Former University of Montana Law School professor Rob Natelson who is now the Senior Fellow in Constitutional Jurisprudence with the Independence Institute in Denver made his monthly appearance on Talk Back and was asked by several callers about his take on the Capitol riot and the subsequent January 6 Congressional hearings.

Natelson said ordinarily, Congressional hearings deal with legislation, not what he termed a ‘publicity stunt’.

“Legislative hearings are supposed to be connected to the passage of pending legislation,” began Natelson.  “Now, the courts are always going to be very deferential to Congress, when it maintains that the hearing is necessary to establish ‘x’ which is necessary to establish ‘y’ which is necessary to establish ‘z’, which is necessary to the legislation. But theoretically, there is a point at which the hearing simply becomes a publicity stunt or a political device and is not legitimately related to legislation.”

Get our free mobile app

Natelson said he believes the January 6 hearings are ‘beyond the pale’.

“I'm not a big Donald Trump fan,” he said. “However, what this committee is doing is beyond the pale. I mean, we do need some real investigations. We need investigations, for example, into national coordination, potentially, of the 2020 Black Lives Matter and Antifa riots. And we're not getting those investigations, because there actually could be areas where the federal government could help in clarifying the law or changing the law dealing with that kind of mass coordination.”

In addition to his criticism of the January 6 hearings, Natelson also stated his opinion about the 2020 Presidential election.

“I have written two columns, I think, on one huge irregularity that occurred during that (2020) election,” he said. “And that was a disregard of federal law, specifically authorized by the Constitution, having to do with the timing of the choice of presidential electors. To my knowledge, nobody has dealt with that irregularity, nor about its possible impact upon the election.”

Natelson looked back on the riots of 2020 and drew a parallel to the January 6 hearings.

“The 2020 riots had been characterized by very light law enforcement efforts in that basically, some of the police departments were told to stand down and not interfere,” he said. “It's possible that that same philosophy, if it can be called that, was at work on January 6. We're not going to know this until we have a real investigation. And I don't think that the current committee is doing a real investigation. I suspect that the real investigation probably will never come from Congress. It's likely to come from historians.”

In addition to his work with the Independence Institute in Denver, Natelson is also an author and a weekly contributor to the online Epoch Times.

Click here to listen to the entire conversation with Rob Natelson.

PHOTOS: Scene at U.S. Capitol shows chaos and violence

LOOK: What major laws were passed the year you were born?

Data for this list was acquired from trusted online sources and news outlets. Read on to discover what major law was passed the year you were born and learn its name, the vote count (where relevant), and its impact and significance.

LOOK: 100 years of American military history