WATCH: Jim Jordan Delivers Full-Throated Defense of Trump, Lights up CNN, System for Bias
House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) braved the CNN wilderness and delivered a full-throated defense of former President Donald Trump over the indictment during an interview with Dana Bash on “State of the Union.”
The absence of former CEO Chris Licht was readily apparent, as Bash didn’t even pretend to be an objective interviewer asking if the things claimed in the indictment were “acceptable to [Jordan].”
Jordan explained that the standard was clear: the President has control over the documents.
The standard is Navy v. Egan, a 1988 case, unanimous decision from the courts, from the court, that — Justice Blackmun wrote the opinion. And it said the president’s ability to classify and control access to national security information flows from the Constitution. He decides. He alone decides. He said he declassified this material. He can put it wherever he wants. He can handle it however he wants. That’s the law.
That’s the standard. And Jack Smith can do all this 37 different counts and whatever he wants to do, but that doesn’t change the standard. The standard that the Supreme Court, in a unanimous decision, said was that he can classify and he can control access. He has the sole authority.
Jordan told Bash that he believed what Trump has said about declassifying material, regardless of whatever the indictment might be alleging.
Jordan was loaded for bear. He listed some of the efforts to get Trump that Democrats have been involved in since 2016.
But this is a — this is so political. In 2016 — I mean, every election, we have now seen this, Dana. 2016, it was a dossier that they used. They knew it was false. They used it to go get a warrant to spy on his campaign. 2018, it was the Mueller investigation.
BASH: OK, let me just — let me just — let me just stop you.
JORDAN: 2020, they suppressed the Biden laptop story with the 51 former intel officials. 2022, they raided his home 91 days before an election.[….]
And now they’re indicting him before the 2024 presidential race.
Then Jordan argued that Jack Smith, the special counsel, was already a flawed and biased choice, and added one more element to how political this was.
JORDAN: So, again, I think this just underscores how political this whole thing is.
Jack Smith — do you know how political is when they selected Jack Smith as a special counsel? I actually said in a deposition with Jack Smith — we deposed him on May 29, 2014, because he was looking to prosecute people who were targeted by Obama’s IRS, people Lois Lerner was going after.
BASH: Sir, you can keep talking about this.
JORDAN: We actually had to depose Jack Smith. And that’s the guy Garland picks.
Bash kept trying to claim that there was obstruction, Jordan argued you can’t obstruct when there was no underlying crime.
But it also should be noted that again, you don’t have the defense arguments or rebuttal evidence presented yet, you have the prosecution’s argument of the evidence they believe they have. So for example, if they argue that there’s “obstruction” because records were moved, there may be an argument other than that that the defense has on the matter.
Jordan pointed out how Hillary Clinton got a pass, even though she didn’t even have the protection of being president and having control over the records, with the ability to declassify the information. Her team also destroyed phones and used BleachBit on the private server, but that was all okay because she had the magical “D.”
JORDAN: Dana, this is — what this — what this truly is, Dana, is an affront to the rule of law. It’s an affront to consistent application of the law.
You had Secretary Clinton, who had classified material on a server. She was not president of the United States. She was Secretary Clinton. You have that happen. Nothing happens to her. When you have two people who do the same thing, and one has the standard that I have talked about, but the only one who gets indicted is the Republican, the only one who gets indicted. [….]
BASH: I want to read something that you said about Hillary Clinton’s e-mail server in 2016. You wrote in an opinion article — quote — “Whether through incompetence or willful disregard for security protocol, Hillary Clinton jeopardized national security for personal gain.”
Why do you think this behavior is horrible when Democrats mishandle classified information, allegedly, but there is nothing wrong at all when Republicans do it?
JORDAN: No, you’re missing — you’re missing the key — you’re missing the fundamental distinction.
She was secretary of state. President Trump was president of the United States. The Supreme Court decision in Navy v. Egan wasn’t about the secretary of state. The Constitution doesn’t say, oh, the secretary of state can classify and can control access to national security information. It says the president.
That is the key distinction. But the left doesn’t care. They are so determined to get President Trump, they have been going after him since before he ran, when they took a dossier they knew was false, took it to a secret court, got a warrant that was filed on four American citizens associated with his campaign.
BASH: OK. If that was…
JORDAN: And it’s continued to this day.
BASH: If that was the — OK.
JORDAN: And anyone with common sense can see that.
Then Bash bizarrely claimed there was “no evidence that there was actually classified e-mail” for Clinton, which is not the case.
She also suggested that remarks from Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AR) that we’re in a “war phase” were somehow advocating violence. She asked Jordan if he would “condemn violence.” Watch her eyes as Jordan throws it right back at her, as to how biased the system and CNN are. Then Jordan say we need to get back to equal application of the rule of law.
JORDAN: Of course we don’t want violence. We have condemned violence every time it happened.
I have condemned it when it happened on January 6. I condemned it when it happened in the summer of 2020. It would have been nice if the left would have done the same, because what I saw — actually, frankly, I saw it on your network. I saw a reporter standing in front of a burning building saying, oh, it’s mostly peaceful protests, in 2020.
Let’s condemn the violence every time it happens. Let’s don’t have violence, but let’s have the rule of law. Let’s have equal application of the law. Let’s have that in America. That’s what our great country is supposed to be about. Unfortunately, in this administration, they’re trampling, I think, the fundamental liberties that we enjoy as citizens.
But again, you can see the media trying to set up another narrative. If people on the right know they’re being targeted by an unfair system and want to stop it, that suggests “violence.” But actual violence by leftists is “mostly peaceful” protest.
Jordan makes some great points. We no longer have trust in the system because we’ve seen the constant unequal application of the law, whether it has to do with Lois Lerner during the Obama administration, Clinton, Trump, or BLM/Antifa versus Jan. 6 protesters.
Trump was targeted even before he got into office, with the Russia collusion hoax targeting him to hurt his chances in 2016. Then we saw the effort to suppress the Hunter Biden laptop with all the 51 former intel officers trying to spin it as likely disinformation. Then the impeachment, with Trump being impeached for asking about Biden’s corruption, yet we still see no effort to prosecute that Biden’s alleged corruption, even as huge information about the bribery form came out on that this week.
They haven’t even interviewed Joe Biden on the classified documents yet, unlike their rush to go after Trump. No matter what the indictment says, it’s hard to view it as fair given the whole history of the effort to get Trump.
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