Jim Jordan probes U.S. Marshals over why more SCOTUS protesters weren’t arrested last year: report

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) wants to know why more protesters weren’t arrested for demonstrating at the homes of Supreme Court justices last year over a leaked draft of the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization ruling, according to a published report.

The far-right congressman who chairs the House Judiciary Committee has demanded communication records between law enforcement agencies including U.S. Marshals and the Department of Justice, and has set a 5 p.m., May 17 deadline for them to respond, The Washington Examiner reports.

Jordan cited training material distributed by Marshals that he said urged them to restrain from arresting the protestors.

Jordan in a letter to the marshals obtained by The Examiner wrote: "Among other things, the training slides instructed Marshals 'to avoid, unless absolutely necessary, any criminal enforcement,' stated that 'making arrests and initiating prosecutions is not the goal,' that arrests of protestors should be a 'last resort” and would be 'counter-productive,'"

The demand for communications records is part of a broader probe over “politicization of federal law-enforcement agencies," according to the report, which notes that Jordan also chairs the Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government.

Attorney General Merrick Garland in March during a Senate Appropriations subcommittee hearing asserted that the marshals were given “full authority” to detain anyone who broke the law at the demonstrations, which occurred as the nation awaited the high court’s ruling on abortion rights.

Under questioning from Sen. Katie Britt (R-AL) Garland said he saw no evidence that in "any way precluded from bringing other kinds of arrests."

Jordan disputed that notion, according to the report.

"The training materials provided to the U.S. Marshals strongly suggest that the Biden Administration is continuing to weaponize federal law enforcement agencies for partisan purposes," Jordan said.