The national media won’t tell us who the career government employee is, even though he just kicked off an impeachment effort. But now that Republican Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan is getting involved in preventing President Trump's impeachment, the media will gladly report on an old sex abuse scandal that never had anything to do with him.

NBC News on Thursday reported that “a professional referee” at Ohio State University had filed a lawsuit related to the school’s now-deceased pervert doctor. The report says that “disgraced doctor Richard Strauss masturbated in front of [the referee] in a shower after a wrestling match at Ohio State University, and he reported the encounter directly to Rep. Jim Jordan.”

The news value here is supposed to be that Jordan has denied knowing about any offensive misconduct by the pervert ever since last summer when the story originally broke. Though Jordan was an assistant coach for the school’s wrestling team, he has only said that some students joked about the pervert, but none raised any issues about sexual abuse.

“Conversations in a locker room are a lot different than people coming up and talking about abuse,” Jordan said in an interview on Fox News at the height of the controversy. “No one ever reported any abuse to me.”

[Read: Second man accuses Jim Jordan of covering up sex abuse at Ohio State]

The media really tried to get this story moving last year by repeatedly referring to “sexual abuse” that Jordan must have known about while failing to act. NBC was first to report in July 2018 that some former wrestlers were claiming Jordan knew of Strauss’s behavior, which included ogling of the wrestlers in the shared school fitness facility; seemingly unnecessary touching of male athletes on their genitals; and asking them to remove all of their clothes when they would visit for minor injuries. The words “abuse” or “abused” were used five times in that report and yet neither were used a single time by any of the former wrestlers quoted in the story.

A CNN report at the time said, “Several former wrestlers have alleged that Jordan knew of the sexual abuse allegations.”

Matthew Fleischer, an opinion editor for the Los Angeles Times, referred misleadingly to alleged “sexual abuses” and said that “even if you believe Jordan — and, to be clear, I don’t — there's no scenario in this mess where he's a good person.”

A Washington Post blog post asked, “Just how much trouble is Rep. Jim Jordan in over alleged Ohio State sexual abuse?”

An article in Politico reported that “new allegations in the Ohio State University sexual abuse scandal are threatening to intensify the political firestorm facing” Jordan.

And yet, this is not how any of the former wrestlers interviewed actually described their situations, except for one guy who was suing the school for money.

Here are quotes from several of the others:

”It was always the joke;” “If someone said, ‘Oh, I’ve got to go see Doc Strauss,’ it would be like, ‘Oh, prepare to drop your pants.’”— Michael Alf to USA Today.

“It was a common uncomfortable joke that Doc was a serial groper.”— Michael DiSabato to CNN.

“Everybody joked about it and talked about it all the time.”— David Range to the Washington Post.

"I have no doubt that Russ and Jim knew, but I never heard it presented in a way that made it need to be addressed in any large sense."— Reid Delman to the Post.

“Doc used to take showers with the team even though he didn’t do any workouts, and everybody used to snicker about how you go into his office for a sore shoulder and he tells you to take your pants down.”— Unidentified former wrestler to NBC News.

It's important to note that all of these men, and some others, say they believe that Jordan, who worked as the assistant coach from 1986 to 1994, knew about Strauss making them uncomfortable. But none of them said they directly complained to Jordan about “sexual abuse.”

But now, here is NBC with a story this week about an adult male who says he told Jordan that Strauss masturbated in front of him and only got a “Yeah, that’s Strauss” response.

But the head coach has actually said that he alerted school administrators about the deviant and got no action in response. What was Jordan as the assistant supposed to do? Pile drive the pervert?

This story is a microwaved scandal, and we all know why it's being pulled out and warmed up now. NBC described Jordan as “a powerful Republican congressman and a top defender of President Donald Trump in the ongoing impeachment inquiry.”

Ahh, so that’s what this is about. Jordan is defending a president that the media hate.

Well, the scandal wasn’t his problem then and it isn’t now.