Jim Jordan’s 'political stunt dressed up as an investigation' is 'loaded with blanks': legal experts

10 March 2023

When conservative ex-Rep. John Boehner was serving as House speaker during the Barack Obama years, one of the far-right congressmen who really got on his nerves was a fellow Ohio Republican: Rep. Jim Jordan, a Tea Party and House Freedom Caucus favorite who is now a Donald Trump loyalist and a prominent figure in the MAGA movement. As Boehner saw it, Jordan's very performative antics were harmful to the conservative cause. And Boehner's contempt for Jordan was obvious when he described him as a "legislative terrorist."

But in 2023, Boehner is long gone from Congress. And Jordan's prominence in the U.S. House of Representatives has increased to the point where, under House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-California), he now chairs the House Judiciary Committee as well as the House Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government.

In right-wing media, MAGA pundits have been insisting that Jordan's work with the Weaponization Subcommittee will seriously wound Joe Biden's presidency and the Democratic Party in general. But in an article published by the conservative website The Bulwark on March 10, two legal voices — former Associate U.S. Attorney General Frederick Baron and former federal prosecutor Dennis Aftergut — argue that the Weaponization Subcommittee's bark has so far been a lot worse than its bite.

"Jim Jordan's premise as chairman of the House Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government is apparent: If at first you don't succeed with political stunts dressed up as 'investigations,' change the subject and try again," Baron and Aftergut argue. "After an initial February 9 hearing airing old grievances…. Jordan, (on March 9), tried what had already backfired for his fellow MAGA committee chair James Comer: a disproven claim that the FBI had censored a Twitter story about Hunter Biden. But, once again, Jordan's investigative weapon was loaded with blanks. And he was hunting dead game anyway."

The legal experts continue, "You might remember the backstory: On October 14, 2020, just a couple of weeks before the 2020 election, Twitter prevented its users from linking to a New York Post article about Hunter Biden's laptop, because the article relied on stolen e-mails and contained private information. But by October 16, 2020, Twitter had corrected, once again permitting users to post links to the story. This tired old story was what Jordan chose as the focus of (March 9's) hearing."

Baron and Aftergut stress that so far, the Weaponization Subcommittee has been painfully short on substance.

"If Jordan's next hearing does not produce weightier and more relevant evidence of government misconduct," they write, "Jordan's weapon may look like a popgun firing a small cork on a thin string."

Read The Bulwark's full article at this link:

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