WASHINGTON, D.C. – While Republican Kevin McCarthy now officially leads the House of Representatives as its new speaker, Ohio Congressman Jim Jordan is quickly becoming one of his most powerful deputies.
The conservative firebrand, who represents Ohio’s 4th District, already was poised to lead the powerful House Judiciary Committee. But now Jordan is expected to play another lead role as chair of a new select subcommittee tasked with investigating what Republicans call “the weaponization of the federal government.”
What You Need To Know
- Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan is expected to chair a new select subcommittee Republicans created to investigate “the weaponization of the federal government”
- In addition to this new role, Jordan will also chair the powerful House Judiciary Committee
- The subcommittee’s broad authority has Democrats concerned it will be used to help defend former President Donald Trump amid the investigations he faces
- Spectrum News spoke with a lawyer who represents clients involved in government investigations, along with a political scientist at the University of Cincinnati, for insight
“The right to speak is the most important and that’s what they’re going after,” Jordan said on the House floor on Tuesday. “And that’s why we’ve had dozens of whistleblowers come talk to us. We want to focus on that because we want it all to stop.”
House Republicans moved to create the panel on Tuesday. All Republicans voted for it while every Democrat voted no.
Democrats bashed it as an open-ended investigation into conspiracy theories with the singular goal of protecting former President Donald Trump.
“It aims to undermine the safeguards of our democracy and to embolden MAGA extremists, who would rather see our institutions fail than to see Democrats and President Biden succeed,” said New York Rep. Jerry Nadler, the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee.
The resolution creating the new panel says it will investigate five broad areas: 1) How the executive branch probes U.S. citizens; 2) How it works with the private sector to obtain information; 3) How it uses that data once collected; 4) What laws and programs it uses to do the collecting; and 5) “...any other issues related to the violation of the civil liberties of citizens of the United States.”
Republicans claim this is about reigning in agencies that they say have overreached by unfairly targeting conservatives.
“We don’t want to go after anyone, we just want it to stop,” Jordan said on Tuesday. “And we want to respect the First Amendment to the Constitution that the greatest country in the world has. That’s what this committee is all about.”
The new subcommittee will begin its work as multiple investigations look into Trump’s actions leading up to the Jan. 6 Capitol attack and his bringing classified documents from the White House to his Florida resort.
Some experts believe this new subcommittee will lead to a new clash between Congress and the Justice Department.
“The broader impact is, that as a citizen of the United States, you have a vested interest in each of the branches staying in their dedicated lane. And every time they go outside their lane, they threaten, in my view, your civil liberties,” said Stanley Brand, a lawyer who once served as general counsel to the U.S. House and now represents clients involved in government investigations.
Brand told Spectrum News that Congress has long clashed with the executive branch over access to documents and information, but he worries lawmakers are getting more comfortable overstepping the standard boundaries of oversight.
He said the decision by the Democrats’ Jan. 6 Committee in the last Congress to subpoena five sitting lawmakers, including Jordan, and issue criminal referrals is the most recent example – and that Jordan may mimic it.
“He’s going in against a backdrop of a previous committee that has really stretched the boundaries,” Brand said. “I would expect that this committee will, ironically, build some of its methods on the January 6th Committee.”
Brand represented Trump aide Dan Scavino in his fight to resist a subpoena from the Jan. 6 Committee, and won. He thinks cases like that could impact who ends up cooperating with subpoenas Jordan issues, more so than the political impact of Jordan failing to comply with the subpoena he received last year.
Jordan’s role heading two high-profile committees cements his evolution from a hardline GOP outsider who once challenged McCarthy in a leadership race to being the speaker’s right-hand man.
University of Cincinnati political scientist David Niven said it shows a calculation by Jordan.
“He recognizes there's some benefit to working with people and not just against them. And with that comes Judiciary Committee chairmanship and the chairmanship of what is essentially a political torpedo,” Niven said.
Niven said Jordan’s new subcommittee will allow him to keep fueling his anti-establishment base, while continuing to defend Trump, no matter what the panel actually uncovers.
“It is clearly going to raise Jim Jordan's profile. It's already high, it's going to get higher,” Niven said. “This is a made-for-TV committee and he's certainly going to be front and center in that effort.”