When House Republicans selected Representative Kevin McCarthy as speaker in January, it was bad enough: the highest official under the Capitol dome was someone who had been complicit in then-President Trump’s initiative to launch the worst attack on that building since it was set on fire by the British. in 1814.

Replacing the Bakersfield Republican with Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan would be so much worse.

Here’s the key difference between them: Trump’s My Kevin McCarthy played along as the defeated president revved up his MAGA militia

of

false claims of election theft from Democrats. But Jordan, hey

turned off

together with the rebel leader.

Jordan’s name appears 44 times in the final report of the House of Representatives committee that investigated the January 6, 2021 tragedy and the conspiracy that preceded it. The report documents

are

Meetings at the White House and repeated phone calls with Trump, including during the attack on the Capitol, and his before-and-after contacts with Trump’s lackeys. The committee recommended that the Justice Department investigate Jordan, along with McCarthy and several other Republicans in the House of Representatives, and that the House Ethics Committee consider sanctioning him for ignoring his subpoenas.

That’s right: the man who wants to lead the House of Representatives voluntarily refused to tell one of the committees what he knew about his desecration, then disdained a subpoena and voiced his defiance in a fundraising campaign.

Jordan’s brashness is quite rich. Now, as chairman of the House Judiciary Committee and the anti-Biden Subcommittee on Arming the Government, he has been eager to subpoena people, including Biden’s Cabinet chiefs and administration officials.

But what lies ahead is even more egregious: If Republicans choose Jordan over the other candidate for president, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, the person second in line for the presidency would be a man who actively tried to overturn a presidential election that even Trump administration officials considered “the most secure in American history.”

Two days after the 2020 election, Jordan stared at a Stop the Steal rally at the Capitol in Pennsylvania, one of the pro-Biden states at the center of the coup plotters. He repeatedly claimed on TV that the election was stolen. He was in cahoots with Trump officials over having then-Vice President Mike Pence reject some of Biden’s electoral votes when Pence presided over Congress’ certification of the election on Jan. 6. Jordan attended a crucial planning meeting at the White House on December 6. That month, Trump cited the support of fighter Jordan in addressing Justice Department leaders in support of false voter fraud allegations.

There’s more: On January 2, 2021, Jordan led! a conference call with Trump and a few other Republicans to strategize on the

certification vote

as well as a social media effort to mobilize a simultaneous MAGA march on the Capitol. Trump and Jordan then spoke privately for eighteen minutes.

In the hours after the insurrection, which left several people dead and dozens of police officers injured, Jordan continued to work with Trump and Co. to improve election certification. And after January 6, he spoke with Trump advisers about pardons for Republicans involved.

On January 11, Trump endorsed the esteemed Presidential Medal of Freedom, intended to recognize “an especially meritorious contribution to the security or national interests of the United States,” by privately awarding it to his accomplice, Jordan.

You can read it all in the January 6 committee report, thanks to sworn testimony, text messages and phone records from other Republicans. No, thanks to Jordan: the loud man remains unusually quiet about his role and that of Trump on January 6. The potential speaker does not want to speak.

As former Rep. Liz Cheney, the Republican vice chair of the Jan. 6 committee, told an audience in Minneapolis last Thursday, Jim Jordan knew more about what Donald Trump had planned for Jan. 6 than any other member of the House of Representatives.

Should Republicans choose him as chairman, Cheney added, there would no longer be any way to argue that a group of elected Republicans could be counted on to defend the Constitution.

Of course, Trump, the so-called Terminator of the Constitution, has supported Jordan.

You might think that moderates among Republicans in the House of Representatives, of whom there are only a few, would be put off by that endorsement and, fearing a backlash in their swing districts, would unite to prevent Jordan from winning . Why not take a page from the eight McCarthy mutineers who allied with Democrats to oust him?

Instead, there are indications that so-called moderates will rally behind Jordan if he wins the most Republican votes. The caucus could vote on Wednesday. However, to avoid a repeat of the party embarrassment of January, when 15 ballots were needed to elect McCarthy, Republicans say they will not hold an election.

full house

vote until they know for sure that Jordan, Scalise or someone else On Monday, McCarthy said he would be open to recycling

as a speaker

has the necessary majority to win.

The wrangling to get to that point could take days. At the same time, the international crisis sparked by the war between Israel and Hamas has given Republicans a sense of urgency to elect a leader, no matter how unleadable they may be. Until they do, the decapitated house is virtually paralyzed.

After the 2006 congressional elections that brought Jordan to Washington, I met with a top aide to the Republican leadership in the House of Representatives for a background briefing on the newcomers. He quickly brought up Jordan: watch out for that guy, he’s bad news. His reputation as a self-promoting attack dog in the Ohio legislature preceded him.

Neither I nor my source could have imagined at the time that Jordan might one day be the favorite to become speaker of the House of Representatives. And

anus

he joined an effort to overturn a presidential election.

What? Overturn an election? We were such innocents.

@jackiekcalmes