Opposition Builds Against Jim Jordan As Next House Speaker
Ohio Republican said to have had inside knowledge of the January 6 insurrection
Former congresswoman Liz Cheney appears to have opened the floodgates of opposition to the idea of Rep Jim Jordan becoming the next speaker of the House of Representatives.
Cheney — the Wyoming Republican who lost her primary election last year after helping lead the House select committee which investigated the January 6, 2021, insurrection — on Thursday publicly denounced the idea of Jordan replacing Rep Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif) as the next speaker after McCarthy was ousted earlier in the week in an historic vote of his colleagues.
Jordan, currently chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, quickly emerged as one of two declared candidates for the speakership. House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La) is the other.
“Jim Jordan knew more about what Donald Trump had planned for January 6 than any other member of the House of Representatives. Jim Jordan was involved, was part of the conspiracy in which Donald Trump was engaged as he attempted to overturn the election,” said Cheney, whose father served as vice president under President George W Bush. “Jim Jordan, if you think about the extent to which people have now said, ‘Well, it was Speaker Pelosi’s fault that Donald Trump’s mob invaded the Capitol,’ that the security wasn’t sufficient enough, the person who knew — there were probably more than just Jim, but there was a handful of people, of which he was the leader — who knew what Donald Trump had planned.”
Trump has now been criminally indicted by the federal government for trying to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
“Now somebody needs to ask Jim Jordan, why didn’t you report to the Capitol Police what you knew Donald Trump had planned? You were in those meetings at the White House,” Cheney added, to audience applause. “And if the Republicans decide that Jim Jordan should be the speaker of the House, there will — and I, by the way, I don’t think that’s gonna happen, I think he’ll lose — but if they were to decide that, there would no longer be any possible way to argue that a group of elected Republicans could be counted on to defend the Constitution.”
And some of Cheney's former colleagues on the House select committee have joined her in her public resistance to Jordan's election as speaker.
“I mean all you have to do is look at his record. Look at January 6 and everything leading up to that,” said one-time Republican congressman Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, in an appearance on CNN. “I think you played the soundbite where he says ‘How did 74 million people not be enough to win an election, so we’re gonna keep looking until we find something.’ That’s not how the Constitution works.”
It was a sentiment echoed by yet another alum of the House select committee, Rep Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif).
“Jordan was up to his neck in this plot for all we could see, he refused to provide us the information we needed. But it looked from the context that we could identify that he was heavily involved in the plot to overturn the Constitution,” she said. “So, I don’t think that’s what America needs, and certainly I take offense to the idea that I’m not patriotic. I work hard to defend the Constitution.”
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