Rep. Jim Jordan will not comply with the Jan. 6 Select Committee’s request that he voluntarily appear before the panel and provide investigators with information about his conversations with former President Donald Trump.
“It amounts to an unprecedented and inappropriate demand to examine the basis for a colleague’s decision on a particular matter pending before the House of Representatives,” the Ohio Republican said in a Sunday letter to Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, chairman of the committee.
In the letter, Jordan said the committee is not “conducting a fair-minded and objective inquiry” because it has not publicly requested information from Democratic members. He pointed the finger at House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for not doing more to ensure a strong security posture at the Capitol before the attack.
“Your attempt to pry into the deliberative process informing a Member about legislative matters before the House is an outrageous abuse of the Select Committee’s authority,” Jordan said, warning that it would “set a dangerous precedent for future Congresses.”
JAN. 6 COMMITTEE ADMITS TO ALTERING TEXT MESSAGE BETWEEN MARK MEADOWS AND JIM JORDAN
The House committee formed to investigate the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol asked Jordan to voluntarily cooperate with the committee on Dec. 22. Jordan was selected by House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy to sit as a member of the panel. But in an unprecedented move, Pelosi vetoed McCarthy’s picks of Jordan and Indiana Rep. Jim Banks. That prompted McCarthy to pull his thee other picks, leaving only Democratic-appointed members on the committee.
In a letter to Jordan, the Jan. 6 committee said it wanted to talk to the congressman from Ohio about his at least one or possibly multiple conversations with Trump that day, as well as his communications with those in the Willard War Room, the Trump legal team, White House personnel, and others involved in planning Jan. 6 events.
— Rep. Jim Jordan (@Jim_Jordan) January 10, 2022
Jordan said in an October committee hearing that he had talked to Trump at least once that day, after the attack happened, and may have talked to him before.
The committee also wanted to know about Jordan’s involvement in what it called “strategies for overturning the results of the 2020 election.”
“At the time of the security breach of the Capitol, I was present in the House chamber performing my official duties pursuant to the U.S. Constitution and federal law. The other topics referenced in your letter likewise relate to the performance of official duties,” Jordan said.
Jordan also railed against the committee for erroneously stating that former New York Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik was in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 5 when he was actually in New York; for misrepresenting and altering a text message that Jordan had sent former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows; and for misportraying another text message to Meadows as being from a lawmaker when it was from former Energy Secretary Rick Perry.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
“The Select Committee has exploited this lack of transparency to selectively leak information, alter and misrepresent nonpublic documents in its possession, and spread misinformation to paint a false and misleading narrative,” Jordan said.
The Jan. 6 committee has sought “voluntary cooperation” from one other sitting member of Congress so far: Rep. Scott Perry, a Pennsylvania Republican who is the new chairman of the House Freedom Caucus. Perry quickly declined the committee’s request.
In a December interview with the Washington Examiner, Jordan said that Trump “did nothing wrong” on Jan. 6 when it came to calling off the rioters soon enough.
