Who is Jim Jordan, the House GOP’s nominee for speaker?

Who is Jim Jordan, the House GOP's nominee for speaker?
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Firebrand The House is scheduled to vote on Rep. Jim Jordan, the second nominee from the House Republicans for speaker, on Tuesday after Rep. Kevin McCarthy was removed from office. Jordan is the focus of the GOP investigations into the Biden administration.

After their initial candidate, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise resigned, House Republicans officially chose Jordan as their choice on Friday. Since McCarthy was fired as speaker on October 3 by a vote of 216 to 210, the House has been without a speaker.

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Since entering the House in 2007, Jordan has developed a reputation as an ardent opponent of Democratic White Houses whose flaming rhetoric has often scorched Republicans.

Jordan was a founding member of the House Freedom Caucus, which was formed by the most conservative members of the party with the goal of ousting John Boehner, the then-Speaker of the House. Donald Trump found an ally in Jordan during his time as president who, like Trump, rarely held back.

Who is Jim Jordan, then?

How Jim Jordan became the politician he is today

Jordan, a 59-year-old native of Troy, Ohio, has worked in politics for most of his adult life; in 1995, he was elected to the Ohio House of Representatives.

Jordan, a University of Wisconsin alum, earned his law degree from Capital University Law School in Ohio in 2001, the same year he was elected to the position of state senator after serving as a state representative.

During the second term of former President George W. Bush, Jordan was chosen to serve in the U.S. House of Representatives in 2006 and entered office in 2007.

Function within the House Freedom Caucus

Jordan joined the House Freedom Caucus as a founding member in 2015 and presided as its inaugural chairman from that year to 2017. The conservative caucus members, led by Jordan, campaigned for a resolution to “vacate the chair” over then-Speaker John Boehner, which led to the resignation of former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. In September 2015, Boehner announced his resignation before any vote could be held.

Since then, the caucus has earned a reputation for taking a take-it-or-leave-it approach to policy and the debt ceiling, frequently pressuring more moderate Republicans to make concessions. And many of its members were among Trump’s most outspoken supporters during his presidency.

The years of Trump

Even after Trump departed office, Jordan remained one of the House’s most fervent Trump supporters.

Jordan slammed the federal and congressional inquiries into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. Additionally, he attempted to stop the impeachment inquiry hearing related to Trump’s phone discussion with Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the president of Ukraine.

Jordan was one of the more than 100 House Republicans who signed an amicus brief in support of the case that was filed with the Supreme Court to dispute the election results. Jordan was also a fervent backer of challenges to Trump’s defeat following the 2020 election. The top court decided not to take the case.

Jordan has received Trump’s support as speaker.

Committees

The Select Committee on Benghazi, which looked into the 2012 killings of four American troops at the American embassy in Libya when Hillary Clinton was secretary of state and Barack Obama was president, included Jordan as a member. Jordan charged Clinton with not taking charge throughout the crisis.

When Democrats took over the House in 2019 and 2020, he served as the committee’s top Republican.

Jordan is currently the chairman of the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government as well as the House Judiciary Committee.

In those capacities throughout the Biden administration, Jordan and James Comer, chairman of the House Oversight Committee, have convened hearings and issued subpoenas in an effort to learn more about the economic affairs of the Biden family, with a focus on Hunter Biden. After a tentative plea deal between the president’s son’s attorneys and federal prosecutors broke down in court, the president’s son is now facing felony firearms charges.

Criticisms of Ohio State University

Jordan’s bid for the speakership has rekindled a dispute that existed when he was Ohio State University’s wrestling coach before he was elected to the state legislature.

From 1986 to 1994, Jordan, a four-time high school state champion and two-time NCAA Division I wrestling champion, served as an assistant wrestling coach.

Mike DiSabato and Dunyasha Yetts, two former college wrestlers, claimed Jordan was informed of claims that a team doctor who is now deceased was abusing athletes. Jordan has consistently denied knowing about the abuse, and he has never faced any allegations of sexual misconduct.

No abuse was known to us. Never knew abuse existed. When the former wrestlers alleged Jordan was aware in 2018, Jordan responded, “If we had, we would have reported it.

Former students who claimed that wrestlers and other athletes had been abused by doctor Richard Strauss brought the assault to light decades after it had occurred. In 2005, Strauss committed suicide. At least 177 kids, including at least 48 wrestlers, are said to have been molested by Strauss while he served as a school doctor, according to an independent inquiry done by the law firm Perkins Coie on behalf of The Ohio State University and made public in 2019. According to the article, the late doctor’s actions were an “open secret” in the athletics division.

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