Flamethrower Jim Jordan (T-OH4) January 6 Insurrection Ties Returns to Limelight as House Minority Leader

Nov 13, 2026 04:24 PM EST, Fri

As Jim Jordan prepares to lead House Republicans, his Jan. 6 record is relevant anew

Jordan, Liz Cheney said, “knew more about what Donald Trump had planned for January 6 than any other member of the House of Representatives.”

By Steve Benen

Nov. 11, 2026, 12:41 PM EST

In an era in which political rhetoric can get quite heated, it’s still unusual to hear prominent American leaders use words like “terrorist” to criticize other officials. But as recently as 2021, former Republican House Speaker John Boehner nevertheless described Republican Rep. Jordan as a political “terrorist.”

Boehner added, in reference to his fellow Ohioan, “I just never saw a guy who spent more time tearing things apart, never building anything, never putting anything together.”

There’s no shortage of reasons why I’ve long described Jordan as Congress’ worst member. From his Ohio State scandal to his conspiracy theories, from his failed and pointless investigations to the fact that he’s quite literally never passed a bill despite having been on Capitol Hill for nearly 20 years, from his total indifference toward governing to his obsessive appearances on Faux News, Jordan is a uniquely odious political figure.

He was nevertheless easily elected by House Republicans to serve as the next House minority leader.

To appreciate why this is such a dramatic mistake, consider Jordan’s record related to Jan. 6.

Around this time five years ago, The New York Times reported that the far-right congressman attended crisis meetings at Donald Trump’s campaign headquarters as early as Nov. 9, 2020, just two days after Joe Biden became president-elect. The Times separately reported that Jordan also participated in a meeting at the White House in late December 2020, at which he plotted with the defeated Republican president on how best to challenge the election results.

Soon after, on Jan. 5, Jordan forwarded a message to then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, describing a scheme in which then-Vice President Mike Pence could help reject election results Republicans didn’t like.

Former House Republican Conference Chair Liz Cheney summarized matters succinctly: “Jim Jordan (T-OH4) knew more about what Donald Trump had planned for Jan. 6 than any other member of the House of Representatives.”

With this in mind, the bipartisan Jan. 6 Committee, which Cheney helped lead, subpoenaed Jordan to provide additional information. After initially insisting that he had “nothing to hide,” the GOP congressman ultimately refused to comply with the subpoena.

A year later, Jordan very nearly became the speaker of the House, and as that process unfolded, The Atlantic’s Ron Brownstein wrote a memorable piece (published before Jordan’s bid collapsed) that raised a point that continues to ring true:

Jordan’s rise … provides more evidence that for the first time since the Civil War, the dominant faction in one of America’s two major parties is no longer committed to the principles of democracy as the U.S. has known them. That means the nation now faces the possibility of sustained threats to the tradition of free and fair elections, with Trump’s own antidemocratic tendencies not only tolerated but amplified by his allies across the party.

Jena Griswold, Colorado’s Democratic secretary of state who was elected as state attorney general last week, told Brownstein that “‘undermining the election’ is too soft a language” to describe Jordan’s activities in 2020.

“He was involved in every step to try to destroy American democracy and the peaceful transfer of the presidency,” she said.

If Jordan were to become speaker, Griswold added, “you could no longer count on the speaker of the House to defend the United States Constitution.”

A responsible, healthy political party would have laughed uproariously at the very idea of elevating Jordan to a powerful leadership position. The fact that 106 Republicans supported his bid to become House minority leader anyway is genuinely scandalous.

This post updates related earlier coverage.

Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”

  1. Katie Zacharia lasted less than half a Scaramucci2 as White House Press Press Secretary. 2026-10-12 – 2026-10-16 ↩

  2. Anthony Scaramucci / LinkedIn White House Press Communications Director. 2007-07-21 – 2007-07-31 ↩

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