Rep. Jim Jordan: Media Downplaying Trump Fraud Claims Believed Disputed Steele Dossier

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) said media outlets and elected Democratic officials who cited the largely debunked dossier created by former UK intelligence Christopher Steele are now dismissing claims of election fraud and irregularities.

“These are the same people who said, ‘Oh we’ve got this anonymous impeachment whistleblower that no one’s ever going to get to talk to, that I didn’t get to cross-examine, that the American people never even got to meet, never even got to see,” said Jordan, the ranking member on the House Judiciary Committee, to Newsmax on Thursday.

“We had to believe him, but, oh, you can’t believe any of this,” Jordan added. “I just don’t think the American people buy that.”

Over the past several weeks, President Donald Trump’s legal team and Trump have called the results of the election into question, prompting social media companies, legacy news outlets, and mostly Democratic officials to say there is no evidence of fraud—despite sworn statements from witnesses and comments from the chairman of the Federal Elections Commission. Some GOP officials in recent days have called on the legal team to present more evidence of election irregularities or fraud.

Earlier in the week, Jordan and Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.) have asked the chairs of their committees—Reps. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) and Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.)—to open an investigation into the election.

“Given your role as leaders of a political party that spent four years baselessly calling into question the legitimacy of the 2016 election with debunked allegations of Russian collusion,” they wrote to the chairs, “you owe it to all Americans to fully examine allegations of actual election errors and misconduct.”

Jordan told Newsmax on Thursday that he does not believe the two committees will do so.

In their letter, Comer and Jordan noted improprieties in Pennsylvania and claimed some election officials in the state didn’t allow poll observers to watch vote-counting efforts. Jordan and Comer also made reference to irregularities in Georgia, including an instance this week when county officials found 5,000 uncounted ballots, memory cards filled with unscanned ballots, and other tranches of ballots that were not counted.

Jordan in the interview was referring to the Steele dossier, which contained a series of memos claiming that then-candidate Trump colluded with Russia to influence the 2016 presidential election. The Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee ultimately paid for Steele’s work. The FBI used the dossier in late October 2016 to obtain a warrant to spy on a former Trump campaign associate.

Circumstantial evidence now suggests that Steele’s dossier may have played a role in the opening of the investigation against the Trump campaign codenamed Crossfire Hurricane. The probe morphed into the special counsel investigation headed by Robert Mueller, who, after a 22-month inquiry, concluded there was no evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.

Earlier this year, Steele was ordered by a UK court to pay damages to Russian businessmen who sued him over claims in the infamous dossier.

Ivan Pentchoukov contributed to this report.