Trump’s Sacramento-based mouthpiece calls Jan. 6 panel illegitimate. Here’s why he’s wrong

Handling communications for a world-class prevaricator like Donald Trump requires a preternaturally flexible relationship with reality. Sacramento’s own Taylor Budowich, who is serving as the former president’s chief spokesman, has proven himself overqualified on that score.

One of several Trump minions subpoenaed last fall by the House committee on the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, Budowich is engaged in a quixotic, post-factual effort to impede its investigation of his role in the insurrection. In that sense, Budowich is an apt representative of the former president’s broader movement to evade every law, rule or norm that doesn’t suit him and get away with it by applying the same lawless defiance to attempts to investigate and prosecute any wrongdoing.

The select committee subpoenaed Budowich, who is communications director for Trump and his political action committee, based on “credible evidence” that he helped arrange a $200,000 payment to advertise Trump’s Jan. 6 rally through a 501(c)4, a type of nonprofit often used for opaque political spending. Budowich initially complied, turning over hundreds of pages of financial and other records and sitting for an hours-long deposition.

But he subsequently sued House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and committee members over a subpoena seeking more information on his financial transactions from his bank, JPMorgan Chase. While Budowich maintains that the bank records will show nothing but his penchant for online impulse buys, the committee expects the documents to corroborate his contributions to fomenting the riot.

Budowich portrayed the committee as “illegitimate” in a statement to The Bee that went so far as to compare the investigation to the late Hosni Mubarak’s deposed autocratic regime in Egypt, where Budowich lived briefly. It’s a deeply ironic comparison given that the Jan. 6 committee is investigating an attack on U.S. democracy precipitated by Budowich’s boss.

His lawsuit, one of several filed by the panel’s targets, questions the committee’s authority on partisan grounds. Noting that Pelosi, D-San Francisco, and her fellow Democrats exercise outright control over the body — much as the majority controls most House committees — Budowich argues that it hasn’t allowed sufficient Republican participation and consultation to meet congressional standards.

Pelosi did reject two of House Minority Leader McCarthy’s choices for the committee, including Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, a specialist in disruptive shirtsleeves histrionics. That unusual move prompted McCarthy, R-Bakersfield, to withdraw his other three choices. Both decisions were fateful, not only excluding the Republican leadership from participation but also ensuring that the panel would be remarkably effective and efficient as congressional committees go.

The committee nevertheless includes two Republicans selected by Pelosi in lieu of the rejected McCarthyites, including the panel’s vice chairwoman and former GOP conference leader, Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney. And as a House lawyer noted in rebutting Budowich’s lawsuit, past Republican majorities enjoyed similar control over select committees such as those that investigated the 2012 attack on a U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, and the botched federal response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005. The former was a notoriously partisan affair targeting then-presidential contender Hillary Clinton, while the latter was composed entirely of Republicans.

Moreover, Pelosi appointed the select committee only after the implosion of a deal to create an independent, bipartisan commission on the attack under terms Democrats reached with McCarthy’s handpicked negotiator, New York Republican John Katko. McCarthy abandoned the deal and helped kill the commission, not coincidentally, on the day Trump falsely maligned the bipartisan agreement as a “Democrat trap.”

Budowich’s current argument is worthy of the former president’s chief propagandist. Months after his boss dashed a bipartisan investigation of Jan. 6, he’s contriving to impede the current probe by arguing that it’s too partisan. The courts should treat his and other such complaints with all the derision they deserve.