Would you be shocked to discover that the same people who stormed the Capitol, killed a police officer, tried to hang Mike Pence, and destroyed historical government property are career criminals? In the wake of January 6th’s fifth anniversary, Representative Jamie Raskin (D-MD) reveals behind-the-scene details MAGA wants to bury.
Rep. Raskin and Jen digest the horrific crimes insurrectionists have committed since their Trump pardons, as well as the pardons’ impact on our democratic system. Raskin also explains why he “fell out of love with the Supreme Court” decades ago and how disgusted the framers of the constitution would be at the state of America today.
Tune in to this riveting interview for all the details and more, including a breakdown of Trump’s retaliation against his most fevered MAGA representatives (sorry, MTG).
Congressman Jamie Raskin represents Maryland’s 8th Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives. Rep. Raskin was chosen by the Democratic Caucus to be the Ranking Member of the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability in the 118th Congress. This is his fourth term serving on the Oversight Committee. Rep. Raskin was the lead impeachment manager in the second impeachment trial of former president Donald Trump and served on the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol.
Jen Rubin
Hi, this is Jen Rubin, Interim Chief of the Contrarian. I’m delighted to welcome back the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, the former impeachment manager, Representative Jamie Raskin from The great state of Maryland. Welcome!
Rep. Jamie Raskin
Jen, thank you for having me tonight. I am really psyched to be with you.
Jen Rubin
Well, we are delighted to have you. Democrats held a really extraordinary hearing to commemorate, to remind Americans about what happened, and you had some remarkable testimony. stood out for you among the experts, and even someone who had been, prosecuted for January 6th crimes?
Rep. Jamie Raskin
Yeah, well, let’s start with Pamela Hemphill, because we tracked her down to Idaho, and I’d remembered, you know, the mega-grandma, and seeing a little article about how she had rejected her pardon, and I was amazed by that, you know? Yes. We tracked her down, and she agreed to come and… Speak with us, And, that was about the most moving thing in the world, to hear her testify, with such… bluntness and such honesty about how she got into the mega cult, and she said, and, you know, Donald Trump, I believed your lies, and I believed your nonsense. And, I don’t want your pardon, because I did enter the building illegally, and she spent 60 days in jail, and What was interesting was, I mean, she’d already done her time, so by rejecting the pardon, as you know, she was just rejecting the removal of legal disabilities and the removal of her legal record, but she said. people kept saying, but then why didn’t you take it? And she said, because that would not have been honest, it would have been a lie, because I did it, and I didn’t deserve it, and I, you know, what I said was so fascinating about this, and I mean, this is more about the pardon power, but… The pardon power is for people who are truly remorseful.
Jen Rubin
Yes!
Rep. Jamie Raskin
who really made a transformation, who are really contrite, who are reformed and rehabilitated. She’s the only one who actually deserved her pardon.
Jen Rubin
Yes! As far as I know, she rejected the party, and then all these other people are out there, you know, there’s dozens and dozens of crimes that have been committed since January, since sex abuse.
Rep. Jamie Raskin
child, you know, child pornography, rape, domestic violence, you know, conspiracy to murder FBI agents, you name it. You know, if we were like Republicans. maybe we should be more like Republicans in this sense. We’d be having a Willie Horton ad every night, about what the J6 pardonese have done since all of this began, and since Trump let them out. But anyway, it is… it’s such a searing statement about… The topsy-turvy moral universe we’re in, that the one person who actually is genuinely contrite repentant and wanting to make amends with the police and with society is the one who refuses the pardon from Donald Trump.
Jen Rubin
Well, I commend your reading. We have a piece up today at The Contrarian that does exactly as you state. We look at the pardonese who have gone on to commit other crimes and other offenses, and what they are up to, because, of course, pardoning people who are unrepentant opens up the opportunity for more criminal behavior. Imagine that.
Rep. Jamie Raskin
And by the way, on that point, thank you for doing that, that’s fantastic.
Jen Rubin
Oh, sure.
Rep. Jamie Raskin
But, you know, I don’t know if Donald Trump opens himself up to real questions from real reporters anymore, but…
Jen Rubin
No.
Rep. Jamie Raskin
he should be asked about this. Why has he not had to answer the question about whether he takes responsibility for the J6 pardonese who’ve gone on to distinguish criminal careers in home invasion and terroristic threats and domestic violence?
Jen Rubin
Exactly. Well, hence the problem with the legacy media. One of the, kind of clear takeaways, I think, from today was that the talks that are undisputed, that you guys documented at the time, that the January 6th report confirmed, they haven’t been rebutted so much as simply ignored, by so many people. And Does the… kind of repentance by Pamela Hempel, suggests that other Republicans might come around eventually to recognize the reality, or are we simply going to go through the next decades, with a segment of America believing things that simply aren’t true?
Rep. Jamie Raskin
Well, you know, there are many methodologies of denial and evasion, you know, and sometimes you talk to the Republicans and they will you know, they’ll go all the way with the conspiracy theories. Oh, you know that was Antifa. Really? Why did Donald Trump just pardon 1,600 Antifa fighters? Or you know it was really the FBI, really? Like, there’s never been a single bit of evidence For that. I mean, it’s just ridiculous stuff. Sometimes it’s kind of more subtle. It’s, well, you guys are blowing it out of proportion. That… not directly contradicting the facts, but… you guys are making a mountain out of a molehill, kind of thing. So, I… I don’t know, I, the human mind is, is a shadowy, complex place. I mean, this is what we’ve learned during this.
Jen Rubin
Absolutely.
Rep. Jamie Raskin
And the powers of self-rationalization are just bewilderingly vast.
Jen Rubin
The fact that January 6th falls just a couple days after, the illegal unilateral war that Donald Trump launched for oil and for the benefit of his patrons in big oil, speaks to this, Unbelievable, and we should… continue to make that point. Ability of him, thanks to the Supreme Court, to not only come back to power, but to come back to do arguably worse crimes, worse constitutional, offenses. Given the light of where we are now, has your view of the Supreme Court and the damage they have done changed at all? Has it intensified? Has it given you more incentive to look at real reforms of the court, given what they’ve done to our constitutional system?
Rep. Jamie Raskin
Yeah, I mean, it’s hard for me to pretend as if it’s changed my view of the Supreme Court, because.
Jen Rubin
Yes, yes, yes.
Rep. Jamie Raskin
I fell out of love with the Supreme Court a long time ago.
Jen Rubin
Yes.
Rep. Jamie Raskin
You know, and, you know, after Bush versus Gore and Citizens United and, you know, all this stuff. But, I will tell you that, yes, I’m very focused on what can be done to try to salvage the situation. We need a real Supreme Court, and You know, on a more optimistic note, that what the district courts are doing, both…
Jen Rubin
Yes.
Rep. Jamie Raskin
Democratic and Republican appointees, what the appeals courts are doing, both Democratic and Republican appointees, shows that the rule of law works, that Actually, the vast majority of jurists who are not under the spell of a political clique Will actually render fairly consistent and steady legal interpretation. And obviously, you know, in addition to everything else they’ve thrown into the bonfire, they’ve thrown originalism, textualism, all of the… I mean, forget all of that with, the right wing. I mean, they… they will just use whatever methodology, or no methodology at all, or just invention. to get to where they want to go. So we’re going to have to reconstruct some methodologies of constitutional and statutory construction, and we can base it on a lot of the great decisions below that have been thrown out by the.
Jen Rubin
Yes.
Rep. Jamie Raskin
I mean, if you look at that case, from Colorado, which interpreted Section 3 of the 14th Amendment to say that Trump couldn’t be on the ballot because he was an insurrectionist. I mean, that was just a model of… Yes. For legal analysis. And the DC Circuit Court opinion rejecting the immunity.
Jen Rubin
Yes.
Rep. Jamie Raskin
friends that the Supreme Court ended up embracing. That was just magisterial. So, it won’t take much, but we do have to figure out the court, and I’ve got some ideas about that.
Jen Rubin
By the way, I think, Justice, Pan’s, comment about the J… if you remember that whole discussion in that case about a SEAL-6 invasion and killing political enemies, that reads almost as prescient, now in retrospect, that we’ve just had a present…
Rep. Jamie Raskin
And Florence Pann was using that as the outlandish cartoon example.
Jen Rubin
Yes, exactly.
Rep. Jamie Raskin
Great lead, yeah.
Jen Rubin
Yeah, and now that’s, that is, fact, that’s documentary, not, farce. Speaking of which, we have… not only the problem of Venezuela, and not only the serial shredding of civil liberties in the out-of-control ICE raids, you go on and on, largely because Republicans won’t do anything. They won’t do their jobs, they won’t uphold their oaths, they won’t listen to the constituents. You’re gonna have a vote tomorrow on the ACA, extensions, and you’re gonna have other votes, I suspect, on Venezuela. Is anything getting through to them? Do the polls matter? Do the suffering of their constituents matter? Is anything gonna rouse these people?
Rep. Jamie Raskin
I mean, you know, the good news is that, you know, we saw erosion with Marjorie Taylor Greene, though she’s gone.
Jen Rubin
Yes. Mace, although she’s headed out.
Rep. Jamie Raskin
2… And with my friend Lauren Boebert, who’s hanging tough, but she’s suffered, like, extreme political retaliation in the last few days in terms of Losing, you know, a project very important to a district. You know, I believe that more people like that will be popping up. But it’s very hard to predict who they will be, because the general logic now is in for a dime, in for a dollar. In other words, if you’ve been with Donald Trump this long, you stuck through all of this stuff. And… you know, you’ve already explained all of this, like, you know, what will actually push you over the edge? I don’t know, but, you know, I gotta believe that everybody, at some point. has their… their threshold of intolerance, and it’s, you know, they just say, I can’t take anymore.
Jen Rubin
My theory is you just have to go out and beat them. But, that, that will, we’ll see how it goes, up.
Rep. Jamie Raskin
So that’s my theory, too. I mean, you know, we’re not taking anything for granted in terms of Republicans, and… You know, I’m spending most of my time out on the road, Jen.
Jen Rubin
Yes.
Rep. Jamie Raskin
Being in swing districts and, swing states for colleagues who need help, and it’s all hands on deck, and it’s all for one and one for all here.
Jen Rubin
Absolutely. And that’s the perfect segue. How do you talk about… we’ve, in the past, kind of broken these, I think that’s wrong, into two buckets. One is democracy, rule of law, and the other is the economy and Donald Trump’s broken promises. But in fact, there’s a connect… there are many connective tissues. How do you talk, when you go out on the road to swing districts, about, the… the message Democrats want to present, how do you explain this in a way that People who haven’t voted for Democrats might in the future.
Rep. Jamie Raskin
Well, for one thing, when we’re defending democracy, we’re defending, among other things, the achievements of democracy. So we’re defending Social Security, we’re defending Medicare, we’re defending Medicaid. Those are the accomplishments of democratic movements and the Democratic Party, inactive. So, it’s… that dissolves the difference immediately. when we think about moving forward, we’ve got to remember that democracy itself is not just, like, a static collection of rules and procedures. Democracy is a project. And at any time in our history, we are working on things together. I just finished reading this beautiful book, about Senator Charles Sumner from Massachusetts.
Jen Rubin
Oh, I have to read it.
Rep. Jamie Raskin
Yeah, it’s just a… it’s a really powerful book, and it gives him his due. But… basically, it talks about, you know, what the radical Republicans Were doing, and how they were totally thrown into the process of building strong democracy. throughout the country, and in the South, of course. And that meant delivering concrete material achievements to people, schools, and land, and the opportunity to work and to have, productive income.
Jen Rubin
Absolutely. One of the throughlines on all of this, of course, is Donald Trump’s sickening corruption. He goes to war for oil because those are his buddies. He deals with crypto overlords and pardons them because that’s going to enrich himself. He gives tax cuts to billionaires and takes healthcare away because those are his sponsors. It’s all in this kind of Grotesque kind of self-dealing that ignores voters, or steals from voters. Has that permeated to average people? Do they understand that those two things are linked?
Rep. Jamie Raskin
Oh, I think so. I think he has been revealed as a… as a con man, and… You know, as… a businessman, albeit a terrible and terribly corrupt businessman, but a businessman who’s just in there for private self-enrichment. That’s what it’s all about, and they’re spending all their time making deals. And what’s confusing to people is that there’s been such a merging of His private business money-making with the affairs of government that it’s almost impossible to disentangle.
Jen Rubin
At this point. Yes.
Rep. Jamie Raskin
And so it’s exactly what the framers of the Constitution did not want.
Jen Rubin
Exactly.
Rep. Jamie Raskin
who is treating the government like it’s his royal kingdom, in the sense that government property is his property, and the government is there to promote his wealth.
Jen Rubin
Exactly. Given the fact we’re 5 years out from January 6th, and we are dealing still with a president who is as we just said, monumentally corrupt and lawless, and we have a Republican Party that is really, at this point, hopeless. What keeps you optimistic about the future? Is it those people who come out on No Kings Day? Is it younger people who still have not lost their idealism? What fuels your optimism? Because you remain one of the most optimistic people I know.
Rep. Jamie Raskin
Yeah, because we’re gonna win, and we’re winning all over the country. Look, we won in Virginia, we won in Jersey, we won in New York, we won in California, we won in Mississippi, we won in Georgia, we won the mayoralty in Miami with our great new mayor down there. Anywhere that voters have an opportunity to go to the polls. They are registering overwhelming approval for Democrats and overwhelming rejection. of Donald Trump. And, you know, anytime a Republican says to me, oh, well, you guys are really low in the polls, I’m like, yeah, we’re low in the polls because we lost to you, and people can’t believe we’ve lost.
Jen Rubin
It’s not on purpose.
Rep. Jamie Raskin
But we’re gonna beat you guys. We’re gonna demolish you guys, and you’re gonna see our numbers soaring.
Jen Rubin
Right, that’s exactly…
Rep. Jamie Raskin
Exactly, right. Yeah, so anyway, I, I, you know, I find hope in the crisis itself.
Jen Rubin
When I was growing up, my dad used to say to us.
Rep. Jamie Raskin
When everything looks hopeless, you’re the hope. And so, throughout the crisis where, we gotta be the hope for other people, because there are always people who have it rougher than we do, no matter…
Jen Rubin
Absolutely.
Rep. Jamie Raskin
There are always people who are having it rougher, you know?
Jen Rubin
Absolutely, and… what I tell our contrarian friends out there is, this is a privilege to live in a time where you can be fighting for democracy. There are not many times where so much is at stake in one generation in one year, and we should embrace that opportunity. I remember Bill Clinton saying that he missed, you know, like, a big crisis in his presidency. Well, we got a big crisis. So, we can, some.
Rep. Jamie Raskin
I agree.
Jen Rubin
I didn’t care.
Rep. Jamie Raskin
We get to go out and fight for everything we believe in every single day, and we’re gonna have some interesting debates going forward, you know, and all of that is to the good, but we’re always going to be on the side of democracy and freedom.
Jen Rubin
Wow. Thank you so much for joining me on what must be a tiring, emotional day for you, but I look forward to many more optimistic conversations in the year ahead.
Rep. Jamie Raskin
I would not have missed it, Jen, I love what you guys are doing in the contrarian, and .
Jen Rubin
Thank you.
Rep. Jamie Raskin
Send my best to everybody over there, alright?
Jen Rubin
I will, I will. Take care.
