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      What did Jim Jordan know about the insurrection and when did he know it? | Sidney Blumenthal

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      OpinionUS Capitol attackWhat did Jim Jordan know about the insurrection and when did he know it?Sidney BlumenthalI have some questions for the Republican congressman about events at the US Capitol on 6 January

      From the archive: The martyrdom of Mike Pence
      Tue 27 Jul 2021 06.00 EDTLast modified on Tue 27 Jul 2021 08.57 EDT“That fucking guy Jim Jordan. That son of a bitch,” Liz Cheney, a Republican congresswoman from Wyoming, told the chairman of the joint chiefs, Gen Mark Milley, about the Republican congressman from Ohio, according to I Alone Can Fix It, by Washington Post reporters Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker.House begins Capitol attack inquiry as Republicans set to boycott proceedingsRead more“While these maniacs are going through the place,” said Cheney, about the insurrection at the Capitol on 6 January, “I’m standing in the aisle and he said, ‘We need to get the ladies away from the aisle. Let me help you.’ I smacked his hand away and told him, ‘Get away from me. You fucking did this.’”When the House Republican leader, Kevin McCarthy, a congressman from California, named Jordan and Jim Banks, of Indiana, both of whom challenged the legitimacy of Joe Biden’s victory, to join the 13-member select committee on the Capitol insurrection, Speaker Nancy Pelosi rejected the two men.“With respect for the integrity of the investigation, with an insistence on the truth and with concern about statements made and actions taken by these members, I must reject the recommendations of Representatives Banks and Jordan to the select committee,” Pelosi stated.Jordan had said: “Americans instinctively know there was something wrong with this election.”Banks had questioned “the legality of some votes cast in the 2020 election” and charged: “Make no mistake, Nancy Pelosi created this committee solely to malign conservatives and to justify the left’s authoritarian agenda.”McCarthy responded by withdrawing all of his five Republicans from participation in the investigation.Jim Jordan is a wiry, hyperactive bundle of nerves who tosses off his suit jacket, coiled to leap into the ring and twist the arms of his opponents. The former college wrestling champion in the 134lb class represents the locker-room jock culture in the House of Representatives, snapping his towel in committee hearings to show off his primacy as an alpha big man on campus. Jordan’s political moves are drawn from his wrestling repertoire: the leg shot, the half-nelson and the slam.From 1987 to 1995, Jordan was an assistant wrestling coach at the Ohio State University, where many athletes claim he knew about and turned a blind eye to Dr Richard Strauss’s sexual abuse of at least 177 students. Jordan has denied that he engaged in a cover-up. One of the abused wrestlers, Mark Coleman, who was a close friend and roommate of Jordan and became an Ultimate Fighting Champion, told the Wall Street Journal (in comments he would later retract): “There’s no way unless he’s got dementia or something that he’s got no recollection of what was going on at Ohio State.” Another abused wrestler, Dunyasha Yetts, said: “If Jordan says he didn’t know about it then he’s lying.” Jordan refused to cooperate with the university’s investigation: goodbye, Columbus.The report on the abuse, issued in 2019 by the law firm hired by OSU to conduct the investigation, Perkins Coie, concluded that Strauss’s predatory sexual behavior was an “open secret”, according to students, and that “coaches, trainers and other team physicians were fully aware of Strauss’ activities, and yet few seemed inclined to do anything to stop it.” (Strauss killed himself in 2005.)At a hearing held by the Ohio state legislature’s civil justice committee, in February 2020, Adam DiSabato, an OSU wrestling champion, testified that Jordan tried to get him to persuade his brother, another OSU wrestler, Mike DiSabato, who was a whistleblower about the abuse, to withdraw his statement. Every year as assistant coach, Jordan awarded a “King of Sauna” certificate to the wrestler “who talked the most smack”, reported the Columbus Dispatch. According to Mike DiSabato, Jordan was in the sauna daily, where much of the sexual molestation took place. “Jim Jordan called me crying, crying, groveling, on the Fourth of July … begging me to go against my brother, begging me, crying for half an hour,” Adam DiSabato said at the hearing. “That’s the kind of cover-up that’s going on here. He’s a coward. He’s a coward.”After serving in the Ohio legislature, Jordan entered national politics in the interregnum of rightwing extremism between the fall of Newt Gingrich and the rise of the Tea Party. He was elected to the House in 2006, during a midterm Democratic sweep that put them into the majority, but the backbencher vaulted suddenly into prominence when the Republicans captured the House in the reaction to the Obama administration in 2010. Elected by the emboldened conservative faction to head the Republican Study Group, he sought to trip up the Republican speaker of the House, John Boehner, eventually forcing the federal government shutdown of 2013, which Boehner denounced as “fucking stupid”.I Alone Can Fix It: Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker on their Trump bestsellerRead moreJordan founded the House Freedom Caucus, more radical than the Republican Study Group, to push Boehner out. “Anarchists,” Boehner called them. “They want total chaos.” He singled out Jordan as “a legislative terrorist”. Boehner quit under the pressure in 2015. In an interview with CBS about his memoir published this year, On the House, Boehner remarked about Jordan: “I just never saw a guy who spent more time tearing things apart – never building anything, never putting anything together.”Liz Cheney, who Pelosi has appointed to the select committee, and was stripped of her position as chair of the House Republican Conference in an effort led by Jordan, said McCarthy named Jordan to the committee in order to sabotage it.“At every opportunity, the minority leader has attempted to prevent the American people from understanding what happened, to block this investigation,” she stated. Jordan, she pointed out, could also not serve on the committee because he “may well be a material witness to events that led to that day, that led to 6 January”.The questions that Jordan may be asked if he were to testify would cover his knowledge and involvement in the planning, organization and funding of the insurrection, as well as his participation in the concerted effort to prevent the constitutional certification of the presidential election and the propagation of Trump’s “big lie” that the election was a fraud and stolen.1) On 20 October, Jim Jordan tweeted: “Democrats are trying to steal the election, before the election.” He objected to the Pennsylvania supreme court’s decision to allow the counting of ballots postmarked on or before but received up to three days after election day, as an attempt “to steal the election”. (Pennsylvania never did count those ballots in determining certification of Biden as the winner of the state and the total votes affected by the procedure were minuscule compared with the margin of victory.)What does Jordan know about the creation of the “stop the steal” myth? Were his statements about a fraudulent election and attacking the Pennsylvania supreme court for its role in “stealing the election” made in coordination with anyone at the White House or known to them in advance? If he got marching orders, where did he get them from?2) Two days after the election, Jordan was a speaker of a “Stop the Steal” rally in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, before the state capitol. The rally was organized by Scott Presler, a former field director for the Virginia Republican party, speaker at the 2020 Conservative Political Action Conference, and activist for ACT for America, cited by the Anti-Defamation League as an anti-Muslim hate group and labeled an “extremist hate group” by the Southern Poverty Law Center.“The private Facebook page used to organize the events was full of extreme anti-Muslim and white nationalist rhetoric and went unpoliced despite the fact that new ACT hire Scott Presler was an administrator for the group,” the SPLC reported.Presler mobilized support for the 6 January “Stop the Steal” rally. “I will 100% be in DC on January 6th to support President Trump. Who’s going?” he posted on his Facebook page on 22 December. He tweeted a video showing his presence in the crowd on 6 January before the Capitol.Who funded the Harrisburg rally? What is Jordan’s relationship to Scott Presler? What are the communications between Jordan, his staff and Presler?3) On 11 January, the same day an article of impeachment was filed in the House against Donald Trump for “incitement of insurrection”, Trump awarded Jordan the Presidential Medal of Freedom in a closed ceremony at the White House.The White House cited his defense of Trump in the investigation conducted by the former FBI director Robert Mueller into Russian influence to elect Trump in the 2016 campaign and in the first impeachment of Trump for seeking to bribe the government of Ukraine in exchange for fabricated political dirt about Joe Biden.Jordan was being honored, according to the White House statement, because he had “worked to unmask the Russia hoax and take on deep state corruption – confronting senior justice department officials for obstructing Congress and exposing the fraudulent origins of the Russia collusion lie”, and had “led the effort to confront the impeachment witch hunt”.What conversations did Jordan have at the ceremony with Trump or others about overturning the election and how to defend Trump?4) On 18 November, Jordan called on Congress to investigate the election “amid troubling reports of irregularities and improprieties” – though he presented no factual evidence. On 4 December, Jordan tweeted: “Over 50 million Americans think this election was stolen. That’s more than one third of the electorate. For that reason alone, we owe it to the country to investigate election integrity.”During an interview with CNN on 7 December, Jordan was asked whether Trump should concede the election.“No. No way, no way, no way,” he replied. He claimed there were “all kinds of crazy things happening in Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, all these in Nevada.” He stated no facts. During an interview on Fox News on 9 December, Jordan said: “I don’t know how you can ever convince me that President Trump didn’t actually win this thing based on all the things you see.” He offered nothing that anyone had seen.Did Jordan coordinate his statements with Trump, the White House staff, other Republican House members, or Trump’s legal team led by Rudy Giuliani?5) On 21 December, Jordan attended private meetings at the White House with Trump and several other Republican House members “where they strategized over a last-ditch effort to overturn the election results”, Politico reported. “It was a back-and-forth concerning the planning and strategy for 6 January,” said Representative Mo Brooks, a Republican congressman from Alabama.What was said at that meeting? What were those plans? Was the rally discussed? Was the idea discussed of sending Trump supporters to intimidate and interrupt members of Congress in the certification process? Was Jordan’s role on the House floor on 6 January against certification raised at that meeting? What did Jordan say?6) On Saturday night, 2 January, Jordan participated in a call organized by the White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, with Trump and 50 House members and senators “to address their goal of overturning certain states’ electoral college results on Wednesday”, according to Fox News. On Sunday morning, 3 January, Jordan and Brooks appeared together on Fox News to discuss their strategy. Jordan stated that Republican members of Congress were the “ultimate arbiter here, the ultimate check and balance”, on the “unconstitutional” certification of the election results on 6 January. Again, Jordan presented no evidence of fraud. Senator Mitt Romney, a Republican from Utah, called the actions led by Jordan and others an “egregious ploy”.Did Jordan broadcast falsehoods in order to encourage Trump supporters to come to Washington on 6 January?7) On 5 January, Brian Jack, the political director in the White House, called Mo Brooks to ask him to address the “Stop the Steal” rally on 6 January. “Today is the day American patriots start taking down names and kicking ass,” Brooks shouted at the 6 January rally “Are you willing to do what it takes to fight for America? Louder! Will you fight for America?” Subsequently, Kevin McCarthy hired Brian Jack as his political director.What does Jordan know about Brian Jack’s role in the organization of the January rally? Did he speak with Brian Jack about the planning and the rally? Has he spoken to him since about the events of 6 January?8) On 5 January, Adam Piper, the executive director of the Republican Attorneys General Association (Raga), participated in a call organized by the White House to help plan the rally and events of 6 January. The non-profit arm of Raga, the Rule of Law Defense Fund, promoted attendance at the rally through robocalls to Republican activists. “At 1pm, we will march to the Capitol building and call on Congress to stop the steal,” said the robocall, according to the investigative organization Documented. “We are hoping patriots like you will join us to continue to fight to protect the integrity of our elections.”What does Jordan know about Raga’s involvement? Did Jordan speak with any donors or groups about funding or participating in the events of 6 January? Did anyone ask him to raise money or speak with anyone organizing for 6 January?9) For several days before 6 January, Democratic members of the House said they observed a number of Republican members giving what appeared to be tours of the Capitol to groups of people who may have later participated in the insurrection. Representative Mikie Sherrill, a Democrat from New Jersey, said she witnessed Republican House members on 5 January conducting what she described as a walk-through for “reconnaissance for the next day”.“Those members of Congress who had groups coming through the Capitol that I saw on 5 January, a reconnaissance for the next day, those members of Congress that incited this violent crowd,” Sherrill said, “those members who attempted to help our president undermine our democracy, I’m going to see that they’re held accountable.”On 13 January, 30 Democratic House members signed a letter calling for an investigation of these “tours” by the House and Senate sergeant-at-arms and the Capitol police. “Members of the group that attacked the Capitol seemed to have an unusually detailed knowledge of the layout of the Capitol complex. The presence of these groups within the Capitol complex was indeed suspicious,” they stated. “Given the events of 6 January, the ties between these groups inside the Capitol complex and the attacks on the Capitol need to be investigated.”Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a Democratic congresswoman from Florida, said: “I do know that, yes, there were members that gave tours to individuals who participated in the riot.”Steve Cohen, a Democrat from Tennessee, stated he and John Yarmouth, a Democrat from Kentucky, saw Lauren Boebert, a Republican congresswoman from Colorado, a far-right advocate of antisemitic QAnon conspiracies who has equated vaccinations with Nazism, leading a “large group” through the Capitol complex in the days before the insurrection. She denied she had led any such “tours”.Tim Ryan, a Democratic congressman from Ohio, disclosed that federal prosecutors are “reviewing the footage” of video taken within the Capitol to determine if any House members engaged in “reconnaissance” missions with insurrectionists.“Today is 1776,” Boebert tweeted on the morning of 6 January. On 24 July, Jim Jordan appeared at a fundraising event with Boebert in her district at the Mesa county Republican party, which in June posted on its Facebook page a conspiracy theory that George Floyd’s murder was a hoax.Congressman Bennie Thompson, a Democrat from Mississippi and chair of the House select committee, was asked if he would depose members of the Congress about their involvement. He replied: “Absolutely. Nothing is off limits.”Does Jordan support the select committee deposing House Republican members and others to determine whether they conducted “reconnaissance” of the Capitol with leaders of the insurrection before 6 January? Has he discussed 6 January with Boebert?10) On the morning of 6 January, as Trump supporters gathered at the Ellipse near the White House for the “Stop the Steal” rally, Jordan rose in the House chamber to object to accepting the presidential electors certified by Arizona.There was, he claimed, “something wrong with this election … Somehow the guy who never left his house wins the election? Sixty million Americans think it was stolen.” He rattled off a series of conspiracy theories. “All the Democrats care about is making sure that President Trump isn’t president. For four and a half years that’s all they’ve cared about.”Frankly, We Did Win This Election review: a devastating dispatch from TrumpworldRead moreHe mentioned a former FBI director: “Jim Comey opens an investigation on the president based on nothing.” He referred to Robert Mueller: “The Russia hoax … for nothing.” He raised the impeachment of Trump, “based on an anonymous whistleblower who worked for Joe Biden”. It was all, Jordan said, “a pattern” that “violated the constitution … an end run around the constitution”.In conclusion, he called for the Arizona electors to be disqualified. The Republicans cheered. As the Congress began debating the objection, at 1.30pm, the mob breached police lines and invaded the Capitol. They chanted “Hang Mike Pence” and shortly after 2pm started to force their way into the House chamber.As members raced to evacuate, Cheney states that Jordan grabbed her arm, saying: “We need to get the ladies away from the aisle. Let me help you.” After the violence was quelled and order restored, leaving five dead and many of the police injured, and when the proceeding resumed that evening with Pence presiding, Jordan voted with 138 other representatives to overturn the election results.Did the Trump White House or his legal team review his speech before it was delivered? Did he communicate with anyone at the White House in the hours between the suspension of the certification and its resumption?11) On 12 January, in a hearing of the House rules committee, the chair, Jim McGovern, a Democrat from Massachusetts, said to Jordan: “I’m glad that all it took for you to call for unity was for our democracy to be attacked, but the last several months the gentleman from Ohio and others have given oxygen to the president’s conspiracy theories … people came to the Capitol building to launch a coup … I’m asking you to make a statement that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris won fair and square.”Jordan replied: “He is President-elect Joe Biden … in some states the rules were changed in unconstitutional fashion.”“You refuse to answer that question,” said McGovern. “That is not the question I asked.”Jordan finally claimed: “I never once said that this thing was stolen.”Why, then, did he tweet that the election was being stolen before it had occurred, appear at a “Stop the Steal” rally and claim that “crazy things” had changed the vote in swing states in addition to many other statements?12) On 13 January, Jordan joined with Paul Gosar from Arizona to call for Cheney’s removal as chair of the House Republican conference, for supporting the impeachment of Donald Trump for inciting the insurrection. According to Ali Alexander, a far-right activist and conspiracy theorist, he, Gosar, Mo Brooks and Andy Biggs, from Arizona, conceived of the idea of the January rally.“We four schemed up of putting maximum pressure on Congress while they were voting,” Alexander said.Gosar appeared at more than a dozen “Stop the Steal” rallies and just after noon on 6 January he tweeted a photograph of the mob massed at the Capitol and this message: “Biden should concede. I want his concession on my desk tomorrow morning. Don’t make me come over there.”On 10 March, Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal, a Democrat from Washington, sent a letter to the Office of Congressional Ethics requesting an investigation of Boebert, Brooks and Gosar for “instigating and aiding” the insurrection.Does Jim Jordan support this investigation and would he approve the select committee deposing Gosar, Brooks and Biggs?13) On 9 February, Jordan posted an op-ed on the Fox News website stating: “President Trump did not incite the violence of 6 January.” He wrote: “At the end of the day, Democrats don’t want President Trump to run for office again. Hopefully, one day, he’ll get to do it again.”Is Jordan trying to protect Trump’s political viability for the 2024 election? Does Jordan object to the select committee deposing Trump?14) On 15 February, Jordan tweeted: “Capitol police requested national guard help prior to 6 January. That request was denied by Speaker Pelosi and her Sergeant at Arms.” His assertion was flatly false.“Instead, public testimony shows she did not even hear about the request until two days later,” wrote Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post. He awarded Jordan’s claim “four Pinocchios”. Can Jordan explain how this misinformation was manufactured?15) On 20 May, Liz Cheney was questioned on ABC News’s This Week about whether Kevin McCarthy should be subpoenaed by the investigating committee. “He absolutely should, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he were subpoenaed,” she said. According to Jaime Herrera Beutler, a Republican from Washington, McCarthy called Trump during the siege of the Capitol to ask him publicly to call off the rioters.“Well, Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election than you are,” Trump was quoted as saying. McCarthy reportedly responded, “Who the fuck do you think you’re talking to?” Yet, on 12 January, on the eve of Trump’s second impeachment, McCarthy told Fox News: “President Trump won this election, so everyone who’s listening, do not be quiet. We cannot allow this to happen before our very eyes … join together and let’s stop this.”I Alone Can Fix It review: Donald Trump as wannabe Führer – in another riveting readRead moreDoes Jordan support the select committee deposing Beutler and McCarthy to answer questions about this incident?16) Jim Jordan told the Washington Post that he should not testify about 6 January.“I think this commission is ridiculous, and why would they subpoena me? I didn’t do anything wrong – I talked to the president. I talk to the president all the time. I just think that’s – you know where I’m at on this commission – this is all about going after President Trump. That seems obvious.”Did Jordan speak with Trump on 6 January during the insurrection? Did he speak with him about it after about the event? Will Jordan cooperate with the select committee as a witness or will he stonewall it as he did the investigation into the sexual abuse at OSU? Will he honor a subpoena or force the sergeant-at-arms to wrestle with him to enforce it?
      Sidney Blumenthal, former senior adviser to President Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton, has published three books of a projected five-volume political life of Abraham Lincoln: A Self-Made Man, Wrestling With His Angel and All the Powers of Earth
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      House begins Capitol attack inquiry as Republicans set to boycott proceedings

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      US Capitol attackHouse begins Capitol attack inquiry as Republicans set to boycott proceedingsCommittee established by Pelosi features two Republicans, Cheney and Kinzinger, after McCarthy withdrew his nominees Tue 27 Jul 2021 03.00 EDTLast modified on Tue 27 Jul 2021 03.02 EDTThe much-anticipated House investigation into the January attack on the US Capitol begins on Tuesday, with Republicans set to boycott proceedings in an attempt to undermine any findings.A special committee established by the Democratic House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, will convene to investigate the circumstances surrounding the deadly insurrection in Washington DC, when hundreds of Donald Trump’s supporters stormed the Capitol in an attempt to interrupt the certification of Joe Biden as president.Capitol attack committee chair vows to investigate Trump: ‘Nothing is off limits’Read moreThe committee, which will feature just two Republicans after the GOP leadership refused to participate, will hear this week from police officers who battled rioters during the attack.The investigation into the 6 January attack has become a fiercely partisan issue in Washington. The House voted in May for an independent investigation that would have been evenly split between Democrats and Republicans, but the Senate blocked the move.That left Pelosi to create a select committee to conduct the investigation. Kevin McCarthy, the Republican House minority leader, picked five Republicans to sit on the committee, but Pelosi rejected Jim Jordan and Jim Banks’ nominations, prompting McCarthy to withdraw all five nominees. Both Jordan and Banks are staunch Trump allies who deny his role in the attack and objected to the certification of Biden’s win.Liz Cheney, a Republican congresswoman from Wyoming, had already been named to the panel by Pelosi, and on Sunday Pelosi went around McCarthy again to appoint Representative Adam Kinzinger, who like Cheney is a critic of Trump, to the committee.Pelosi said Kinzinger “and other Republicans have expressed an interest to serve on the select committee. And I wanted to appoint three of them that Leader McCarthy suggested. But he withdrew their names. The two that I would not appoint are people who would jeopardise the integrity of the investigation, and there’s no way I would tolerate their antics as we seek the truth.”Kinzinger and Cheney were among the 10 House Republicans who voted for Trump’s second impeachment, and the pair were the only Republicans who voted to form the special committee. Both have cited Trump’s false claims of election fraud as a factor in the insurrection.“For months, lies and conspiracy theories have been spread, threatening our self-governance,” Kinzinger said on Sunday.“For months, I have said that the American people deserve transparency and truth on how and why thousands showed up to attack our democracy. I will work diligently to ensure we get to the truth and hold those responsible for the attack fully accountable.”Democrat Bennie Thompson will chair the committee, which on Tuesday will hear from four police officers who were on duty on 6 January. They are expected to testify about their experiences that day, including the physical and verbal abuse they were subjected to as hundreds of people swarmed the Capitol.“We have to get it right,” Thompson said on Monday. He said if the committee could find ways to prevent anything like it from happening again, “then I would have made what I think is the most valuable contribution to this great democracy”.Last week a Florida man became the first person to be sentenced to prison for his role in the January attack. More than 570 people have been charged with taking part in the riot, during and after which seven people died.TopicsUS Capitol attackHouse of RepresentativesNancy PelosiUS politicsDemocratsRepublicansnewsReuse this content More

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      Nancy Pelosi primes Capitol attack panel to take hard line on Trump

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      US Capitol attackNancy Pelosi primes Capitol attack panel to take hard line on TrumpThe Republican leadership’s decision to boycott the inquiry leaves the ex-president without defenders on the committee Hugo Lowell in WashingtonMon 26 Jul 2021 02.00 EDTLast modified on Mon 26 Jul 2021 02.01 EDTThe House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, is readying the committee that will on Tuesday begin its investigation into the attack on the Capitol to press ahead with an aggressive inquiry into Donald Trump, as she seeks to exploit Republicans’ refusal to participate that could leave the former US president unguarded.Can Pelosi’s power play on Capitol attack panel thwart wrecking tactics? Read moreThe move by the top Democrat in the House last week to block Jim Banks and Jim Jordan – vociferous allies of the former president – from serving on the House select committee, prompted the House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, to boycott the inquiry, pulling his three other Republican picks from the panel.But Pelosi won strong support from Democrats for her vetoes and told her lieutenants that she may have emerged with the upper hand ahead of the select committee’s first hearing.“We have the duty, to the constitution and the country, to find the truth of the 6 January insurrection and to ensure that such an assault on our Democracy cannot again happen,” Pelosi said of the investigation in a letter to Democrats.The speaker has suggested to top Democrats in recent days that McCarthy’s reflexive move to boycott the panel leaves Trump without any defenders in the high-profile investigation into the 6 January insurrection, according to a source familiar with the matter.Pelosi chose some of the former president’s most critical opponents when she made her appointments to the select committee, installing both lead House impeachment managers from Trump’s two impeachments as well as the Republican dissident Liz Cheney, who was ousted from party leadership in May for repudiating Trump.But the absence of any Republican picks on the select committee means that when the investigation pivots from examining security failures to the role Trump played on 6 January, the inquiry will be conducted solely by his political foes, emboldening Pelosi to seek an aggressive inquiry, the source said.It was not immediately clear how Pelosi might proceed with the select committee. But Democrats have agitated for weeks for her to take a hard line against Republicans after they doomed a 9/11-style bipartisan commission into the Capitol attack.Democrats close to Pelosi say she remains furious at how Republicans have sought to downplay the brutal violence of the insurrection, which informed her decision to not give Banks and Jordan a platform from which to twist or minimize the select committee’s findings.But the speaker’s relationship with Republicans deteriorated to a new low, after McCarthy shouted down the phone at her when she informed him of her decision to veto Banks and Jordan, the source said.Republicans have seized on Pelosi’s intervention against Banks and Jordan, as well as her close involvement with the panel, to portray the inquiry as a partisan exercise to gain political advantage ahead of the 2022 midterm elections.McCarthy lashed out anew a day after he was denied his two top picks for the select committee, and pledged to carry out a Republican-only investigation that would focus on how Pelosi should have done more to protect the Capitol.But Democrats said Pelosi was more than justified in upending congressional norms in refusing to appoint Banks and Jordan, both of whom amplified Trump’s lies about a stolen election and objected to certifying Joe Biden’s election win.“We want people who are going to have allegiance to the oath of office that they took, not an allegiance to one person. And they’ve clearly pledged their allegiance to the former president,” said Democrat Pete Aguilar, a member of the select committee.Several Democrats said they were particularly disturbed by a CNN report that an alleged Capitol rioter, Anthony Aguero, accompanied Banks on a trip sponsored by the Republican Study Committee to the southern border and, at times, served as an interpreter.They also said that Pelosi came to the conclusion that Banks could not be trusted to serve as the top Republican appointee on the panel after he issued a statement that he wanted to investigate the role of the Biden administration in the insurrection.Democrats expressed deep reservations as well about Jordan, the top Republican on the House judiciary committee, after he disparaged the select committee and accused Pelosi of being responsible for a diminished security presence at the Capitol.The speaker does not herself oversee security at the Capitol, which is the responsibility of the US Capitol police board and the House and Senate sergeants-at-arms. Both sergeants-at-arms at the time of the attack were hired by Republican congressional leaders.A bipartisan Senate report released last month detailed multiple security failings on the parts of the US Capitol police and the sergeants-at-arms. It did not blame Pelosi or her then opposite number in the Senate, Mitch McConnell.TopicsUS Capitol attackHouse of RepresentativesNancy PelosiUS politicsDemocratsRepublicansnewsReuse this content More

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      Nancy Mace Called Herself a ‘New Voice’ for the G.O.P. Then She Pivoted.

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      Her shift reflects how rank-and-file Republicans — even those who may disagree with him — have decided it is too perilous to openly challenge former President Donald J. Trump.MOUNT PLEASANT, S.C. — Representative Nancy Mace had just delivered the kind of red-meat remarks that would ordinarily thrill the Republican voters in attendance here on a recent sweltering evening, casually comparing liberal Democrats to terrorists — the “Hamas squad,” she called them — and railing against their “socialist” spending plans.But asked to give an assessment of her congresswoman, Mara Brockbank, a former leader of the Charleston County Republican Party who previously endorsed Ms. Mace, was less than enthusiastic.“I didn’t like that she back-stabbed Trump,” Ms. Brockbank said. “We have to realize that she got in because of Trump. Even if you do have something against your leaders, keep them to yourself.”Ms. Brockbank was referring to Ms. Mace’s first weeks in office immediately after the Jan. 6 riot, as the stench of tear gas lingered in the halls of the Capitol and some top Republicans were quietly weighing a break with President Donald J. Trump. Ms. Mace, a freshman congresswoman, placed herself at the forefront of a group of Republicans denouncing Mr. Trump’s lies of a stolen election that had fueled the assault and appeared to be establishing herself as a compelling new voice urging her party to change its ways.But these days, as Republicans in Congress have made it clear that they have no intention of turning against Mr. Trump, Ms. Mace has quietly backpedaled into the party’s fold. Having once given more than a dozen interviews in a single day to condemn Mr. Trump’s corrosive influence on the party, Ms. Mace now studiously avoids the subject, rarely if ever mentioning his name and saying it is time for Republicans to “stop fighting with each other in public.”After setting herself apart from her party during her first week in office by opposing its effort to overturn President Biden’s victory, Ms. Mace has swung back into line. She joined the vast majority of Republicans in voting to oust Representative Liz Cheney from leadership for denouncing Mr. Trump and his election lies. She also voted against forming an independent bipartisan commission to investigate the Capitol riot.And rather than continuing to challenge party orthodoxy, Ms. Mace has leaned in to the most combative Republican talking points, castigating Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the top health official who is a favorite boogeyman of the right, accusing Democrats of forcing critical race theory on children, and publicly feuding with progressives.Her pivot helps explain why the Republican Party’s embrace of Mr. Trump and his brand of politics is more absolute than ever. It is not only the small but vocal group of hard-right loyalists of the former president who are driving the alliance, but also the scores of rank-and-file Republicans — even those who may disagree with him, as Ms. Mace has — who have decided it is too perilous to openly challenge him.“She’s a little bit like a new sailor; she tried to get her sea legs, but she’s also looking out over the horizon, and what she saw was a storm coming in from the right,” said Chip Felkel, a veteran Republican strategist in South Carolina. “So she immediately started paddling in another direction. The problem is, is that everything you say and do, there’s a record of it.”Ms. Mace declined through a spokeswoman to be made available for an interview, but said in a statement that “you can be conservative and you can be a Republican and be pissed off and vocal about what happened on Jan. 6.” (Ms. Mace’s most recent statements regarding the Capitol attack have been explanations of why she opposed commissions to investigate it.)“You can agree with Donald Trump’s policies and be pissed off about what happened on Jan. 6,” Ms. Mace said. “You can think Pelosi is putting on a sideshow with the Jan. 6 commission and still be pissed off about Jan. 6. These things are not mutually exclusive.”Ms. Mace is facing a particularly difficult political dynamic in her swing district centered in Charleston, which she won narrowly last year when she defeated Joe Cunningham, a Democrat. Her immediate problem is regaining the trust of the rock-ribbed conservatives who make up her base. It is all the more pressing because political observers expect Republicans to try to redraw Ms. Mace’s district to become more conservative, and possible primary challengers still have a year to decide whether to throw their hats in the ring.Her predicament bubbled below the surface on a recent evening here at a pork-themed “End Washington Waste” reception overlooking the Charleston Harbor and the docked Yorktown, a decommissioned Navy aircraft carrier. Voters signed the hocks of a paper pig urging Democrats to cut extraneous spending from the infrastructure bill and exchanged printed-out “Biden bucks” for cocktails, as some reflected on Ms. Mace’s balancing act.Ms. Mace campaigning in Mount Pleasant, S.C., in November. She is facing a difficult political dynamic in her swing district centered in Charleston.Mic Smith/FR2 AP, via Associated PressFrancis and Clea Sherman, a married couple who braved the 90-degree heat to attend, praised her for being “unafraid to speak out” and “tackling tough issues.”“We absolutely think that is the most horrifying thing — not to ever happen, but certainly one of them,” Ms. Sherman said of the Capitol breach, quickly adding that she was just as outraged by racial justice protests around the country that had grown violent. “All those riots that went along in all those cities — they’ve got to stop.”Mr. Sherman, a Korean War veteran, nodded along. “It was a shame it had to happen,” he said of the Jan. 6 assault, adding that he used to “get very upset” with some of Mr. Trump’s remarks.But the former president had been effective, he said. “In my whole life I’ve never been able to see someone accomplish so much,” Mr. Sherman added, citing low unemployment rates and a strong economy. “The bottom line was, did he get the job done?”Penny Ford, a Mount Pleasant resident who attended the event with her husband, Jim Ford, gave a more grudging assessment, explaining that they had winced at Ms. Mace’s comments about the former president. Still, she said, the congresswoman was “the best we have at the moment.”Ms. Ford said they would prefer to be represented by someone like Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio — a staunch Trump loyalist who helped plan the challenge to Mr. Biden’s election in the House — or Senator Ted Cruz of Texas — who led the effort to invalidate it in the Senate — and said they would consider voting against Ms. Mace next year “if I had a choice for someone else.”The first woman to graduate from the Citadel, Ms. Mace based her winning 2020 campaign on her up-from-the-bootstraps biography, detailing her journey from scrappy Waffle House waitress to statehouse representative. She bested Mr. Cunningham, who had been the first Democrat to hold the seat in nearly four decades, by just over a percentage point.On the campaign trail, Ms. Mace walked a careful line, balancing her libertarian streak with a more pragmatic approach, playing up a history of “speaking up against members” of her own party and “reaching across the aisle.”And in the days after the Jan. 6 attack, she was unsparing in her language. What was necessary, Ms. Mace said then, was nothing short of a comprehensive rebuilding of the party. It was a time for Republicans to be honest with their voters, she said: “Regardless of the political consequences, I’m going to tell the truth.”She could not stay silent, Ms. Mace insisted.“This is a moment in history, a turning point where because of my passion for our country, for our Constitution, for the future of my children — I don’t have that option anymore,” she said in an interview the day after the attack. “I can pick up the mantle and try to lead us out of this crisis, or I can sit idly by and watch our country go to waste. And I refuse to do the latter.”Ms. Mace in 1997, during her freshman year at the Citadel, where she became the first woman to graduate two years later.Paula Illingworth/Associated PressLess than a week later, her tone abruptly changed. After joining Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democrat of New York, in a bipartisan request to provide congressional staff aides with more resources to cope with the “trauma” of the Jan. 6 attack, she criticized her colleague for recounting how she feared that rioters had broken into her office building.“No insurrectionists stormed our hallway,” Ms. Mace wrote on Twitter, touching off a heated back-and-forth.She then fund-raised off the feud, arguing that “the actions of the out-of-control mob who forced their way into the Capitol” were “terrifying” and “immediately condemned by the left and right,” but that “the left,” particularly Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, had “run wild because they will never let a crisis go to waste.”More recently, when she voted against the formation of the proposed bipartisan Jan. 6 inquiry, Ms. Mace called the endeavor a “partisan, duplicate effort by Speaker Pelosi to divide our nation.”And after initially refusing to tell reporters whether she voted to oust Ms. Cheney, of Wyoming, from her No. 3 leadership post, Ms. Mace’s team issued a statement affirming that she had, saying that Republicans “should be working together and not against one another during some of the most serious socialist challenges our nation has ever faced.”Ms. Mace has, in some ways, retained her independent streak. She verbally slapped down Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia, for comparing mask mandates to Nazism. And she has continued to work across the aisle with Democrats on issues like presidential war powers and cybersecurity.Her still-frequent appearances on television, though — now mostly on a variety of Fox News shows, as well as the conservative networks OAN and Newsmax — tend to stick to some of the party’s most well-tread political messages. In a recent interview on Fox News, she asserted that strident liberals had seized control of the Democratic Party.“They’re in charge,” she said, “which is why we’re seeing what we thought would be a moderate administration take a sharp left turn all of a sudden.” More

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      Jerry Lewis, Master of the Congressional Earmark, Dies at 86

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      A powerful legislator, he became chairman of the House Appropriations Committee in 2005 but faced scrutiny from the Justice Department for his ties to a lobbyist.Jerry Lewis, a powerful House Republican whose largess to his district in California established him as a master of the earmark but led to an investigation of his actions by the Justice Department, died on July 15 at his home in Redlands, Calif. He was 86.His son Dan confirmed the death but said he did not know the cause.Mr. Lewis was elected in 1978 and served 17 terms in the House. A conservative who preferred working with Democrats to confrontational politics, he was a major fund-raiser for Republican candidates; his party’s third-ranking member, as conference chairman; and, briefly, chairman of the powerful House Appropriations Committee.“He represented a style of politics that no longer dominates the party,” John H. Pitney Jr., an aide of Mr. Lewis’s in the mid-1980s who is now a professor of politics at Claremont McKenna College in California, said by phone. “He was very much an ally of Bob Michel” — the former House minority leader from Maryland — “and never a favorite of the Gingrich faction, which took him down from the chairmanship of the House Republican Conference” in 1992. (Newt Gingrich, then the House minority whip and later the speaker, supported the successful candidacy of Dick Armey of Texas over Mr. Lewis.)Mr. Lewis was best known for sending enormous sums of money back to his district through the use of earmarks, provisions in congressional spending bills that direct funds to a specific recipient. He sent tens of millions of dollars to educational, medical and research institutions, military installations, a dam on the Santa Ana River, extensive tree clearing in the San Bernardino National Forest and other projects in his Southern California district.In 2005, when he became chairman of the Appropriations Committee — after six years as chairman of its defense subcommittee — he told The Press-Enterprise of Riverside about his ambition for his district.“My goal as chairman is not just to create a huge funnel to San Bernardino and Riverside counties,” he said. “But I have a feeling we will in California manage to get our share.”But in 2006, the Justice Department began an investigation into whether Mr. Lewis had improperly steered millions of dollars in earmarks to clients of a lobbyist, Bill Lowery, a former Republican congressman from California and an old friend. Some of the clients donated to Mr. Lewis’s re-election campaign.Subpoenas were issued seeking details about how communities and businesses in Mr. Lewis’s district chose to hire Mr. Lowery’s firm, how much they paid, and the nature of communications between the firm and Mr. Lewis.Four years later, the Justice Department dropped the investigation.Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a watchdog group that had been critical of Mr. Lewis’s ties to Mr. Lowery, condemned the Justice Department’s decision.“Exactly what will a politician have to do for the Department of Justice to sit up and take notice?” Melanie Sloan, then the group’s executive director, said in an interview with The Associated Press.Looking back on the investigation in 2012, shortly before he retired from the House, Mr. Lewis told the Southern California public radio station KPCC, “It’ll always be there, and the reality is that we have attempted to be a positive impact in public service.”Charles Jeremy Lewis was born on Oct. 21, 1934, in Seattle and moved with his family to San Bernardino, Calif., as a child. His father, Edward, was a civil engineer who worked on the construction of New Deal projects. His mother, Ruth, was a homemaker.After studying veterinary science at the University of California, Berkeley, he transferred to the University of California, Los Angeles, where he received a bachelor’s degree in political science. After working in the insurance business, Mr. Lewis served on the San Bernardino Board of Education and then was elected to the California State Assembly. He served there for a decade. During his tenure, he pushed for voter approval to make a reporter shield law — to protect the confidentiality of sources — an amendment to the state constitution and wrote legislation that established an air pollution control agency in Southern California.Once elected to the House, he was named to the Appropriations Committee in his second term and became chairman of the subcommittee that funds the Department of Veterans Affairs, NASA and the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Four years later he took over the defense subcommittee. His two years as Appropriations Committee chairman ended in 2007, after Democrats won the House majority.In addition to his son Dan, Mr. Lewis is survived by his wife, Arlene (Willis) Lewis; a daughter, Jenifer Engler; two other sons, Jerry Jr., and Jeff; a stepdaughter, Julie Willis Leon; two stepsons, Jimmy and Marty Willis; six grandchildren; three great-grandchildren; and two brothers, Ray and John. His marriage to Sally Lord ended in divorce.Having the same name as a famous comedian was something that trailed Mr. Lewis throughout his career. “He had a good sense of humor” about it, Dan Lewis said. He recalled his father campaigning at a parade in Apple Valley, Calif., where people were eager to see the funnyman, not the lawmaker. The crowd might have been disappointed, he said, but the congressman “wasn’t annoyed.” More

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      Why Jim Banks and Jim Jordan Were Blocked From the Capitol Riot Panel

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      Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she was barring them from a committee scrutinizing the attack based on Democrats’ concerns about their “statements made and actions taken” around the assault.WASHINGTON — The two House Republicans Speaker Nancy Pelosi barred from a select committee investigating the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol are both staunch defenders of former President Donald J. Trump who backed his efforts to invalidate the election and have opposed investigating the assault on Congress.Ms. Pelosi said she had decided to disqualify Representatives Jim Jordan of Ohio and Jim Banks of Indiana because of widespread Democratic dismay about “statements made and actions taken by these members.”Her decision enraged Republican leaders, who announced that they would boycott the investigation altogether. But Democrats insisted that the pair’s support for the election lies that fueled the deadly attack and their subsequent statements downplaying the violence that occurred that day were disqualifying.Here is a roundup of what they have said.‘No way’ Trump should concede, Jordan said as he helped plan the challenge to Biden’s victory.Mr. Jordan said in December that there was “no way” Mr. Trump should concede the election, even after the Electoral College certified Mr. Biden’s victory.“No. No way, no way, no way” Mr. Trump should concede, he told CNN in December, adding: “We should still try to figure out exactly what took place here. And as I said, that includes, I think, debates on the House floor — potentially on Jan. 6.”Later that month, he participated in a meeting at the White House, where Republican lawmakers discussed plans with Mr. Trump’s team to use the joint session of Congress on Jan. 6 to challenge the election outcome.‘There was something wrong with this election’: Jordan continued to suggest Biden’s victory was illegitimate.“Americans instinctively know there was something wrong with this election,” Mr. Jordan said, arguing for invalidating electoral votes for Mr. Biden on Jan. 6. “During the campaign, Vice President Biden would do an event and he’d get 50 people at the event. President Trump at just one rally gets 50,000 people.”‘Democrats created this environment’: Jordan compared the riot to racial justice protests.Mr. Jordan has repeatedly sought to equate the attack on the Capitol to unrest around last summer’s racial justice protests, and accused Democrats of hypocritically trying to punish Mr. Trump for the riot while refusing to condemn left-wing violence. He signaled that he would use the Jan. 6 investigation to push that narrative.“I think it’s important to point out that Democrats created this environment, sort of normalizing rioting, normalizing looting, normalizing anarchy, in the summer of 2020, and I think that’s an important piece of information to look into,” Mr. Jordan said this week.He also said the select committee was a politically motivated effort to harm Mr. Trump, calling it “impeachment Round 3.”Banks questioned the ‘legality’ of some votes cast in the 2020 election.Mr. Banks, the chairman of the conservative Republican Study Committee, took a more reserved approach when discussing Mr. Trump’s election fraud claims, telling constituents he had questions “about the legality of some votes cast in the 2020 election” while steering clear of some of the former president’s more fantastical claims.But like Mr. Jordan, he supported a Texas lawsuit seeking to toss out key Biden victories and voted to overturn the results in Congress.Banks claimed the select committee was created ‘to malign conservatives.’Mr. Banks released a statement after he was chosen to serve as the top Republican on the panel that seemingly referred to the violent rioters as patriotic Americans expressing their political views. He said he would use the committee to turn the spotlight back on Democrats, scrutinizing why the Capitol was not better prepared for the attack, as well as unrelated “political riots” last summer during the national wave of protest against systemic racism.“Make no mistake, Nancy Pelosi created this committee solely to malign conservatives and to justify the left’s authoritarian agenda,” Mr. Banks said. “I will not allow this committee to be turned into a forum for condemning millions of Americans because of their political beliefs.” More