Jim Jordan’s year in the spotlight: A timeline of his rise and fall as a House Speaker candidate

WASHINGTON, D. C. – Ohio’s Jim Jordan got his first taste of actual power when Republicans took control of the House of Representatives this January.

The Champaign County Republican used his new chairmanship of the House Judiciary Committee to undermine criminal prosecutions of ex-President Donald Trump and blitz the administration of President Joe Biden with numerous investigations into alleged incompetence and malevolence.

He took his show on the road a few times too, with stops on the southern border and in New York.

And when a small group of Republicans ousted California’s Kevin McCarthy from his position as House Speaker, Jordan made an unsuccessful run to take over that job. The speaker’s race was perhaps both the apex of Jordan’s year and its nadir. Jordan appeared positioned to take the gavel after Trump gave him a midnight endorsement, but his hard-driving tactics turned off Republican colleagues as he leaked support.

True to his reputation, Jordan’s year didn’t produce much in the way of adopted legislation. But, at times, it captured national attention.

Here’s a timeline of Jordan’s activities during his busy year in the spotlight:

JANUARY 10: The Republican-controlled House voted along party lines to create a new “Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of Federal Government” that Jordan would run, in addition to his responsibilities chairing the full Judiciary Committee. Democrats said it would be used “to gin up fake investigations into non existent scandals” while Jordan said it would be used to fight double standards.

JANUARY 11: House Republicans led by Jordan pressed the party’s anti-abortion platform by passing legislation requiring health care practitioners to provide medical care to infants who survive abortions, and a resolution to condemn attacks on anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers. Neither proposal had any chance for passage in the Democrat-controlled U.S. Senate.

JANUARY 13: Jordan launched an investigation of Biden’s handling of classified documents by demanding the Justice Department hand over records on the case. A letter he sent to Attorney General Merrick Garland accused the Justice Department of soft pedaling its examination of how Biden mishandled classified material that he retained after serving as vice president, while taking a hard line on Trump.

Several months later, Trump was indicted on dozens of charges related to mishandling classified documents, as prosecutors released photos of that they said were of boxes of classified material that Trump stored in a bathroom at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. Biden has not been charged. ABC News reported that Biden cooperated with National Archives efforts to recover documents in he retained after leaving office, while Trump resisted.

FEBRUARY 2: Before Jordan chaired first House Judiciary Committee hearing, Democrats and Republicans on the committee spent more than a half hour arguing over whether to say the Pledge of Allegiance before each hearing.

FEBRUARY 3: Jordan’s government weaponization subcommittee issued subpoenas to obtain FBI, U.S. Attorney General and Education Department documents so it could examine whether federal agents inappropriately targeted parents who protested at school board meetings. Fact checkers have repeatedly examined and found false GOP claims that the FBI is spying on parents at school board meetings and labeling them as “threats” for protesting.

FEBRUARY 8: At a House Committee on Oversight and Accountability hearing Jordan repeatedly questioned ex-Twitter employees about the company’s decision to temporarily block dissemination of a New York Post article about Hunter Biden’s laptop before the 2020 election. The company’s former chief “trust and safety” official, Yoel Roth, told Jordan his bosses at the company decided the story violated its policies, but they reversed themselves a few days later. He said it was not done at the request of the FBI or the Biden campaign, but Jordan was skeptical.

“I think you guys got played by the FBI,” Jordan said.

FEBRUARY 9: Jordan opened the first hearing of the new government weaponization subcommittee by alleging a litany of improper political acts by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. He said it created a “threat tag” to describe parents who spoke out at school board meetings. It purged employees who attended conservative political events, took private user information on conservatives from Facebook without those users consent, and is deliberately manipulating the case files of Jan. 6 rioters “to make it appear that extremism is on the rise.”

A White House memo issued before the hearing described the committee as a “Fox News reboot of the House Un-American Activities Committee” and categorized it as “a political stunt that weaponizes Congress to carry out the priorities of extreme MAGA Republicans in Congress.”

FEBRUARY 23: Jordan led a convoy of Republican Judiciary Committee members on a trip to the U.S. border with Mexico, where they did not witness any illegal crossings. Arizona officials told them around 4,000 immigrants cross the U.S. border near Yuma each day, but the convoy’s conspicuous presence thwarted their goal of spotting immigrants attempting an unobtrusive entry. Local officials told them the influx of immigrants is stressing everything from health care to food banks in the region.

MARCH 17: Jordan’s “government weaponization” subcommittee asked U.S. Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall to provide it with details on cases where the Air Force improperly released information from several servicemembers’ personnel files to political operatives, following a report by Politico that revealed that 11 people’s records were improperly disclosed. An Air Force spokesperson told CNN its employees “did not follow proper procedures requiring the member’s authorizing signature consenting to the release of information,” but said there was “no evidence of political motivation or malicious intent on the part of any employee.”

MARCH 20: Calling a pending indictment of Trump on charges related to his role in making an alleged $130,000 hush-money payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels, “an unprecedented abuse of prosecutorial authority,” Jordan demanded testimony and documents about the probe from New York County District Attorney Alvin L. Bragg, Jr. A spokesperson for Bragg’s office said it won’t “be intimidated by attempts to undermine the justice process, nor will we let baseless accusations deter us from fairly applying the law.” Bragg later filed a federal lawsuit that aims to keep Jordan from using his committee to interfere in the case.

MARCH 21: Jordan’s government weaponization subcommittee releases a report that says the FBI launched at least 25 investigations of threats to school boards after Garland issued a 2021 memorandum instructing it to address the issue, but none of the probes resulted in federal charges. Garland told a March 1 Senate Judiciary Committee hearing that the FBI investigated tips about violence or threats of violence against school officials, just as it would investigate complaints that suggest someone is making a threat against a Supreme Court justice.

MARCH 30: A hearing to discuss a federal lawsuit that claims the Biden administration has directed social media companies to “censor and suppress Americans’ free speech” degenerated into testy partisan sniping with Democrats accusing Jordan of using the committee to protect Trump and Republicans comparing Biden’s administration to the secret police in East Germany.

The ostensible topic of the hearing was Missouri v. Biden, a 2022 lawsuit filed by the attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana that alleges the current presidential administration has “led the largest speech censorship operation in recent American history,” as former Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt told the committee.

APRIL 3: In a letter to Bragg, Jordan said he was deciding whether to draft legislation that would protect “former and/or current Presidents from politically motivated prosecutions by state and local officials,” in response to potential charges against Trump. Law professors interviewed by Cleveland.com/The Plain Dealer predicted such an effort wouldn’t get very far because provisions in the U.S. Constitution limit the powers of Congress, past U.S. Supreme Court decisions indicate presidents aren’t above the law and Democrats who control the Senate wouldn’t sign off on it.

APRIL 17: Jordan took his political road show to New York to hear testimony from witnesses who claimed Bragg routinely ignores and mishandles street crimes. “Here in Manhattan, the scales of justice are weighed down by politics,” Jordan declared as he kicked off the hearing. “Rather than enforcing the law, the DA is using his office to do the bidding of left-wing campaign funders. He’s taken his soft on crime approach to the real criminals.”

Democratic committee members and New York Mayor Eric Adams said Jordan was the one playing politics by trying to intimidate Bragg on Trump’s behalf. They said if Jordan and other Republicans really wanted to fight crime, they would act on gun safety legislation such as banning assault weapons and cracking down on “ghost guns” that are made with 3-D printers.

APRIL 26: Jordan accused the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) of overstepping its authority by imposing new regulations on “stabilizing braces” that help disabled shooters control their weapons, telling ATF Director Steve Dettlebach the new policy “turns law abiding gun owners into felons as a result of unelected bureaucrats simply enacting a new regulation.” The House of Representatives subsequently voted to overturn the policy, but the Democrat-controlled Senate didn’t follow suit.

MAY 11: The GOP-controlled U.S. House of Representatives adopted a 213-page border security bill drafted by Jordan’s committee, as well as the Foreign Affairs and Homeland Security committees, that did not go anywhere in the Democrat-controlled U.S. Senate. In a speech on the House of Representatives floor, Jordan called the legislation “the strongest immigration enforcement legislation in modern times.”

MAY 23: Jordan used a Judiciary subcommittee hearing to highlight the case of a Maryland woman whose murder and rape was traced to a 16-year-old member of the MS-13 gang to call for change in the nation’s border security policies. The teenager – who has been charged with the crime but not tried – entered the United States as an unaccompanied minor even though he was arrested in El Salvador for “illicit association” with the MS-13 gang.

JUNE 21: Jordan and his committee spent hours questioning Special Counsel John Durham about a report he said proves the FBI pursued a partisan probe of whether former Trump’s 2016 campaign colluded with Russia. Durham told Jordan’s committee that he found the FBI did not have an adequate basis to launch its “Crossfire Hurricane” investigation. The top Democrat on the Committee, New York U.S. Rep. Jerrold Nadler, accused Republicans of using the report to give Trump and “his MAGA Republicans” someone else to blame for Trump’s problems, and deflect attention from Trump’s June 8 indictment on 37 counts of mishandling classified information.

JULY 11: Jordan suggested moving the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s headquarters to Alabama as part of his crusade against what he calls the FBI’s “politicized bureaucracy.” He asked the GOP chair of the House Appropriations Committee to zero out money for a planned new FBI headquarters building in Washington and to instead examine options to relocate the agency outside of the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area, including making use of infrastructure available at the FBI’s Redstone Arsenal Campus in Huntsville, Alabama.

JULY 12: Jordan kicked off a hearing with FBI Director Christopher Wray by alleging the FBI improperly used its power to silence opponents of coronavirus vaccinations and lockdowns. He accused it of casting doubt on the authenticity of material extracted from a laptop that belonged to Biden’s son, Hunter. Wray repeatedly disputed how Republicans characterized FBI activities and said the FBI has worked with local law enforcement to arrest more than 20,000 violent criminals and child predators last year, taking “an average of almost 60 bad guys” off the street each day.

JULY 13: Jordan accused the head of the Federal Trade Commission of “harassing” Twitter to the point of obsession at an oversight hearing on the agency. FTC Chair Lina Khan told Jordan the FTC has focused on Twitter because of its longtime lack of effective security and privacy policies. Problems were so serious that they enabled unauthorized users to co-opt Twitter accounts, including some from Fox News, she said.

JULY 20: Jordan gave longshot Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. a platform to decry censorship he claims he’s been subjected to by the administrations of Biden and Trump at a hearing of his government weaponization subcommittee. After the hearing, Jordan announced he and Kentucky GOP Sen. Rand Paul had introduced legislation called the “Free Speech Protection Act,” that would “block executive branch employees and contractors from using their positions to censor and otherwise attack speech protected by the First Amendment.”

JULY 26: Jordan accused Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas of everything from treason to doing the bidding of drug cartels at a Judiciary Committee hearing, where he declared that record numbers of people entering the country illegally, terrorists and fentanyl have crossed the southwest border during Biden’s 2.5-year administration. Mayorkas denied claims that the border is open, but said the immigration system “has been broken for as long as I can remember.”

AUGUST 24: Jordan announced he’s launching an inquiry into whether the Georgia district attorney who indicted Trump on conspiracy charges coordinated her work with federal law enforcement. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis said he was trying to interfere with an active Georgia criminal case, a move she described as “flagrantly at odds with the Constitution.”

SEPTEMBER 13: Jordan, who vocally defended Trump when the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives impeached him over his Ukraine activities and his role in the Jan. 6, 2021 riot at the U.S. Capitol, gears up to lead an impeachment inquiry of Biden claiming Biden “leveraged American tax dollars to get certain actions from Ukraine. The White House says there are no grounds to impeach Biden, with a spokesman calling the effort “extreme politics at its worst.”

SEPTEMBER 20: Jordan and other House Judiciary Committee Republicans bombarded Garland with questions about the Justice Department’s handling of a probe into Biden’s son, Hunter, and whether he got preferential treatment. Garland told the committee “The Justice Department works for the American people. Our job is to follow the facts and the law. That is what we do.”

OCTOBER 4: Jordan announced a run for House Speaker after a small faction of House Republicans ousted California’s Kevin McCarthy from the job. Trump followed up by endorsing Jordan’s bid on his Truth Social media platform.

OCTOBER 12: House Republicans picked Louisiana’s Steve Scalise as their candidate to replace McCarthy, but he couldn’t nail down the virtually unanimous GOP support needed to secure the post. When Scalise dropped out of the running, Jordan announced another run for the position.

OCTOBER 13: Jordan won a majority of his conference’s votes to succeed McCarthy, but runs into the same trouble Scalise did securing virtually unanimous backing. Twenty Republicans declined to back him in an initial vote on the House of Representatives floor.

OCTOBER 20: After several days of House floor votes where GOP opposition to Jordan’s candidacy for Speaker grew after holdouts against Jordan’s speakership reported getting threats, the House Republican Conference voted to remove Jordan as its speaker nominee. Republican colleagues say the strongarm tactics by Jordan and his allies helped turn them off of the Ohio congressman as a speaker candidate.

OCTOBER 30: Jordan returned to the Judiciary Committee’s helm, announcing a probe of a District of Columbia effort investigate conservative legal activist Leonard Leo and nonprofit groups he’s affiliated with.

NOVEMBER 8: Jordan convened a Judiciary Committee hearing on antisemitism and campus free speech, where college students and academic experts described discrimination against conservative and Jewish students. Georgia Democrat Hank Johnson said it was “ironic” that Republicans decided to hold a hearing about censorship and free speech the day after they censured Michigan Democrat Rashida Tlaib over her comments about Israel “because they didn’t like what she had to say. She didn’t threaten anybody. She did not advocate for violence.”

DECEMBER 13: The House of Representatives votes along party lines to move forward with the impeachment inquiry, with Jordan describing Biden as “a politician who does certain things, those actions then benefit his family financially, and then there’s an effort to conceal it and sweep it under the rug.” A White House spokesman called the inquiry a “baseless stunt” that’s “not rooted in facts or reality but in extreme House Republicans’ shameless desire to abuse their power to smear President Biden.”

Sabrina Eaton writes about the federal government and politics in Washington, D.C., for cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer.