Donald Trump has a unique menagerie of friends.

Some of them are Communist dictators—such as North Korea’s Kim Jong Un and Russia’s Vladimir Putin.

Some of them are accused pedophiles—such as billionaire Jeffrey Epstein, who, in 2008, was convicted of soliciting an underage girl for prostitution. 

And some of them apparently knew that others were being sexually abused, but did nothing to stop the assaults—like Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH).

Jordan has long defended Trump’s litany of demonstrated lies and documented criminality. Appearing on CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360,” on April 16, 2018, Jordan accused Andrew McCabe, the former deputy director of the FBI, of being a liar. He accused the Washington Post of lying. He asked Cooper if he had ever lied.

But, pressed by Cooper on whether he had ever heard Trump lie, Jordan replied: “I have not. I don’t know of it. Nothing comes to mind.”

Rep. Jim Jordan

Jordan pushed to impeach Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who oversees Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russia’s subversion of the 2016 Presidential election.

Jordan, a member of the House’s Right-wing Freedom Caucus, fanatically supports President Donald Trump, whose campaign received documented support from Russian Intelligence agents. 

Jordan believes there should not be any investigation into this unholy alliance. 

And on February 27, Jordan appeared at the House or Representatives’ Committee on Oversight and Reform to attack the credibility of Michael Cohen. 

Trump’s former attorney and fixer

• Accused the President of being a racist, a conman and a cheat.
• Testified that “Donald Trump is a man who ran for office to make his brand great, not to make our country great. He had no desire or intention to lead this nation—only to market himself and to build his wealth and power.” 
• Produced a copy of a check Trump “wrote from his personal bank account—after he became president—to reimburse me for the hush money payments I made to cover up his affair with an adult film star and prevent damage to his campaign.” 
• Testified that “Mr. Trump knew of and directed the Trump Moscow negotiations throughout the campaign and lied about it. He also lied about it because he stood to make hundreds of millions of dollars on the Moscow real estate project.”

Michael Cohen

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As a result of his work for Trump, on August 21, 2018, Cohen pleaded guilty to tax fraud, bank fraud and campaign finance violations. He was sentenced in December, 2018, to three years in federal prison and ordered to pay a $50,000 fine.

Like every other Republican at the hearing, Jordan ignored Cohen’s damning allegations. He didn’t try to defend Trump. He simply indulged in character assassination.

After Jordan claimed that Cohen showed “non-existent” remorse, Cohen counterattacked: “I am remorseful. I am going to prison. I will be away from my wife and children for years.”

Meanwhile, Jordan is being haunted by a scandal of his own. 

Jordan served as an assistant coach at Ohio State University (OSU) from 1987 to 1995. Several former OSU wrestlers claim Jordan ignored sexual abuse of students by the team’s doctor. 

In April, 2018, OSU announced it was investigating charges that Richard Strauss had abused team wrestlers while he served as the team doctor from the mid-1970s to the late 1990s. Strauss died in 2005.

Jordan claims he didn’t know about the abuse.

Yet several former wrestlers assert that they told Jordan about the abuse or remember Jordan being a part of conversations about the abuse.

“I considered Jim Jordan a friend,” Mike DiSabato, a former wrestler, told NBC. It was DiSabato’s allegations against Strauss that led OSU to open the investigation. “But at the end of the day, he is absolutely lying if he says he doesn’t know what was going on.”

In an email to Ohio State’s legal counsel, DiSabato wrote: “Strauss sexually assaulted male athletes in at least fifteen varsity sports during his employment at OSU from 1978 through 1998.”

“There’s no way unless he’s got dementia or something that he’s got no recollection of what was going on at Ohio State,” former Ultimate Fighting Championship world champion Mark Coleman told the Wall Street Journal.  “I have nothing but respect for this man, I love this man, but he knew as far as I’m concerned.” 

Which immediately raises the question: How can you respect and love a man who knew that students were being sexually abused—and did nothing to stop it?

Speaking with reporters in Ohio, Jordan offered a Sergeant Schultz “I know nothing” defense: 

“We knew of no abuse, never heard of abuse. If we had, we would have reported it. If, in fact, there’s problems, we want justice for the people who were victims, obviously, and as I said, we are happy to talk with the folks who are doing the investigation. But the things they said about me just were flat-out not true.”

Trump says he believes his ally Jordan “100 percent”: “I don’t believe them at all,” Trump told reporters, referring to the wrestlers who have come forward.

Thus, a President accused of moral depravity finds himself defended by a man accused of ignoring the sexual abuse of young men.