Oversight Committee hearings questioning how much Dr. Fauci knew about gain of function research in China that could have led to the creation of the virus. “Why don’t Democrats in Congress want to know where this thing [COVID-19] started?” Jordan asked. “Is it because Speaker Pelosi called it a diversion last year when we were raising these questions?… Maybe Dr. Fauci would have to answer some tough questions if we dug into how this thing started.”
At another hearing just last month, Jordan laid out a timeline using recently released emails from Dr. Fauci that further suggested Fauci knew “American taxpayers had funded gain of function research in Wuhan, China” as early as January of 2020.
With President Trump out of public office, many conservatives are looking to leaders like Jordan to advance the Trump agenda in Congress should Republicans retake the House next year. Jordan has proven that he possesses the same fearless energy in his battles with Democrats that originally helped President Trump define his political brand.
Given how effective Jordan has become as a leader and communicator within the Republican Party, it only makes political sense that Pelosi would be extremely wary of granting him a new platform heading into 2022. After years of Jordan exposing Democrat hypocrisy and embarrassing Democrat witnesses in hearings, Pelosi must recognize that Jim Jordan becoming the face of Republican opposition to her agenda could bode ill for her and her party in future elections.
Although Jordan has publicly stated that he only hopes to become chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, where he is currently the Republican Ranking Member, Jordan’s rising profile could eventually make him a contender for the Speaker’s Gavel. Jordan previously made a bid for Minority Leader in 2018, a race that was ultimately won by McCarthy.
Looking back on Jordan’s record of success dismantling Democrat narratives, Pelosi would be wise to fear that Jim Jordan would be a one-man wrecking crew against Democrats’ misleading account of January 6th heading into the midterm elections next year.