Sixteen days before the Insurrection, there was a White House meeting with Trump, Pence, Meadows, Giuliani and 11 Republican representatives —mostly members of the Freedom Caucus—in which they discussed overturning the 2020 election.
Joining Trump, Pence, Meadows and Giuliani, were Rep. Mo Brooks (AL), Brian Babin (TX), Andy Biggs (AZ), Matt Gaetz (FL), Louis Gohmert (TX), Paul Gosar (AZ), Andy Harris (MD), Jody Hice (GA), Jim Jordan (OH, Vice Chair of Freedom Caucus), Scott Perry (PA, Chair of Freedom Caucus), and Rep-elect Marjorie Taylor Green (GA). Brooks is the only member who is no longer in government.
This meeting barely was mentioned in the seventh select committee hearing on June 12, 2022, which was co-led by Rep. Stephanie Murphy and Rep. Jamie Raskin, and focused mostly on domestic terrorists.
Aside from that, there was one other big take-away, about which Rep. Raskin talked in great detail. On December 18, 2020, there was a six-hour meeting with Trump, Sydney Powell, Mike Flynn, Mark Meadows, White House Counsel Pat Cipollone and other White House advisors and attorneys—portrayed as hot blooded and contentious—with the purpose of discussing Powell’s and Flynn’s outrageous conspiracy theories, and their desire to seize all voting machines, among other ideas. Rep. Raskin said it was very important and Trump watched for hours as Cipollone tore apart their arguments. And then Cipollone and Meadows shut down Trump’s idea of appointing a special counsel, Powell, with the power to seize machines and then charge people with crimes with all resources necessary to carry out her duties.”
Three days later, there was another White House meeting, about which almost nothing has been written, Cipollone wasn’t invited, and apparently was turned away. I read the hearing transcript, and in Rep. Stephanie Murphy’s introduction to the December 21, 2020 meeting, she said one sentence. “We will show some of the coordination that occurred between the White House and members of Congress as it relates to January 6th, and some of these members of Congress would later seek pardons.”
Rep. Murphy said elsewhere in the hearing that the meeting’s purpose was to "disseminate his (Trump’s) false claims and to encourage members of the public to fight the outcome on January 6." The few news stories about it said the purpose was to overturn the election.
The information the committee received about the meeting from unnamed witnesses, was that the focus of the meeting was to discuss the Eastman theory. What seems more likely is that once Trump learned three days earlier that White House Counsel Pat Cipollone wouldn’t condone plans to overturn the election (which is why he was excluded from the Dec. 21 meeting), Trump decided to include only staunch supporters who would do whatever he asked them to, and possibly had ideas of their own for overturning the election. The critical questions are: What did they discuss? And, what actions did they take?
The value of learning what was discussed in the Dec 21 meeting, and acted upon is whether it provides evidence of Trump’s, Pence’s, Meadows’, Guiliani’s, Jordan’s and the other representatives’ criminality.
As it is, the only way to even imagine what they may have discussed was to follow Rep. Murphy’s lead about the pardons.
In an article in the Insider, there were at least nine preemptive pardons (I counted eight, by excluding MTG’s which wasn’t confirmed) sought after the Insurrection, including ones for Mark Meadows, Rudy Giuliani, and John Eastman. Initially, I only had read about the five pardons sought from Representatives Matt Gaetz, Mo Brooks, Andy Biggs, Scott Perry, and Louis Gohmert (although Meadows and Giuliani attended that meeting as well). Perhaps the action that was most telling was that Mo Brooks and Matt Gaetz had asked for a blanket pardon for everyone who attended the Dec. 21, 2021 meeting, as well as for other members who didn’t attend.
When Cassidy Hutchinson presented the pardon information in the seventh hearing, and was asked whether Jim Jordan had sought a pardon, she said he hadn’t, but was interested in updates of what was happening with them.
Toward the end of that hearing, Rep. Adam Kinzinger said, "The only reason you ask for a pardon is if you think you've committed a crime.”
And, that is another key question: What crime(s) did these people think (or know) they committed? It seems logical that Rep. Murphy and the committee would have known more about what took place in the meeting if any of the participants, aside from Giuliani, had been willing to testify.
Committee members spent months trying to persuade Meadows, Jordan, and others to testify. The most notable case was Mark Meadows, who was involved in everything, including pushing conspiracy theories, and who initially gave the committee more than 2,000 text messages, and then he stopped cooperating. The committee ultimately sent a criminal referral on him to the DOJ. AG Garland sat on it for six months before quashing it.
That was devastating to committee members. First of all, Meadows had invaluable information, and secondly, if Garland wouldn’t back them up and jail Meadows, they would have no bargaining chips with other witnesses who weren’t forthcoming, and still others who would refuse to testify, which they did. Ultimately Jim Jordan, Mo Brooks, Andy Biggs, Scott Perry, Louis Gohmert, and Matt Gaetz refused to testify.
On January 9, 2022, in a four-page letter to Chairman Bennie Thompson, Jordan said he would not cooperate with an interview request from the select panel investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, calling it an “unprecedented and inappropriate demand.”
“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,”
On May 12, 2022, Jordan, McCarthy, Brooks (he changed his mind when Trump refused to endorse him in the midterms), Biggs and Perry were subpoenaed, but they never complied.
“And, Jordan responded to that subpoena by contesting the constitutionality of the request and outlining a list of demands the committee must meet in order for him to even consider moving forward.”
“Throughout the letter, Jordan tried to delegitimize the committee for a variety of reasons. ‘You have not explained the Constitutional basis for the extraordinary claim that a congressional committee may compel the testimony of other Members of Congress,’” Jordan wrote in one instance.
“Jordan referred to the panel’s subpoena of him as ‘a dangerous escalation of House Democrats’ pursuit of political vendettas’ and accused committee members of leading a partisan investigation that is not designed to seek the truth but instead to settle political scores, specifically with former President Donald Trump.”
Perhaps Jordan’s rage at the committee can be traced to July of 2021, after Speaker Pelosi refused to appoint two of McCarthy’s picks, Jordan and Jim Banks to the first bipartisan committee which would investigate the Insurrection, and called upon McCarthy to name two new Republicans. As we all remember, McCarthy pulled all the Republicans out of that committee, which was his stupid mistake.
Pelosi had the power to remove them, and her rationale was that both Jordan and Banks had voted against Trump’s impeachment and pushed to overturn the election results certifying Joe Biden as president. And, Pelosi then formed the current January 6th Select Committee, and invited Republicans Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger to participate.
And, for the last fifteen months, the January 6 Select Committee worked nonstop to complete a Herculean task in record time. And, Jim Jordan, the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, spent his time “engaged in a systematic effort to cast doubt on the integrity of the 2020 U.S. presidential election. He also led efforts to create an image in the minds of Trump supporters of January 6 as the “ultimate date of significance” (his words, repeated several times). He helped spearhead the effort to oppose certification of the election in Congress. He continued to promote the “Big Lie” even after the events on Jan. 6 and subsequent FBI and Department of Homeland Security warnings that this conspiracy is propelling domestic violent extremists.”
On November 2—six days before the midterm election—and undoubtedly expecting Republicans would slaughter Democrats —Jim Jordan sent letters to Merrick Garland and Christopher Wray telling them there was a long list of documents he wanted them to provide by November 16, and promising that once he became Chair of the Judiciary Committee, he would investigate the DOJ and the FBI.
Jordan also must have spent his time continuing to be Trump’s ass-wipe. Because before the TFG announced his candidacy for 2024 on November 15, 2022, Trump said Jim Jordan was his ‘closest confidante’ in Congress,” Axios reports.
“Trump said he and his allies were quietly laying the groundwork not just for a presidential campaign, but for a second Trump term in office staffed only by America-first loyalists.
And, Trump also said that ‘his top allies, were working through a series of well-funded political groups and nonprofits, are preparing to purge the federal bureaucracy of people they consider to be disloyal, stack every layer of that bureaucracy with die-hard Trump loyalists, and install top Trump allies like former DOJ official Jeffrey Clark and former Pentagon chief of staff Kash Patel to key positions,’” Axios reported.
On November 18, 2022, Jordan sent letters to Ron Klain, and others in the Biden administration, saying “Republicans have identified 42 employees from President Joe Biden's White House and administration, whom they expect to testify next year after their party takes control of the chamber.”
And, undoubtedly, Jordan plans on continuing his bullying and threats against Garland, Wray, and all the Democrats that Trump has targeted for Jordan.
The only valuable quality that Trump has—for Democrats that is—is is his transparency in telling all the terrible things he plans on doing. And, maybe, this time, we’ll finally listen.
The critical question I want answered—preferably by the best legal minds in this country, whether they are former DOJ prosecutors and/or scholars of constitutional law—is whether there is any legal action we or our leaders can take before Republicans, including Jordan, who allegedly participated in planning the Insurrection and coup, and/or participated in the event itself, are sworn in on January 3, 2023?
And, I want to know that Democrats have a strategy for legally reining in Jordan if he becomes Chairman of the Judiciary, and ultimately Trump in 2024 if he’s not in jail. And, that’s the letter I plan on sending to President Biden, and my senators and representative in addition to few very vocal California Democrats, Speaker Pelosi, Ted Lieu, Eric Swalwell, Adam Schiff, and Katie Porter, in addition to Shelton Whitehouse from Rhode Island (and perhaps more).
It is time for Democrats to take action NOW. Our leaders and members must bring in the best legal minds in the country to fight Rep. Jordan as he tries to destroy the January 6 Select Committee Report, and the reputations of committee members. They need to hire top political strategists (perhaps including someone like Steve Schmidt), finally hire a first-rate public relations and crisis management firm to craft a message to be broadcast throughout the country, and to teach all Democratic members how to respond to these threats.
If they don’t, the next two years will be Hell, the work of the January 6 Select Committee will be destroyed, its members, and Democratic leaders (including Speaker Pelosi) pilloried, and I believe we will lose the 2024 election.