Jamie Raskin on the Facts of January 6th, and the Danger Ahead

The New Yorker Radio Hour

WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

Politics, Arts, News, Wnyc, Books, David, Storytelling, Society & Culture, Yorker, New, Remnick

4.2 • 6.2K Ratings

🗓️ 29 July 2022

⏱️ 18 minutes

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Summary

Jamie Raskin, a Democrat from Maryland, serves on Congress’s Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the Capitol. He spoke with David Remnick about the effort to demonstrate Donald Trump’s culpability in the insurrection in a way that would resonate with voters, and about Trump’s political future. Trump is “guilty as sin, and everybody can see it,” Raskin says, and he is running low on patience for the Department of Justice to act. “As a citizen, I would hope and expect to see action,” Raskin notes, given the committee’s findings. “But I try to be careful not to browbeat the Attorney General of the United States.”

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.
0:09.8	Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. In February of last year, I sat down with
0:15.3	Congressman Jamie Raskin of Maryland. He was serving as house manager for the second impeachment
0:20.6	of Donald Trump following the insurrection of January 6th. He was serving as house manager for the second impeachment of Donald Trump,
0:21.9	following the insurrection of January 6th. It was a time of unbelievable turmoil for the nation
0:28.2	and for Raskin himself. He'd just lost a son to depression and suicide. On January 6,
0:35.6	his daughter and his son-in-law had gone with him to the Capitol, and they ended up trapped in an office barricaded against the mob.
0:44.1	Raskin has been serving as a member of Congress's January 6th committee, a committee that's trying to change the minds of Americans who still believe in Donald Trump and his colossal attempt at national deception.
0:56.6	I spoke with Jamie Raskin right after their final scheduled hearing.
1:01.5	Congressman, in the last hearing, we were shown how the president sat for hours watching television
1:06.5	as a mob that he'd insideited, tried to stop the election.
1:15.4	What have you accomplished with these hearings overall, and what's ahead for the committee?
1:21.7	Our assignment under House Resolution 503 is to define the events of the sixth, define what the causes were, but then to map out a series of legislative responses to them to fortify American democracy against
1:30.4	coups, insurrections, political violence, and other attempts to usurp the will of the people.
1:36.9	So we're still in the middle of our work. We're hoping that we're moving into the final
1:41.5	phase of it, but we still do have investigative leads and lines
1:45.1	of inquiry that we're going to pursue. And then we have to make these recommendations. And we don't
1:50.7	have a lot of time to do it in. What is the time limit? And why is there a time limit? Is it the
1:55.9	election? Well, there's a time limit because the House of Representatives, unlike the U.S. Senate,
2:04.2	is a non-continuous body.
2:07.4	All of us are up for election every two years.
2:12.5	And so every time when we come back and create a new Congress, we have to adopt a whole new set of rules.
	...

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