Wrestling abuse claims, Jan 6 and abortion: Jim Jordan’s controversies plagued his failed House speaker bid

Ohio Republican haunted by decades-old allegations, his actions in connection to the insurrection, and his hardline stance on abortion

Rep Jim Jordan, the rightwing bomb-thrower whom former Speaker John Boehner, a fellow Ohioan, called a “legislative terrorist”, is out as the GOP nominee for speaker.

Mr Jordan lost an internal ballot by a large margin. According to Rep Kat Cammack, he lost by 112 votes to 86.

This comes after Mr Jordan lost further support on the third ballot of the full house.

On the first vote, 20 Republicans voted against Mr Jordan, 22 did so on the second, and 25 on the third. Former Speaker Kevin McCarthy took 15 rounds of voting before he managed to get across the line in January.

Acting Speaker Rep Patrick McHenry said on Friday afternoon said Republicans will return on Monday for a candidate forum following the removal of Mr Jordan.

The “election process” will then begin on Tuesday morning, he added.

“The reason why I made that decision is, we need space and time for candidates to talk to other members,” he told the press.

A large and growing number of Republicans were starting to make calls to sound out fellow members about who they might support.

A number of scandals and controversies still haunt his now paused bid to lead the chamber the work of which he’s been steadfastly trying to grind to a halt since 2007.

The Insurrection

Democrats have been slamming Mr Jordan as an “insurrectionist” who played a key part in former President Donald Trump’s attempt to stay in office despite his 2020 election loss. Mr Jordan is also reported to have spoken to the then-president on the day of the Capitol riot – January 6, 2021.

The Congressional Integrity Project watchdog shared an ad on Monday (16 October) slamming Mr Jordan for his role in the riot, writing on X: “Every Republican who votes for Jim Jordan to be Speaker of the House should be held accountable for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, support for the attack on our country on January 6th, and attacks on our democracy.”

The video begins with the words: “Right now, the leading contender to become Speaker and second in line to the presidency is a co-founder of the far-right House Freedom Caucus, election-denier MAGA-extremist. He’s arguably the member of Congress most involved in Donald Trump’s attempted coup.”

The ad from the left-leaning group includes footage from news reports and comments by Republicans criticising Mr Jordan.

“Jim Jordan knew more about what Donald Trump had planned for January 6 than any other member of the House of Representatives,” former Rep Liz Cheney of Wyoming says in a clip in the video.

Cassidy Hutchinson, a former aide to Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and later whistleblower, says in another part of the ad: “Jim Jordan was privy to nearly everything, if not everything, about and pertaining to January 6. Jim Jordan can’t be trusted with the Constitution.”

In a virtual committee meeting later in January 2021, Mr Jordan said, “What happened at the Capitol on January 6 was as wrong as wrong can be,” according to The Washington Post.

The Independent has reached out to the office of Mr Jordan for comment.

Ohio State allegations

Mr Jordan, a back-to-back NCAA national wrestling champion in 1985 and 1986,  served as the assistant coach on the Ohio State wrestling team between 1987 and 1995.

Four wrestlers have come forward claiming that Mr Jordan failed to shield them from the alleged sexual abuse by team physician Richard Strauss, who died by suicide in 2005. There have been no allegations made that Mr Jordan committed any sexual misconduct but members of the team claim that he was aware of Dr Strauss’s violations and that he chose to turn a blind eye to it.

Mr Jordan hasn’t faced arrest or charges for failure to report, but the four wrestlers named him in a lawsuit against the school.

Mr Jordan has rejected all allegations of wrongdoing and he has declined to take part in the investigations against Dr Strauss. He told Fox News that the “lies” had been “sequenced and choreographed” by “the left”.

Former OSU wrestler Mike Schyck is one of hundreds of students who say they faced sexual abuse from Dr Strauss.

“Do you really want a guy in that job who chose not to stand up for his guys?” he asked, according to NBC News. “Is that the kind of character trait you want for a House speaker?”

If Mr Jordan becomes speaker, he may still be deposed in one of the legal filings.

Dunyasha Yetts, also a former wrestler at the university, has accused Mr Jordan of lying when saying he was unaware of the alleged abuse, calling his “hypocrisy … unbelievable”.

“He doesn’t deserve to be House speaker,” Mr Yetts told the network. “He still has to answer for what happened to us.”

Fellow former OSU wrestler and attorney representing a number of the plaintiffs, Rocky Ratliff, told NBC that Mr Jordan “abandoned his former wrestlers in the Ohio State sexual abuse scandal and cover-up”.

An unidentified individual referred to as John Doe in the most recent legal filing said that he thinks that while Mr Jordan is qualified to be speaker, he struggled to endorse his bid.

“My problem with Jimmy is that he has been playing with words instead of supporting us,” the individual said, according to NBC. “None of us used the words ‘sexual abuse’ when we talked about what Doc Strauss was doing to us, we just knew it was weird and Jimmy knew about it because we talked about it all the time in the locker room, at practices, everywhere.”

“His locker was just a few spots away from mine and mine was near Dr Strauss,” Mr Schyck noted. “And we were always talking about Dr Strauss. There’s no way he didn’t know what was going on.”

Mr Ratliff called it an “open secret”.

“Everybody talked about Strauss,” he said, according to NBC. “Everybody knew if you went to him, the first thing he would do is take down your pants. Everybody knew he was taking unnecessary showers with the team. His locker was near Jimmy’s locker.”

Not a single bill signed into law in 16 years

Mr Jordan’s critics have noted that he has an essentially non-existent legislative record and is short of bipartisan experience, preferring to push his own party to the right, away from the Democrats.

Mr Jordan hasn’t been able to get a bill signed into law since he entered the chamber in 2007.

“House Republicans have just elected a speaker nominee who in 16 years in this Congress hasn’t passed a single bill because his focus has not been on the American people,” Democratic Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said on Friday (13 October).

While Congress passes few bills and many legislators fail to get a bill signed into law, other metrics suggest that Mr Jordan would be an unconventional speaker.

According to the Center for Effective Lawmaking, only four members were less effective than Mr Jordan last Congress. He has remained in the bottom five in the GOP caucus in the last four Congresses. In every full Congress he has been a part of, he has been in the bottom quarter of lawmakers.

Comparatively, ousted Speaker Kevin McCarthy sponsored 17 passing bills, eight of which were signed into law.

The office of Mr Jordan pointed to 64 bills that he co-signed – meaning that he backed another lawmaker’s bill – that were signed into law, telling The Washington Post on Monday that Mr Jordan had “negotiated legislation directly with the White House and returned millions to the US Treasury from his office budget”.

“Congressman Jordan has always done what he told the voters he would do — whether it’s assisting seniors getting Medicare and Social Security benefits, expediting passports, helping veterans, meeting with thousands of constituents, or touring hundreds of businesses in Ohio’s 4th district — and the constituents know it,” spokesperson Russell Dye told the paper.

Jordan’s push for abortion ban is ‘toxic’

Mr Jordan put forward the Life at Conception Act which would outlaw all abortions across the US.

“Republicans have gotten wise to how toxic this idea is but this is what they are putting forward,” columnist and political observer Matthew Yglesias wrote on X on Monday. 

“Now obviously Rep Jordan is no more going to get this signed into law than he’s going to protect student-athletes from sexual abuse, but this mentality will inform every judicial and regulatory policy decision handed down by a Republican administration,” he added.

Moderate and swing district Republicans face difficult vote

Former Rep Charlie Dent, a Pennsylvania Republican, previously told NBC News that “it’ll be enormously problematic for the Republicans in those districts that Joe Biden won”.

“Swing district Republicans are going to have Jim Jordan and Donald Trump draped around their necks in the 2024 election,” he added. “It’s a lot easier to go after Jim Jordan for the events of January 6 and his role in it with Trump than just about any other Republican.”

“My advice to those wavering members is – Don’t buckle under this pressure. It will only get worse. If Jordan were to become speaker this type of bullying will be used to get people to fall in line,” Mr Dent said.

“This is a time to fight,” he added amidst an increasing pressure campaign against the holdouts. “You’d be rewarding horrible behaviour.”

A Republican staffer told NBC that Mr Jordan’s allies "have been threatening people who don’t want to vote for Jordan with primaries, conservative media hit pieces and mean tweets from their influencer army as a means to intimidate them into voting for him”.

Brendan Buck, who advised Speakers Boehner and Paul Ryan, told NBC that “it will be interesting to see if Jordan demonstrates any awareness of how tough (often pointless) votes could imperil his colleagues”.

“He’s never shown much concern about them before,” he added regarding the incumbents who could face a tough re-election.

“And front-liners are not helpless, but their reality is a fate determined largely by the political environment. If the House completely burns down and the generic ballot goes way south, they’re the first to go,” he added.

“They have the most to lose. Their seats are most at risk,” Mr Jordan told NBC regarding the swing district Republicans. “I would not put up a vote for Jim Jordan without conditions. I mean I’d have a hard time doing it anyway. But to do it without conditions? I don’t get it.”