After the Legislature has been in session three weeks, Democrat Rep. Chris Tuck of South Anchorage has set a hearing for Feb. 10 to dig into the military veterans and police and fire veterans group known as Oath Keepers. Testimony will be by invitation only at the discretion of Tuck.
Tuck, who chairs the House Committee on Military and Veterans Affairs, said on the House floor on Monday that any Alaskan who belongs to a group that has the mission of overthrowing the government may not serve in office. He was referring to Rep. David Eastman of Wasilla, and he was referring to Eastman’s membership in the Oath Keepers, a 501(c) group that enjoys a charitable listing with the federal government.
Members of Tuck’s Democrat-dominated caucus have been attempting to remove Eastman from all of his committees because of his lifetime membership with the Oath Keepers, whose leaders are accused but not convicted of various crimes relating to the riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Who Tuck will get to come testify is still a secret. The only known member of Oath Keepers in the Legislature is Eastman, but he says he has not received an invitation to testify. On the floor of the House he asked people to send him names of those he should invite. Tuck says that many Alaskans are interested in the topic, especially the coalition of leftist groups that have banded together and named themselves “Expel Eastman.” Tuck himself has not served in the military but has been an officer for the IBEW, an organization that has been plagued by corruption.
The leftist majority in the House has not been able to muster the 21 votes to remove Eastman from his committees, and is far short of the 27 votes needed to expel him, so Tuck is taking charge to prove that the Oath Keepers membership violates the Alaska Constitution’s disloyalty clause, hoping to persuade some members of the Republican minority to take action against one of its members.
Democrats in the U.S. House have set up a Jan. 6 committee to investigate the chaos that ensued on Jan. 6, 2021, when members of the public stormed the Capitol to interrupt the certification of the Electoral College vote. The committee has subpoenaed dozens of people. Whether Tuck will try to turn his committee into a tribunal against veterans who went to D.C. on Jan. 6, such as Eastman, remains to be seen.
