Reprinted with permission from Shareblue.
Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), one of Trump’s top defenders and supporters in Congress, has been accused of enabling serial sexual abuse.
Jordan previously served as a wrestling coach at Ohio State University. The school is now investigating the late Dr. Richard Strauss, who is alleged to have abused team members from the 1970s until the late 1990s while he worked as team doctor.
Former members of the team told NBC News that Jordan knew about the abuse and contributed to the cover-up of the assaults.
They said Jordan was aware that Strauss showered with the students and inappropriately touched them. One student said that he directly told Jordan about the abuse.
“I considered Jim Jordan a friend,” Mike DiSabato, a former wrestler who alleges he was abused, told NBC. “But at the end of the day, he is absolutely lying if he says he doesn’t know what was going on.”
DiSabato said that he reached out to Jordan earlier in the year with his plans to go public with his allegations, and that Jordan told him to “please leave me out of it.”
Another former wrestler, Dunyasha Yetts, said he told Jordan when he was a coach that Strauss “started pulling down my wrestling shorts,” and that he spoke to Jordan numerous times about the abuse.
“For God’s sake, Strauss’s locker was right next to Jordan’s and Jordan even said he’d kill him if he tried anything with him,” Yetts told NBC.
Jordan claims ignorance. “I had not heard about any type of abuse at all,” he told The Columbus Dispatch when stories about the university’s investigation first surfaced earlier this year.
Jordan’s spokesman, Ian Fury, repeated the denial to NBC News: “Congressman Jordan never saw any abuse, never heard about any abuse, and never had any abuse reported to him during his time as a coach at Ohio State,” Fury said.
Over the last year and a half, Jordan has been a staunch supporter and defender for an admitted sexual predator: Trump.
Trump said of women: “Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything.”
Trump’s ongoing embrace of misogyny and racism hasn’t deterred Jordan, who regularly goes to the mat to defend Trump — not just by supporting his agenda in Congress, but also by covering for him personally.
Jordan has been part of the core team of congressmen trying to get in the way of investigations into Trump and Russian election tampering.
Instead of standing up for law and order, Jordan claimed that Trump was tricked into obstructing justice, and argued that it is OK to lie to Congress.
And when Jordan tried to cite a bogus Fox News report to attack Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein in a recent congressional hearing, Rosenstein called him out for an obvious error — leading the entire room to burst into laughter at Jordan’s expense.
Jordan also said during an appearance on CNN that Trump doesn’t lie — even though Trump has told over 3,000 documented lies on the public record.
With his work on Trump’s behalf, Jordan has proved that he is willing to enable an abuser, and even to actively smear and undermine a law enforcement investigation.
Given the latest allegations that Jordan helped prevent a serial abuser from getting justice at Ohio State, it seems Jordan has been at this sort of thing for a long time.
Published with permission of The American Independent.
