MSNBC "The Rachel Maddow Show" - Transcript: Interview with Jamie Raskin

Interview

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Congressman Raskin, thank you for joining us tonight. It`s good to see you again.

REP. JAMIE RASKIN (D-MD): It`s great to see you, Ali.

VELSHI: Congressman, let`s talk about what happens here. Just this evening, in the House of Representatives, they had a Republican House leader trying to get his nominees to this committee seated. He still thinks that there is some play that he had there, but you`re moving ahead. It is bipartisan. Whether it needs to be or not, it is bipartisan and it`s moving ahead tomorrow.

What does success look like for you?

RASKIN: Success looks like an investigation that gets up the truth and, you know, we`re not going to be distracted by any of Kevin McCarthy`s circus or antics are sideshows here. We`re starting off on the law enforcement officers because they`re on the frontlines defending Congress, defending the democracy against these waves of medieval style violence. They`re going to describe, you know, getting beat up with baseball bats and Confederate battle flags and Trump flags and really gruesome awful things that will run on for four or five hours.

This was a premeditated coordinated violent assault on Congress of the United States and, of course, it`s pathetic that you`ve got members of Congress and people like Kevin McCarthy who are doing everything they can to sabotage real investigation. But I think Speaker Pelosi has outmaneuvered them. despite the fact that we rejected the independent commission that they demanded -- five Republicans and five Democrats with equal subpoena power, we did that in the Republican still killed it because they don`t want a real investigation and America is really starting to ask the question, what is that they`re hiding because it`s not all about Donald Trump. You don`t attack the Congress of the United States with one guy.

So we`re looking at what were the networks of political influence and domestic violent extremism that got together to attack Congress on January 6 when we were counting Electoral College votes. How did they try to thwart the democratic process and stop the peaceful transfer of power for the first time in our history?

VELSHI: You`re going to hear from a few police officers. We are going to hear from a Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn, Capitol Police Officer Aquilino Gonell, Metropolitan Police Officer Michael Fanone, who we`ve heard of from an TV, and Metropolitan Police Officer Daniel Hodges. But they will present evidence very much like you did at the impeachment trial. evidence that matches up with images that many of us have seen, and are familiar with that you described, this medieval attack on the Capitol.

But this other issue that you want to get to the bottom of, the network of influencers, the extremists who were in there, how do we get to the bottom of that? Who do you call and how do you get them in front of the committee? To explain who inside Congress empowered these insurrectionists?

RASKIN: Well, that`s going to be the next wave of investigative process. And we`ve got some top flight investigators and lawyers and staffers here on Capitol Hill, who have come together as part of a select committee, to try to unearth what we`re all of the networks of influence that got together, to mobilize this attack on Congress.

And, of course, we have subpoena power. We`ve got investigative power, and we are going to let the chips fall where they may. We are going to follow every possible lead in order to determine what happened, how it happened, why it happened, who paid for it, and are they still out there. What do we need to do to prevent the next attack?

Because, you know, the political scientists will tell you that the shortest sign of a successful coup is a recently failed coup where the perpetrators were able to study the weaknesses, and the inadequacies in the security program that exists. So, this is deadly serious business and that we have a very cohesive bipartisan committee that`s going to work to get to it all the answers.

VELSHI: You know, after January six, you really describe the effect that it had on you. Your daughter had seen it and been there. How is it that one`s party can affect their need to get to the bottom of an attack at their workplace, that targeted all of you? Your staff, your police, your security, in your case your family?

How does that fall along partisan lines? I`m sure you have asked this question of your colleagues.

RASKIN: Well, I`ve got to say, that overstates it because it`s really not along partisan lines. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger are proving that the Republicans out there who are not afraid to examine these actual events, and underlying causes. It`s one guy. It`s 80 or 90 percent of the Republican Party who has come under the psychological spell of Donald Trump.

And so, we were living through the remarkable moments, when a modern political party is behaving much more like an authoritarian religious cult of personality. Where one person dictates when everybody says and when everybody does.

And so, when Kevin McCarthy comes out today and he calls my colleagues Pelosi Republicans, it`s clear that he sees a patriotic American acting beyond political party. And he sees a Pelosi Republican. In other words, that`s the way that all of the Trump robots see it. It`s really scary.

But you are going to see in this select committee, real bipartisanship at work. That is every member of the committee is contributing a lot. Working together for a common goal of trying to determine what`s took place on January six and how do we make sure it never happens to us again.

VELSHI: Congressman good to see you. Godspeed on your work, Congressman Jamie Raskin of Maryland. He`s a member of the Select Committee. Appreciate your time tonight.

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