The House Jan. 6 Committee asked Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) to provide information about the Capitol insurrection in a Wednesday letter — the second demand to a sitting member of Congress this week.
The panel wants to learn about conversations that Jordan had with President Trump on Jan. 6.
Jordan has gone back and forth on whether he had any conversations with Trump on the day of the insurrection and, if he did, when they occurred and how many times they occurred.
“We understand that you had at least one and possibly multiple communications with President Trump on January 6th,” the committee wrote in its letter. “We would like to discuss each such communication with you in detail.”
The panel also wants to know about any other comms that Jordan had with Trump, his legal team, “or others involved in organizing or planning the actions and strategies for January 6th.”
Jordan is the second member of Congress to receive an information request — not a subpoena — from the committee, which asked Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA) to help with its investigation on Monday. Perry, who purportedly helped with Trump’s scheme to install Jeff Clark as acting attorney general in a bid to have the DOJ intervene in the election outcome, said he would not comply.
In the letter, the panel also said that it wants to learn from Jordan about his role in the period from November 2020 to January 2021, when Trump groped frantically for a way to subvert the election results while sowing doubt about the fairness of the election.
But most intriguingly, the panel wants to know about whether Trump held out pardons in connection with Jan. 6th – truly, an example of the art of the deal.
That, the committee says, includes “discussions involving the possibility of presidential pardons for individuals involved in any aspect of January 6th or the planning for January 6th.”
It was Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ), another member in good standing of the insurrection caucus along with Jordan, who, Rolling Stone reported, dangled a “blanket pardon” to potential rally organizers.
The letter also references Jordan’s suggestive preening in October that he’d be happy to comply with the panel.
After being asked if he would cooperate with the inquiry, Jordan said at a Rules Committee hearing, “I have nothing to hide. I’ve been straightforward all along.”
House Minority Leader Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), who had his own Jan. 6 phone call with the former president, tried to put Jordan on the committee in July.
But Speaker of the House Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) blocked Jordan from taking that position, denying the auctioneer-talking representative the ability to thwart the inquiry from within.
