About
Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) was first elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 2006, representing Ohio’s 4th Congressional District. As one of the most conservative members of Congress, he is a founding member of the far-right House Freedom Caucus who served as its first chair from 2015–17 and is now deputy chair. When the Freedom Caucus pushed for the removal of then Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-Ohio) in late 2015, he said of Jordan that he had never met someone “who spent more time tearing things apart.”
During his almost two decades in Congress, Jordan has never sponsored a piece of legislation that has become law. Yet, as the current chairman of the powerful House Judiciary Committee and as the ranking member on the House Oversight Committee from 2019–20, he has built a reputation for pursuing investigations into Democrats.
Jordan is a devout Trump supporter who has benefited from his endorsements. In May 2022, he told Fox News viewers that “the Trump endorsement is the most powerful political endorsement in American history, without a doubt, we understand that. The country has common sense… The Republican Party is the party of common sense and regular people; [the] Democrat Party is the party of craziness.” In October 2023, he is in the running for speaker of the House—again with Trump’s endorsement.
Before being elected to Congress, Jordan was a member of the Ohio House of Representatives from 1995–2000 and the Ohio Senate from 2001–07. Earlier in his career, when he was a wrestling coach at Ohio State University, several former wrestlers said that he was aware of, but declined to act on, sexual abuse committed by team physician Richard Strauss. Jordan denied any knowledge of misconduct by Strauss. In February 2020, a former team captain testified before the Ohio state legislature that Jordan aided and abetted in the university’s cover-up of the abuse.
Jordan adamantly defended Trump during the 2019 impeachment proceedings related to his withholding aid to Ukraine unless its president, Volodymyr Zelensky, opened an investigation into the Biden family. After the 2020 presidential election, the congressman continued to show his loyalty to Trump by voting against certifying the Electoral College results, against impeaching Trump for inciting the mob that attacked the Capitol, and against establishing a special House committee to investigate the attack, among other measures.
Just days before leaving office, President Trump awarded Jordan the Medal of Freedom in a closed-door ceremony. Several months later, the congressman led the House opposition to the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, claiming that “it’s never been easier to vote in America.”
Despite the two election conspiracy-related indictments brought against Trump and selected allies in 2023, Jordan has not been held to account for the significant role he played in the insurrection and has actually gained power in Congress in the intervening years.
January 6, 2021
- On Jan. 5, Jordan texted White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows to urge then Vice President Mike Pence to “call out all the electoral votes that he believes are unconstitutional as no electoral votes at all.”
- Just before the riot disrupted the Electoral College vote count, Jordan spoke on the House floor to question how “the guy who never left his house” during the 2020 presidential campaign could have possibly won. He argued that Congress needed to object to certifying the outcome because “60 million Americans think [the election] was stolen.”
- Just hours after Trump supporters stormed the Capitol, Jordan joined 146 other congressional Republicans in refusing to certify Biden’s win of the 2020 presidential election.
- Jordan blamed Democrats for the attack on the Capitol because the party “spent the whole summer saying rioters and looters” at Black Lives Matter protests were peaceful, supported police reform measures, and failed to increase security at the Capitol during the Electoral College certification process.
- Jordan led the House opposition to impeaching Trump for his role in inciting the insurrection, saying, “It’s not just about impeachment anymore, it’s about canceling… the president and anyone that disagrees with [Democrats].”
- Jordan voted against establishing a House committee to investigate the Jan. 6 attack, calling the effort politically motivated and a distraction from President Biden’s shortcomings in terms of crime, inflation, gas prices, and the U.S. exit from Afghanistan.
- In May 2022, the House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack subpoenaed Jordan to provide details on multiple communications he allegedly had with Trump on and before Jan. 6. Although he acknowledges that he spoke to Trump that day, Jordan refused to cooperate with the committee, echoing the former president’s claim that the effort was just another one of the Democrats’ “partisan witch hunts.”
- Given Jordan’s refusal to cooperate, the House Select Committee urged the House Ethics Committee to discipline him for breaking the rules of their chamber and discrediting Congress, thereby undermining its “longstanding power to investigate in support of its lawmaking authority” and implying that members of Congress “may disregard legal obligations that apply to ordinary citizens.” Since that committee works in secrecy on ongoing investigations, it is unclear whether any action has been taken to date.
- The House Select Committee concluded that Jordan had been involved in multiple meetings and calls with both Trump and senior White House officials about how to delay the joint session of Congress that would formalize Biden’s victory. The committee labeled him “a significant player in President Trump’s efforts” to overturn the results of the election and as one of the congressmen who spoke with White House staff immediately after the insurrection to discuss “the prospect of Presidential pardons for Members of Congress.”
- An extensive report by the Center for American Progress in April 2023 underscores the danger of Jordan remaining among the key players in Congress who has not been held accountable in any way for his role in the insurrection. In fact, rewarding both former Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and Jordan “with leadership positions… makes a mockery of democracy,” the report points out.
The Big Lie
- In October 2020, Jordan claimed that Democrats were working to steal the election and two days after the election, he spoke at a “Stop the Steal” rally in Pennsylvania. However, on Jan. 11, 2021, during a remote House session, he claimed that he “never said this election was stolen,” a comment CNN found factually false.
- In November 2020, Jordan participated in a meeting at the White House with other Republican members of Congress on how to use the Electoral College certification process to challenge Biden’s election victory.
- On Dec. 10, 2020, Jordan signed an amicus brief in a lawsuit filed by the state of Texas urging the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the results of the presidential election in four swing states: Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
- Both before and after the election, Jordan publically pushed endless unfounded claims of cheating in the 2020 presidential election.
- On Jan. 5, 2021, Jordan railed on Fox Business that “there was fraud on top of the unconstitutional way they ran the election,” as the New York Times points out in a comprehensive piece detailing how Republicans legitimized the myth of a stolen election.
- Texts obtained by the Jan. 6 House Select Committee indicate that former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows tapped Jordan as a go-between for House members willing to promote false voter fraud allegations. They also show that Jordan sent a text message to Meadows on Jan. 5 outlining a legal theory that Vice President Mike Pence could block certification of the 2020 election results.
- In June 2021, Jordan called for an investigation of Justice Department officials who declined to investigate Trump’s various claims of voter fraud after the 2020 election.
- As the indictments against Trump mounted in 2023, Jordan remained one of his staunchest congressional allies, launching investigations into various aspects of the Biden administration and showing his ongoing willingness to brazenly lie for the former president in congressional hearings.
- In August 2023, Jordan used his position as chair of the House Judiciary Committee to launch an investigation into the office of Fulton County, Georgia’s attorney general shortly after AG Fani Willis announced a sweeping indictment of Trump and 19 others for their roles in conspiring to overturn the legitimate outcome of the 2020 presidential election in Georgia.
- In September and October 2023, Fulton County Attorney General Fani Willis pushed back against Jordan’s attempts to question her case against Trump and his co-defendants, writing in response to his first requests: “Your job description as a legislator does not include criminal law enforcement, nor does it include supervising a specific criminal trial because you believe that doing so will promote your partisan political objectives. Your letter makes clear that you lack a basic understanding of the law, its practice, and the ethical obligations of attorneys generally and prosecutors specifically.” A month later, the attorney general rebuffed the congressman again, noting: “A charitable explanation of your correspondence is that you are ignorant of the United States and Georgia Constitutions and codes. A more troubling explanation is that you are abusing your authority as Chairman of the Committee on the Judiciary to attempt to obstruct and interfere with a Georgia criminal prosecution.”
Election Audits
- As early as November 10, 2020, Jordan called for an audit of the presidential election and called mail-in ballots a “recipe for disaster.”
- In October 2021, he testified at a hearing about the Arizona election, asking rhetorically, “Why do Democrats hate audits?” and claiming that Pennsylvania made “unconstitutional changes” to its election laws to benefit Biden.
Top contributors for the 2024 election cycle.
The organizations themselves did not donate, rather the money came from the organization's PAC, its individual members or employees or owners, and those individuals' immediate families.
| Organization Name | Total | PACs | Individuals |
|---|---|---|---|
| Peck Enterprises | $17,040.00 | $0.00 | $17,040.00 |
| Goldman Sachs | $13,200.00 | $0.00 | $13,200.00 |
| Western Mutual Insurance | $13,200.00 | $0.00 | $13,200.00 |
| Indeck Energy Services | $12,400.00 | $0.00 | $12,400.00 |
| 1a Auto Inc | $12,100.00 | $0.00 | $12,100.00 |
| House Freedom Fund | $11,700.00 | $5,000.00 | $6,700.00 |
| United Parcel Service | $11,402.00 | $10,000.00 | $1,402.00 |
| Rex Lumber | $11,200.00 | $0.00 | $11,200.00 |
| Abbott Laboratories | $10,835.00 | $10,000.00 | $835.00 |
| Home Depot | $10,779.00 | $10,000.00 | $779.00 |