In pictures: The January 6 Capitol riot | Shay Horse/NurPhoto/Getty Images https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/03/politics/gallery/january-6-capitol-insurrection/index.html
Jordan is not an outlier in the House GOP cosmos. His pugilistic advocacy of phony Trump narratives—the 2020 election was rigged; there was no Russian attack on the 2016 election; Trump did nothing wrong when he pressed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to dig up dirt on Joe Biden; the current prosecutions of Trump are Deep State plots—is in sync with the positions expressed by most House Republicans. Yet in one area, Jordan has distinguished himself: He was one of the small number of House GOP members who actively schemed with Trump to overturn the results of the last presidential election.
On January 6—a day of violent chaos and insurrection—Jordan spoke with Trump by phone at least twice. As the committee noted, Jordan “has provided inconsistent public statements about how many times they spoke and what they discussed.” That day Jordan also received five calls from Giuliani, and the two connected at least twice in the evening, as Giuliani was attempting to encourage members of Congress to continue objecting to Biden’s electoral votes. In the days after January 6, Jordan spoke with Trump White House staff about the prospect of presidential pardons for members of Congress.
Days after the November election, he spoke at a “Stop the Steal” rally in front of the Pennsylvania state Capitol. He spread election conspiracy theories within right-wing media. He endorsed Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell’s bogus claims that Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic had robbed Trump of electoral victory. He called for a congressional investigation of electoral fraud for which there was no evidence and demanded a special counsel be appointed. He endorsed state legislatures canceling vote tallies and selecting their own presidential electors. He urged Trump not to concede. He demanded Congress not certify Joe Biden’s victory in the ceremony scheduled for January 6, 2021.
When Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen said to Trump that the Justice Department couldn’t “snap its fingers and change the outcome of the election,” Trump responded, “I don’t expect you to do that. Just say the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the Republican Congressmen.”
Many Republicans endorsed Trump’s Big Lie about the election. But Jordan was one of only a handful of congressional Republicans who actively conspired with Trump to overturn the election results. As he runs for House speaker, Republicans appear eager to ignore that. Yet by embracing Jordan, they tie themselves further to that attack on democracy and the Constitution.
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Jim Jordan tried to help Trump mount a coup. Now he gets to be speaker?
