Top Democrat Targets Jim Jordan For Obstructing An Investigation

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During a recent hearing of a subcommittee on the House Judiciary panel, which is presently led by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) tore into Jordan’s own record of defying subpoenas.

The point of the proceedings, as explained by the other GOP member chairing the gathering, was scrutiny of a supposed lack of sufficient compliance by departments in the federal government with pushes by Republicans in Congress for various documents. Jordan, though, defied a subpoena from the House committee that investigated January 6. Swalwell also noted how Jordan had previously assented to standards of using a subpoena in which it’s more of a last resort than a first option. Yet, here Republicans were, making a predictably huge deal out of the rate of departmental compliance as they foster staged outrage about the imaginary threat of law enforcement authorities supposedly going in unfairly broad terms after parents in general for daring to speak out.

What investigators have been concerned about are those making threats and maybe even acting on these threats of violence, sometimes directed at children. There is no conspiracy to target parents for espousing conservative beliefs somewhere like a school board meeting.

“I think it’s quite rich that we are talking about subpoena compliance under a chairman of the full committee who was absolutely out of subpoena compliance in the last Congress,” Swalwell said during the hearing. “So, we’re going to haul witnesses in here today and claim that they did not comply with subpoenas or requests, and that request is so rich, because it’s coming from a chairman who himself did not comply with the January 6 committee’s requests… He was asked over and over and over.” Swalwell noted how Jordan was a “witness” to some of the circumstances of January 6, meaning what led up to the violent and deadly attack on the Capitol by Trump’s supporters, and yet he resisted complying and was subsequently referred for investigation to the House Ethics Committee.

Swalwell noted how a portion of the oath of office taken by members of Congress mandates that members carry out their duties — centering on a defense of the Constitution — without purposing themselves towards “evasion,” something of which Swalwell said Jordan was clearly guilty.

Swalwell also insisted in his remarks that federal personnel targeted by the committee’s Republicans were actually complying. “In fact, the first request that was sent to the Department of Justice… hundreds of documents were sent back,” Swalwell also said. “The request was so vague, it would be like typing in Google search: ‘What is earth?’ And the Department of Justice is saying, can you just be a little more specific, and we will get you these documents… And the claim here is that the Department of Justice has designated parents as domestic terrorists. You will see, in the department’s October 4, 2021, memo that they never use the phrase, from the attorney general to anyone else in any of the documents produced, ‘domestic terrorists’ as a way to label parents.”

Check out a portion of Swalwell’s opening remarks below: