Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, one of the Republican Party’s top inquisitors in Congress, is expected to be deposed Friday about allegations that he failed to protect the wrestlers he once coached at Ohio State University from a sexual predator, four plaintiffs in lawsuits against the university told NBC News.
Jordan, who was the assistant wrestling coach at the university from 1986 to 1994 before he got into politics, has repeatedly and publicly denied any knowledge that the team’s doctor, Richard Strauss, was preying on the athletes.
It will be the first time Jordan has be questioned under oath by lawyers representing hundreds of former OSU students, both athletes and nonathletes, who are suing the school for damages in federal court in the Southern District of Ohio. Jordan is not a defendant, but he is referred to in some of the lawsuits alleging he was aware of the abuse.
Jordan, the powerful chairman of the House Judiciary Committee and a staunch ally of President Donald Trump, is known for his combative questioning of witnesses and for avoiding suit jackets during it.
Reached for comment, Jordan spokesperson Russell Dye released a variation of the statement Jordan’s team has been using since July 2018, when three former OSU wrestlers told NBC News that Jordan was lying when he claimed he did not know that Strauss molested them under the guise of giving physical examinations.
“As everyone knows, Chairman Jordan never saw or heard of any abuse, and if he had, he would have dealt with it,” the statement said.
Mike DiSabato, who wrestled for Jordan and was the first former OSU student who publicly accused him of having turned a blind eye to the abuse Strauss inflicted on him and his teammates, said he does not expect Jordan to say any more than he already has.
“I assume he’s going to triple down and follow the same script he followed back in 2018 when he went on Fox and denied knowing about any abuse, denied being told of any abuse, never heard the word ‘abuse,’” DiSabato said.
DiSabato was referring to an interview with Fox News’ Bret Baier in which Jordan also insisted that he did not hear any locker room banter about Strauss.
Still, said DiSabato, who previously reached a settlement with OSU, he hopes Jordan “will finally come out and admit that he knew Strauss was doing unnecessary prostate exams, doing unnecessary genital exams, taking multiple showers with athletes, all while being employed by a university funded by the state of Ohio.”
Jordan will sit down for a deposition about a month after the release of an HBO Max documentary about the Strauss scandal called “Surviving Ohio State,” in which one of the wrestlers he once coached flat-out called him a liar.
Another Strauss survivor, Steve Snyder-Hill, said he will watch the deposition Friday at his lawyer’s office in Columbus. While he is not a former athlete, Snyder-Hill is one of the former OSU students suing the university.
“I expect him to lie under oath,” Snyder-Hill said. “I don’t know a nicer way to put it.”
Snyder-Hill said Strauss abused him at a campus clinic in 1995. He said that what the doctor was alleged to have been doing to young men under the guise of giving physical examinations eventually became an open secret throughout campus, extending beyond the athletes’ locker rooms.
“Jordan had a locker two down from Strauss, and Jordan claims he didn’t know?” Snyder-Hill said. “That’s hard to believe.”
Strauss, who died in 2005, worked at OSU from 1978 through 1998.
Prompted by allegations from DiSabato and other former OSU wrestlers, the university agreed to an independent investigation by the Perkins Coie law firm, which concluded in 2019 that coaches and athletic administrators knew for two decades that Strauss was molesting male athletes and other students but failed to sound the alarm or stop him.
Jordan’s former communications director, Ian Fury, insisted in 2019 that the report absolved Jordan. All of the coaches and administrators’ names were redacted in the version of the report released to the public.
Fury cited as proof a line in the report that said investigators “did not identify any other contemporaneous documentary evidence indicating that members of the OSU coaching staff, including head coaches or assistant coaches, received or were aware of complaints regarding Strauss’ sexual misconduct.”
Since the release of the report, OSU has said it has paid out $60 million in settlement money and its former president has publicly apologized “to each person who endured” abuse at the hands of Strauss.
Several of the lawsuits mention Jordan by name.
Still facing at least five active lawsuits from 236 men alleging Strauss molested them, too, OSU, which had apologized to Strauss’ victims and had reported in 2019 that Strauss committed 1,429 sexual assaults and 47 rapes, walked back its previous position in October 2023 and denied having admitted any wrongdoing. The settlements it paid out were without admission of liability and were reached through mediation.
OSU also argued that the statute of limitations in the case against it had run out.
But in June 2023, the Supreme Court refused to reconsider a lower court ruling that said former students should be allowed to sue OSU, paving the way for their lawyers to question Jordan and other OSU employees about Strauss.
Former Athletic Director Andy Geiger was deposed Wednesday, NBC affiliate WCMH of Columbus reported. Some of the lawsuits refer to Geiger as one of several people whom student-athletes allege they told about the abuse when it was happening.
“We plan to depose every OSU employee alleged to have known about Strauss’ abuse, including the employees named in the complaints,” Adele Kimmel, director of the Public Justice Students’ Civil Rights Project, said in June 2023.
