Jim Jordan Rebuked in Home-State News Podcast: 'Villain'

House Republican Jim Jordan has been branded "the worst villain in Congress from Ohio" during a podcast produced by a news organization based in his home state. The criticism is over his role in the House of Representatives voting to hold Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt of Congress on Wednesday.

Jordan's conduct was contrasted with that of fellow Ohio congressman Dave Joyce, the only Republican who voted against holding Garland in contempt, and whom the podcast host described as "principled."

On Wednesday, 216 House Republicans voted to hold Garland in contempt, while 206 Democrats, along with Joyce, opposed the measure. The move was orchestrated by Jordan who chairs the House Judiciary Committee, along with Representative James Comer, who heads the House Oversight Committee. It came in response to Garland refusing to hand over audio recordings from President Joe Biden's interview with Special Counsel Robert Hur from the Justice Department over his alleged mishandling of classified documents.

Cleveland.com's editor Chris Quinn discussed the contempt vote on the news website's Today in Ohio podcast alongside its impact editor Leila Atassi, content director Laura Johnston and executive board member Lisa Garvin.

During the discussion, Quinn praised Joyce for his stance: "This is how you erode the dam. You need one leak in the dam for it to start to spread. Anybody else that feels like Dave Joyce can look at what he did, this principled position, and say, you know, I got to get to that. We've got to stop turning the Republican Party into a version of Hitler and get back to kind of the centrist American ideals for which we've already stood.

"I was blown away. He did the right thing. He is a former prosecutor. He knows how wrong it is to attack the investigators. The investigators just do their job. The FBI is one of the most professional institutions in the history of the country."

By contrast, Quinn was damning of Jordan: "And for Jim Jordan to be blasting them, to be eroding the Justice Department, faith in the Justice Department, for his political points is terrible for America, and Dave Joyce knew it. He said it, and it's so good that a guy from Ohio is the one that stood against the worst villain in Congress from Ohio, which is Jim Jordan."

Speaking about Wednesday, Quinn later added: "It was a great day for Ohio. It was what we needed to show the world that we are not Jim Jordan. We are not J.D. Vance. That's not what Ohio is.

"Ohio is Dave Joyce, and he did something that really is what leadership is about. So, a salute to him," Quinn said.

Newsweek reached out to the office of Representative Jim Jordan for comment by email outside of usual office hours on Saturday.

Earlier this year, Garland said he wouldn't be prosecuting Biden after classified documents were recovered from the president's home in Delaware and his former office at the Penn Biden Center office in Washington D.C. between November 2022 and January 2023. Garland said the evidence "does not establish Mr. Biden's guilt beyond a reasonable doubt." He later described the president as "a well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory."

Donald Trump, the presumptive 2024 Republican presidential nominee, was charged in June 2023 following claims he improperly held onto classified documents after leaving the White House and obstructed efforts to return them to the proper authorities. The former president has pled not guilty to all counts and denies any wrongdoing.

Garland said that, while he couldn't provide House Republicans with the audio recordings of Biden's interview with Hur, he did offer them a written transcript.

House Speaker Mike Johnson later said he was ready to go to court in a bid to get the audio recordings released.

The Trump ally said: "It is sadly predictable that the Biden administration's justice department will not prosecute Garland for defying congressional subpoenas, even though the department aggressively prosecuted Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro for the same thing.

"This is yet another example of the two-tiered system of justice brought to us by the Biden administration," Johnson added.