Donald Trump's co-conspirators are complaining the House select committee lacks a “legitimate legislative purpose" in investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection, but one columnist explained why those claims are "absurd."
Conservative attorney John Eastman, author of the so-called "coup memo" advancing the theory that vice president Mike Pence could stop the certification of Joe Biden's win to tip the election to Trump, filed a lawsuit after he was subpoenaed arguing that the panel was engaged in law enforcement and not legislation, reported the Washington Post.
"There may be no human being alive who underscores the committee’s legislative purpose more clearly than John Eastman does," wrote Post columnist Greg Sargent. "Eastman is a living breathing argument for reform of the Electoral Count Act (ECA) of 1887, which governs how Congress counts electors appointed by states. That’s because Eastman was a key architect of the scheme to exploit holes in the ECA to subvert the outcome."
Committee members have repeatedly said their investigation will be used to solidify the process for certifying presidential elections, along with other potential legislative purposes, and Eastman's legal advice to the twice-impeached one-term president shows why those reforms are necessary.
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"The idea that Eastman, of all people, would attempt this argument is particularly ludicrous," Sargent wrote. "He arguably illustrates the need for legislative reform as clearly as you could possibly want."
"At this point, Trumpworld has been reduced to effectively arguing that the committee’s goal of developing a political and policy response to an effort to overturn and destroy our political order is itself illegitimate," he added. "The cover-up has devolved into an assertion that we should respond to those extraordinary events by doing nothing along those lines at all."
