November 08, 2023 12:03 PM UTC

"KenSNBC" Buck, January 6th's Unreliable Narrator

• 2 Comments
• by: Colorado Pols

Last Thursday, as 9NEWS’ Marshall Zelinger reports, retiring GOP Rep. “KenSNBC” Buck testified remotely from Washington in the Denver District Court trial seeking to disqualify ex-President Donald Trump from the 2024 Colorado primary ballot for his role in inciting the January 6th, 2021 riot at the U.S. Capitol and the associated plot to deny Joe Biden his lawfully-won victory in the 2020 presidential elections.

Although Buck has garnered much praise in recent weeks for his variably principled stand against 2020 election deniers and coup-plotters in his party, Buck testified last week to help Trump and Trump’s infamous local attorney Scott Gessler stave off this lawsuit and keep Trump on the Colorado ballot. In particular,

Buck was called by Trump’s team to discredit the January 6 committee report that is being used to try to prove Trump’s involvement in an insurrection. [Pols emphasis]

“It’s like going into a courtroom as a prosecutor, not having a defense counsel or a defendant. I think, in order to be able to judge someone’s culpability, you’ve got to be able to hear both sides of the story, and in this case, there was not another side,” Buck said…

As readers know, Republican leadership in the U.S. House wanted absolutely nothing to do with the January 6th Select Committee investigation, and made that crystal clear to any members who considered participating in good faith. The two Republicans who did serve on the committee, Reps. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, both did so literally on their way out the door as their careers as Republican lawmakers ended.

What does this have to do with Ken Buck? As Buck testified Thursday right after complaining that the January 6th committee was hopelessly one-sided, Buck claims he asked Speaker Kevin McCarthy to serve on the committee and was denied permission:

“I actually called Kevin McCarthy because of my background as a prosecutor, and I asked Kevin if I could get his permission to seek to serve on that committee because I thought it was important that witnesses were cross-examined, and documents were challenged. And Kevin told me that he did not want me serving on that committee, and that he did not want anybody else, any other Republican, serving on that committee,” Buck said.

Folks, how can Ken Buck complain that the January 6th Select Committee was one-sided when he was ordered by his own GOP leadership not to participate? If Buck felt so strongly that the January 6th investigation needed honest bipartisan participation, why didn’t Buck take the risk and serve anyway along with Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger? And while we’re on the subject, is Buck suggesting that Cheney and Kinzinger don’t count for bipartisanship?

It’s another case where we genuinely want to give Buck some credit, but his own contradictions make that impossible. Just like Buck abandoning his stated principles to support avowed election deniers Steve Scalise and later Mike Johnson as Speaker, in the end Buck always seems to find a way to confound the gratitude he would otherwise have coming.

The one venue where it all makes sense, of course, is cable news.