MSNBC "All in with Chris Hayes" - Transcript: Interview with Rep. Jamie Raskin
Interview
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HAYES: I want to turn now to a professor of constitutional law who also happens to be a member of the United States House of Representatives, Congressman Jamie Raskin Democrat of Maryland and a Member of the Judiciary Committee. You`re someone who has taught, studied, and legislated on campaign finance. And I want you to respond to an argument coming from Capitol Hill from the President and I think others are basically being like, campaign finance, are you kidding me? Really? Is that such a big deal? Who cares about campaign finance law?
REP. JAMIE RASKIN (D), MARYLAND: Well, thanks for having me, Chris. It`s a very big deal. If you think about Watergate for example, that scandal was all about campaign finance and crimes that were committed in pursuit of the presidency. And here what we`re talking about is crimes committed in pursuit of the presidency and a lot of them have to do with campaign finance.
But the President`s point is debunked and contradicted by his own conduct and behavior. If it wasn`t a big deal, why did they go to such great lengths to conceal the whole scheme. So you know what he did essentially was to direct according to the US Attorney. A sequence of events where they took $150,000 in corporate money and paid it in hush money right before the campaign t0 one former mistress and then they $130,000 to pay in hush money to pay off another former mistress to purchase her silence.
They went over the $2,700 or $5,400 limit if you count primary in general -
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HAYES: Yes, they shot pretty far over that.
RASKIN: They went over that easily then they violated the rule against direct corporate contributions even under the egregious Citizens United case. Doing this is not legal. It was a clearly coordinated campaign contribution. They sat in the room together and decided to direct the money there and then they didn`t report any of it. They went to great lengths and great pains to conceal the whole conspiracy.
So it`s very serious business and it is precisely the kind of conduct that was alleged in the impeachment articles by the House Judiciary Committee during Watergate. And we know that there was the break-in but there was lots of illegal money flowing in.
And look, what I`m taking from the disclosures this week and from a little conversation that I had with James Comey when he came before our committee was that the President has basically been conducting his affairs like a crime family. Comey wrote in his book that when Trump was interviewing him for the job of staying on, he said will you have loyalty to me. Will you have personal loyalty to me? And Comey wrote and then he reaffirmed in his test last week that this was something that he likened to a mob boss.
And he said, he`d not experienced this board before except in the context of Mafia family investigations. And the president basically has been running his affairs like an organized crime family. And so there are now all of these corrupt deals that are coming to light, attempts to pay off mistresses, but of course, everybody is still waiting for the other shoe to drop with the Moscow project which was the big business ambition of the President. And that was you know, could they actually build for hundreds of millions of dollars you know, a Trump Tower in Moscow in the middle of the presidential campaign.
What if the deal had gone through and we had a president who was compromised in that way by Vladimir Putin and by Russian government? It was bad enough just trying to do it, but what if it had gone through?
HAYES: Let me go back to what you just said about sort of comparing to Watergate. And it`s true I mean the follow the money was about where creep
* where the committee reelect the president was getting the money to do all the dirty tricks they were doing, right? That was a key part of the entire crack in the case open. If it`s the case that Individual One has done what he appears to be implicated in doing which is directing the commission of a felony, multiple felonies. Isn`t that on its face a high crime or misdemeanor for the purpose of the U.S. Constitution?
RASKIN: Well, first of all, on the campaign finance side, you have to prove that it was willful and knowing. But I think there`s a tremendous circumstantial evidence that they knew what they were doing was an attempt to circumvent the campaign finance laws.
Now, the question about impeachment is somewhat different because I think all the authorities agree that direct violation of a criminal statute is not necessary for impeachment. It is sufficient for impeachment in most cases but not always. There`s always this other judgement that`s built-in impeachment that`s not just like the way a prosecutor would look at it. You know, are the elements of the statutory offense met but also is there a general offense against the character of our government and democracy?
In other words, is there really a high crime and misdemeanor in terms of corruption of the government. But it looks like we`re getting very close to that. It`s hard to run away from that conclusion. But remember impeachment is not the beginning of a process, it`s the end of our process. And we`re in no hurry to get there. We just want to get the truth of what happened and tried to deal with the various crimes and obstructions of justice the best that we can.
HAYES: Congressman Jamie Raskin, thank you for time tonight.
RASKIN: My pleasure.
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