Last Tuesday, Mikie Sherrill won the race to become New Jerseys next Governor and plans to submit her resignation from the U.S. House of Representatives next week. Who will take her place in Congress? Friend of the Contrarian, Tom Malinowski, who previously represented New Jersey in 2019, is throwing his hat in the ring.
Malinowski joins Jen to explain his rationale for heading back on to the campaign trail, his reaction to the government shutdown deal (specifically a provision that could give Senators hundreds of thousands of dollars), and the newly revealed Epstein emails.
Tom P. Malinowski is a former U.S. Congressman from New Jersey from 2019 to 2023. A Democrat, he served as Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor in the Obama administration. Before that, he worked with the National Security Council to help end some of the 20th Century’s bloodiest humanitarian crises, and as the chief advocate for Human Rights Watch, leading a bipartisan effort to end the Bush Administration’s use of torture.
The following transcript has been edited for formatting purposes.
Jen Rubin
Hi, this is Jen Rubin, Editor-in-Chief of The Contrarian. Welcome back, Tom Malinowski, who has made news himself recently. You’ve decided to run to fill Mikie Sherrill’s seat. Why are you running to return to the dysfunctional House of Representatives?
Tom Malinowski
Hi, Jen. So… Thank you for having me. I think I’m running for Congress because I think there should be a Congress.
Jen Rubin
Yeah!
Tom Malinowski
Wouldn’t that be nice, like, if there were this… This other institution in Washington that… did stuff like… and… okay, I’m gonna coin a phrase now: Checks and balances.
Jen Rubin
Yep. Yep, it’s catchy, could catch on.
Tom Malinowski
I know. And, you know, we’ve been talking, as your fellow contrarian for the last few months, about all of the outrages and dysfunction, and most of all, the… it’s not policy differences we have with Trump, but the complete evisceration of democratic norms and respect for the Constitution and rule of law. And we’ve been talking about what Democrats in Congress can do, even in the minority, and maybe in the majority, hopefully, knock on wood.
So I gotta put my money where my mouth is sometimes, and this is a great opportunity, because it’s the next fight after the great victories on Tuesday in New Jersey and Virginia. This is the next contested election between now and the midterms.
So it’s going to be really important for building that momentum, continuing the momentum that we have now.
Jen Rubin
Do you know what the timing is going to be yet?
Tom Malinowski
So, it looks like, Mikie Sherrill is going to formally resign from Congress at some point next week. And at that point, the clock begins, and there will be a special primary election in about 2 months, so about 2 months after her resignation, so it could be around February 1st.
And then the special general election will be 2 months after that.
Jen Rubin
Got it, got it. Now, there are a number of other Democrats who may be running, for the same seat. Do you expect that to be very hotly contested, even though it’s a very short time period? Do you expect them all to rally to your side, Tom, and do the right thing? Or do you expect there to be some vigorous debates and lots of campaigning between now and February?
Tom Malinowski
I’m sure we will all rally to the side of the nominee. I start out well-known in the district. I represent part of this district when I was in Congress before. A couple of my towns from the old district were moved into this one, and I think particularly at a time when most Democratic voters are thinking about the Trump administration and the threat to democracy, and the need for strength in Congress to deal with that problem. I think I’ve got a good story to tell as a Democrat with experience, with some seniority in the House, and I think a good track record of fighting back and not capitulating.
Jen Rubin
Absolutely. Do you expect the governor-elect to endorse anyone before the primary?
Tom Malinowski
I do not, no. She… and I, of course, would always be nice to have anybody’s endorsement, but I think I would probably advise her, if I were only thinking about her situation, not to do it, because she’s got to focus on building an administration getting started as governor at a very challenging time.
And why plunge into a… You know, another election before that.
Jen Rubin
Absolutely. You did an immense amount of campaigning with her and for her, so you are out with the voters. Did anything surprise you about the electorate since you last campaigned for yourself? In other words, are there different issues? Is there a different feeling amongst the electorate? What did you notice when you were out, after having taken a break from at least campaigning for yourself?
Tom Malinowski
04:47
Hmm. I have to say, I expected Mikie to win. I was not one of the worriers. But the margin of victory, I don’t think I would have predicted it would be this big. So that, that does tell us something about the electorate right now, because there’s no way you get to, like… 56, 55% of the vote in an election that the Republicans so heavily contested without having folks who may have been Trump supporters a year ago. Or at least wanted to give him a chance to come over to the other side. And so that’s not all, contrarians. It’s not all people who go to no kings rallies and carry little constitutions in their pocket.
Jen Rubin
Yes.
Tom Malinowski
But I think what really struck me about this election is that there are clearly now a lot of people out there who just think this has gone too far.
Jen Rubin
Yes.
Tom Malinowski
Even if they don’t 100% trust the Democratic Party yet. And I think we can feel that. Now, among Democratic primary voters. I think this is about something really simple right now. It’s no kings, crooks, or cowards.
Jen Rubin
There you go. I like it. Speaking of, I won’t say coward, I will say less courageous, folk. The shutdown ended in a way that didn’t sit well with many of us. There were a group of Senate Democrats, as anyone very well knows, who not only made a deal, but made a deal that was so appallingly bad that it even included the potential that a bunch of senators whose phone records were legitimately subpoenaed for purposes of the investigation of the insurrection that Donald Trump led, will be able to sue the federal government, of course. Given Trump is in charge, and get huge payouts. What was your reaction to the deal, and to the fact that Democrats would have allowed something like this to be included?
Tom Malinowski
I guess I’m not surprised that those Republican senators seized an opportunity to grab a few million dollars for themselves, because that’s… you know, there’s… I think democracy is alive in America, rule of law, not so much. And the message that every Trump-supporting member of Congress, public official, politician is getting right now is you can get whatever you want, you can do whatever you want, there are no rules. If you commit a crime on this guy’s behalf, you will be pardoned. The law applies to Democrats, it doesn’t apply to you. So why not get rich quick if you see an opportunity?
I would love to see the breakdown of what happened behind closed doors to answer your other question, how did the Democratic senators, those eight, not see this, because, like…You’d think that they… if they were gonna make this deal, they would have known what was in it?
And then you now have, in the House of Representatives, Mike Johnson appearing to be against this, right? So he said, well, we’ll pass the government funding bill with this terrible provision, but then we will introduce a standalone bill in the House to get rid of… the thing that we are allowing these senators to do.
The problem…it has to go back to the Senate. And, obviously, the Senate’s pretty clear, they’re not gonna pass that. And even if they did, would Trump sign it? So… and that kind of thing pisses me off, because it’s just taking advantage of people not understanding how the process works. It’s performative, pretending to do something when you’re not really willing to do the real thing.
And… So, yeah, you know. Tommy Tuberville can sue us. Right? The taxpayers, for a million dollars. And Pam Bondi will say, okay Tommy, let’s… let’s compromise on $2 million.
Jen Rubin
Exactly. Exactly. I mean, we laugh, but this is the level of cheating and of corruption. Donald Trump wants to write himself a check for $230 million for having gone through the pain of having to be held to account for his own insurrection. That’s the world in which we’re operating.
Tom Malinowski
And it’s… look, it’s all terrible… it’s terrible, and what’s worse is that, it looks like we’re not going to protect those millions of middle-class Americans whose health insurance premiums are doubling, tripling, quintupling in some cases, at least until the next showdown, which will be at the end of January. So that’s real pain.
And the only political silver lining… I would rather avoid the pain, but the political silver lining is that it is now crystal clear to everyone that the Republicans in Congress and Trump do not give a damn about that.
I will have no trouble in my campaign in holding them 100% responsible for what is happening to those families, even if I think the Democrats should have held out longer.
Jen Rubin
Fair enough. Now, the other big development, of course, and today we’ve had the latest installment of the Jeffrey Epstein, and Donald Trump files, we should say, is that the House Democrats, who seem to be better at the strategery thing than their counterparts in the Senate, released some emails that seemed to indicate, that at least from Jeffrey Epstein’s perspective, Donald Trump might have known a lot more than he’s led on to, and he indicates that he spent, quote, hours at Jeffrey Epstein’s home with one of these underage girls. Now, they could have been discussing political science, because we know what an intellectual Donald Trump is. They could have been discussing environmentalism. But we don’t know.
And this does raise the specter that not only has he had greater involvement, but that he’s lied about it, that Pam Bondi has lied about it. Let’s fast forward and say you’re in the house. What would you do about this?
Tom Malinowski
I do exactly what the Democrats have been doing, and you know, they’re not accusing Donald Trump of anything. We don’t go around saying, lock him up like the other side. What they’re saying is that this was an…This is an awful thing, there are victims out there who should have been listened to sooner, and who deserve accountability.
And that anybody who is responsible, whether it’s Donald Trump or somebody else, Democrat, Republican, doesn’t matter, there should be justice for those young women. And, you know, I don’t know what Trump did when he was partying with Epstein. I got my suspicions, but I’m not, like, not gonna prosecute someone based on my suspicions, but I do think, as do all the House Democrats and some of the House Republicans, that the truth should come out, and the chips should fall where they may.
Jen Rubin
Absolutely. One of the things that we are left with, regardless of what the truth about Donald Trump was, is that Pam Bondi has been acting as part of this cover-up. She went before the American people and said, oh, no, there are really no Epstein files at all. She apparently, had a whole team of people go through these files, found all the references to Donald Trump, but hasn’t told the American people about it. What should the Congress do about a Attorney General has not only done that but, of course, helped prosecute on entirely specious grounds a series of Trump opponents.
Tom Malinowski
Well, if I were a senator, I would try very hard not to confirm a single Trump-appointed judge for the duration of this Congress, if I have the power to do it. The judiciary is, Supreme Court notwithstanding, holding up its end of the bargain here in defending the Constitution. And so, that is a… that is a significant check on what Pam Bondi and these people are able to do. They may indict some people, they may try to prosecute them, they’re gonna lose so badly that… I hope they get tired of losing at some point.
So that’s number one. Number two, like, if we…You and I have talked about this before, I’ve written about it, I do think Democrats need to be previewing now. What forms of accountability will come and the types of investigations that they’re willing to do. Some of what we’re seeing is just wrong, but not criminal, but some of it may well be. Like, the pay for pardons scheme, where clearly if you were a Trump supporter who gave a million dollars to one of his PACs, and you committed fraud or some act of corruption, you’re buying a pardon.
And while the President’s pardon power is absolute. It’s still bribery if you’re paying for it, and we gotta be talking now about what we’re gonna do about that in the future when we have a majority so that people are deterred from doing it now.
Jen Rubin
Absolutely, absolutely. One of the things that we’ve been missing, among other things, of course, is oversight, investigations. And if there are people who have perjured themselves before Congress, and I’m not pointing fingers at any individual who are now in either judicial spots or executive spots. The remedy for that, aside from any kind of criminal ramifications, there is an impeachment process that goes forward. May not remove these people, but sometimes that is an effective way of inducing people to at least leave government, who should not be there in the first place.
When you are in Congress previously, you were not a shrinking violet by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, you were one of the people who exercised, some powerful oversight on various issues. There is a group of congresspeople right now who seem to, have, some of them were there when you were there, some of them joined subsequently, I’m thinking of Dan Goldman, I’m thinking of Jamie Raskin, and others. Do you think that there is a cohort of people that you could effectively work out… work with to sketch out a scheme, a plan of oversight and of accountability if, in fact, House members, if the Democrats wind up with the majority of the House members?
Tom Malinowski
Yeah, and it’s not going to be hard to investigate this stuff, because they’re doing it so openly. You know, that’s one of the defenses. One of the Republican defenses of Trump corruption is that he admits it, so I don’t think it would take, a lot to document it, and to tell the story, and to try to figure out who some of the enablers are who are.
Jen Rubin
Yes.
Tom Malinowski
Arguably committing crimes, some of whom are overseas. And would be less protected from what a future sane administration might do to hold them accountable.
Jen Rubin
Yes.
Tom Malinowski
So I’ve talked… I mean, I’ve had these conversations with Jamie Raskin in particular, and worked with Dan Goldman on the impeachment, the Ukraine-related impeachment proceedings when he was a staffer for Adam Schiff so, I’m very eager to get right.
Tom Malinowski
Back into that, and not waiting until next year after next, when we hopefully have a majority, but to get in there next spring, if I win the special election, to start laying the groundwork for that with them.
Jen Rubin
Very important. Well, Tom, we wish you the best of luck, and we will be following that race intently, and come February, we’ll see if you, potentially have a new gig. So best of luck, and, enjoy yourself. It must be fun getting out there to campaign for yourself again.
Tom Malinowski
I do enjoy it, but it’s the ability to do the work. that makes it worthwhile, and boy, there’s so much to be done. So, anyone who’s interested, we’re at Malinowski4nj.com.
Jen Rubin
There you go. There you go.
Tom Malinowski
Look forward to speaking with you again soon, Jen.
Jen Rubin
Absolutely. Take care. Bye-bye.
