Ohio Republican Jim Jordan invited the scorn by pointing out that people don’t have the right to disrupt Congress, despite his long record of defending those involved in the January 6, 2021 riots.
The chairman of the House Judiciary Committee made this remark during Wednesday’s fiery hearing with Attorney General Pam Bondi, who faced off against Democrats who questioned her about the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files, ICE, and many other contentious issues.
Turning the conversation to former CNN reporter Don Lemon, who is facing federal civil rights charges related to his alleged role in disrupting a Minnesota church service last month when he followed protesters into the building with his cameraman, Jordan presented Bondi with a series of legal propositions.
“You’re not allowed to exercise your constitutional rights in a way that interferes with those of others, are you?” he asked, earning a firm “no” in response.
“You have the right to petition the government under the First Amendment [but] that doesn’t mean you can come into this room and start yelling at Mr. Raskin or me or anyone else and disrupt a congressional hearing,” he continued.
Ohio Republican Representative Jim Jordan chaired Wednesday’s House Judiciary Committee fire hearing with Attorney General Pam Bondi (Getty)
“You have a right to protest in the street, but that doesn’t give you the right to go into the Capitol and disrupt Congress.”
Among those who noted the irony of his remark, given Jordan’s past support for MAGA’s efforts to prevent the certification of the results of the 2020 presidential election in order to overturn President Donald Trump’s defeat, was another ex-CNN anchor, Jim Acosta.
“Dude,” he wrote on X (Twitter), marveling at the lack of knowledge of the congressman himself.
Jordan was one of 147 Republicans who voted to reject the 2020 election results in Pennsylvania and Arizona on January 6, claiming that Democrat Joe Biden had defeated Trump by fraud, an opinion shared by thousands of conservatives who entered the Capitol that day.
Subsequently, in a virtual committee meeting 10 days later, “What happened in the Capitol on January 6th was as bad as it gets,” only to then refuse to cooperate with the House Select Committee on the January 6th Attack, for which he was referred to the House Ethics Committee.
Jordan refused to cooperate with the House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack, calling its subpoena a “scandalous abuse” of its authority (AP)
When he wrote to the chairman of the board, Bennie Thompson, in January 2022, Jordan accused him of “scandalous abuse” of his authority, and also reprimanded the committee for “an unprecedented and inappropriate request to examine the basis for a colleague’s decision on a particular matter pending before the House of Representatives.”
“This request is very far from the boundaries of any legitimate inquiry,” he added, arguing that the fact that he was asked to testify “violates the main constitutional principles and serves to further erode legislative norms.”
The committee later heard from Cassidy Hutchinson, a former assistant to Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows, who alleged that Jordan was in contact with the White House about securing a presidential pardon for Republican members of Congress who played a role in the plot to overturn Biden’s victory.
The committee ultimately named the Congressman more than a dozen times in its final report on the Capitol riot and called him a “significant player” in the attempt to defeat Trump.
They accused him of meeting with the president’s allies to discuss “strategies to challenge the election, chief among them stating that the election was tainted by fraud,” and of advising Meadows to put pressure on Vice President Mike Pence to deliver valid electoral votes.