County Executive Bruce Blakeman was the keynote speaker at a dinner honoring John Eastman — the disgraced attorney widely known as the chief legal architect of the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol — and then claimed that he didn’t know “who John Eastman is or what he stands for.”
That is not ignorance. That is a calculated insult to every New Yorker who watched Jan. 6 on live television. It is classic deception.
Eastman drafted the memos telling Vice President Mike Pence he could simply discard the certified electoral votes of states President Trump lost. He stood on the stage at the Ellipse on Jan. 6 and laid out his case for “fraud” and “dead people” voting — before thousands of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol, leaving multiple people dead and more than 100 police officers injured.
The man is not obscure. He is infamous.
And yet the Queens Village Republican Club chose to honor him with a “freedom fighter” award. And Blakeman, who’s now running for governor, chose to be the keynote speaker.
The real “freedom fighters” of Jan. 6 are the law enforcement officers who put their lives on the line to save our democracy, not those who ginned up the crowd with lies.
This was not an isolated lapse. It was also reported that Blakeman was scheduled to be a featured speaker at a Long Island event at which Stewart Rhodes — the Oath Keepers founder who was sentenced to 18 years for seditious conspiracy — spoke, and which included a man who pleaded guilty to storming the Capitol. Blakeman’s name was on the poster. His biography is on their website.
A pattern is not a coincidence. A design is not inadvertence.
Blakeman’s blatant cynicism, so reminiscent of the man he holds the umbrella for, and that of so many of Trump’s other sycophants, is why I am sponsoring legislation in the Assembly, along with Sen. John Liu in the Senate, which would require every public-school student in New York to receive instruction on the Jan. 6 insurrection.
As Trump continues his self-serving effort to erase that infamous day from the memory of history, New Yorkers will fulfill our solemn obligation to teach our children the truth.
The legislation exists because the people responsible for Jan. 6 have spent years trying to make the country forget what happened. Trump has called it a “day of love,” and as he promised throughout the campaign leading to his second election victory, he made it one of his first actions to issue a proclamation pardoning more than 1,200 people who were involved and halting the ongoing prosecution of many more. People convicted of violent assaults on police. Insurrectionists recast as heroes, and in Trump’s own words, “patriots.”
Not since the War of 1812, when British forces set fire to the Capitol, have the halls of power in Washington been overtaken by violent intruders as they were on Jan. 6. With this legislation, we would ensure that it’s a day that will not be forgotten.
The American Historical Association writes that “teaching today’s events, which are not a ‘moment,’ but the product of a long history, presents a familiar, yet unusually urgent, challenge: How can students use historical knowledge and thinking to understand the present?”
Young people are looking to their teachers to help them understand both history and current events. New York’s educators have a responsibility to help our students understand what happened on that day, and to help them analyze the legacy of that historic moment.
Bruce Blakeman’s bogus claim of ignorance, “I don’t know who Eastman is,” is a continuation of the effort to make the public forget, and just another pretext to stay on Trump’s good side while attempting to fool New Yorkers into thinking he isn’t as extreme as the president.
If Blakeman genuinely doesn’t know who Eastman is, New York’s schoolchildren soon will. And if he does know, then he owes voters a truthful explanation of why he believes Eastman is an appropriate person to honor, and what that says about the kind of governor he would be.
New Yorkers don’t forget. And we don’t elect governors who pretend to.
Charles Lavine represents the 13th Assembly District.
