Jan 6 apologist Jim Jordan tells listening to: ‘You don’t have a proper to enter the Capitol and disrupt Congress’
Ohio Republican Rep. Jim Jordan has invited scorn by pointing out that people do not have the right to disrupt Congress, despite his long record of defending those who were involved in the rioting of January 6, 2021.
The chairman of the House Judiciary Committee made the remark during Wednesday’s fiery hearing with Attorney General Pam Bondi, who lashed out at Democrats questioning her about the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files, ICE, and many other contentious issues.
Turning the conversation towards former CNN journalist Don Lemon, who is facing federal civil rights charges related to his alleged role in the interruption of a Minnesota church service last month when he followed protesters inside 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 trambles on someone else’s, are you?” he asked, earning a firm “no” in response.
“You have a right to petition the government under the First Amendment [but] that doesn’t mean you can come into this room and start screaming at Mr. Raskin or me or anybody else and disrupt a congressional hearing,” he continued.
“You have a right to protest in the street, but that doesn’t give you a right to go into the Capitol and disrupt Congress.”
Among those noting the irony of his remark, given Jordan’s past support for MAGA’s efforts to prevent the certification of the 2020 presidential election results 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 congressman’s lack of self-awareness.
Jordan was one of the 147 Republicans who voted to reject the 2020 election results in Pennsylvania and Arizona on January 6, claiming that Democrat Joe Biden had beaten Trump by fraud, an opinion shared by the thousands of conservatives who stormed the Capitol that day.
He did subsequently concede at a virtual committee meeting 10 days later, “What happened at the Capitol on Jan 6 was as wrong as wrong can be,” only to then refuse to cooperate with the House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack, for which he was referred to the House Ethics Committee.
Writing to the panel’s chairman, Bennie Thompson, in January 2022, Jordan accused it of “an outrageous abuse” of its authority, also rebuking the committee for “an unprecedented and inappropriate demand to examine the basis for a colleague’s decision on a particular matter pending before the House of Representatives.”
“This request is far outside the bounds of any legitimate inquiry,” he added, claiming his being asked to testify “violates core constitutional principles and would serve to further erode legislative norms.”
The committee did later hear from Cassidy Hutchinson, a former aide to Trump’s then-chief of staff Mark Meadows, who alleged that Jordan had been in touch with the White House about securing presidential pardons for Republican members of Congress who had played a role in the plot to overturn Biden’s victory.
The committee ultimately mentioned the congressman’s name more than a dozen times in its final report on the Capitol riot and called him a “significant player” in the attempt to override Trump’s loss.
It accused him of meeting with the president’s allies to discuss “strategies for challenging the election, chief among them claims that the election had been tainted by fraud,” and of advising Meadows to pressure Vice President Mike Pence into discounting valid electoral votes.
Source: independent.co.uk
