In sworn testimony Wednesday, Alaska Rep. David Eastman said he remains a member of an anti-government militia, one of two key criteria for his disqualification from the Legislature under a 67-year-old clause of the state constitution. (From AlaskaBeacon)
In this Alaska Court System screenshot, Rep. David Eastman, R-Wasilla, takes the witness stand on Wednesday, Dec. 14, 2022, during his legislative eligibility trial in Palmer.
McKenna must also rule on the legality of the Alaska Constitution’s disloyalty clause, which may violate the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Opening Tuesday’s hearing, he asked attorneys on all sides for additional written briefing on the subject, due Monday. “I believe so. I have not heard from anyone at the Oath Keepers about my membership … in several years,” Eastman said.
Attorney Joe Miller, representing Eastman, has attempted to divorce the convicted members from the rest of the group, saying they are not representative of the group as a whole, or of Eastman, who was in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6 but did not enter the restricted area around the U.S. Capitol. Dudukgian relied on testimony from Lewis and Matt Kriner, a senior research scholar at the Center on Terrorism, Extremism, and Counterterrorism at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterrey, to make the case that the actions of Jan. 6 show that the Oath Keepers advocate the overthrow of the U.S. government.
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