MSNBC "All In with Chris Hayes" - Transcript: Interview with Jamie Raskin
Interview
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HAYES: Earlier this week, Democratic Congressman Jamie Raskin of Maryland grilled Republican Congressman Andrew Clyde of Georgia, for saying the people who stormed the Capitol were indistinguishable from tourists. Remember, Congressman Clyde is the guy who can be seen here barricading himself against the door when the mob was trying to storm the House chamber. He then turned around and said that the insurrectionists were indistinguishable from tourists or at least pictures of them were.
Well, Congressman Clyde then went on to vote against awarding Congressional Gold Medals to the officers who defended the Capitol that day. And Congressman Raskin was not having it, forcing him to defend his record.
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RASKIN: Why did you vote no on this bill which was on the floor of the House?
CLYDE: The particular bill on the floor of the House, all right, was not appropriate. It was not that the bill that was appropriate is the one that I co-sponsored.
RASKIN: Really? What made this inappropriate?
CLYDE: Because it awarded that -- those gold medals to those Capitol Police for all of the times that they have defended this Capitol back in the 1970s, the 1980s, the 1990s, not just one incident. Because I think they deserve -- because there were Capitol Police officers that that died from gunshot wounds back earlier. Did you know that?
RASKIN: So, you`re saying this didn`t go far enough. Is that your point? So, you wanted to give the gold medal to these people but you voted against it because you wanted to give it to them?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Congressman Jamie Raskin is the lead impeachment manager for Donald Trump`s second impeachment in the wake of that insurrection. In addition to serving as a member of the House Select Committee to investigate January 6, he`s the chair of the House Oversight Subcommittee on Civil Liberties and Civil Rights and he joins me now.
Congressman, you know, we were all -- that exchange with you and Andrew Clyde made all of us kind of sit up at for this reason. I feel like Congress right now is like a family in a Eugene O`Neill play where there`s just this roiling, you know, wound and trauma underneath all of it. There`s wrongs that have been committed and underdressed, and everyone`s sort of just going along with it like everything`s normal. And it`s just untenable, and it was sort of bracing to see you not do that. What, what made you do that?
RASKIN: Well, thank you, Chris. I think it`s a good analogy you`ve got. I mean, if something traumatic happens in a family, like say, child abuse or something like that, and most people want to deal with it but a faction of people who are in denial and want to lie about it and explain it away and sweep it under the rug, that festers and that becomes an incredibly divisive and polarizing thing.
And I think I probably am representative of most of my Democratic colleagues and even some Republican colleagues, which I just can`t take the lying anymore. And I don`t want to be party to propaganda and disinformation and the suppression of the truth.
[20:55:28]
HAYES: You`re on the committee that had the first hearing. And there`s been some interesting developments about what that committee is going to have access to including guidance from the Department of Justice saying there is no executive privilege claim that former officials including the former Acting A.G., Jeffrey Rosen, can cooperate with solicitations of information.
Are you optimistic that you`re going to actually have access to these ex- officials who might know exactly what happened in the lead-up to that day and on that day?
RASKIN: Well, I`m pretty optimistic about it. We have a great committee. We`ve got a great chair in Bennie Thompson. We`re forming a really good staff. I think that the law is going to be on our side. Of course, we had several years of frustration just trying to get what was rightfully due Congress out of the Trump administration. So we know some of these people believe that they can operate with immunity and impunity and above the law. But we`ll see at this point, you know, whether they can continue to get away with it.
In any event, remember, the House already impeached the former president for inciting violent insurrection. The Senate voted 57-43 to convict him. Trump beat that constitutional spread but we still convicted him in the court of public opinion and in the eyes of history.
And now, the question is not who incited it because we know at least one person incited it, but who organized it, who paid for it, how did these networks of domestic violent extremism get together with people inside the corridors of the innermost political establishment to make this happen? How did they do it, and why did they do it, and are they still out there?
So, we`ve got a strong bipartisan committee with Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger working with us, and terrific members all around. And we are dead set on getting the truth. And we think this is (INAUDIBLE) assignment that we`ve got.
HAYES: I want to play for you something Jim Jordan said today. It`s sort of an amazing moment because there are questions about the roles of members of Congress. Jim Jordan was asked -- he admitted earlier he talked to President Trump on the day of January 6th. He had the follow-up with a local reporter and here is the exchange. Take a listen.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There`s some confusion over what you told Bret Baier on Fox News on Tuesday night so, I want to clear it up. First off, yes or no, did you speak with President Trump on January 6th?
REP. JIM JORDAN (R-OH): Yes, I mean, I spoke with the president last week. I speak with the president all the time. I spoke with him on January 6th. I mean, I talk with President Trump all the time. And that`s -- I don`t think that`s unusual. I would expect members of Congress to talk with the president of the United States when they`re trying to get done the things they told the voters in their district to do.
I`m actually kind of amazed sometimes that people keep asking this question. Of course, I talk to the president all the time. Like I said, I talked to him last week.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: On January 6th, did you speak with him before, during, or after the Capitol was attacked?
JORDAN: I have to go -- I spoke with him that day after, I think, after. I don`t know if I spoke with him in the morning or not. I just don`t know. I`d have to go back. I mean, I don`t -- I don`t know that -- when those conversations happened. But all I know is I spoke with him all the time.
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HAYES: Is this the kind of thing that the committee should get to the bottom to? By the way, great interview from that reporter. Kudos there. But it strikes me that these conversations, I would like some record, you know, for the record of who the president was talking to that day and about what.
RASKIN: Well, Congresswoman Cheney said at our very first meeting that she wanted a minute-by-minute account of everything that was taking place in the White House during the attack. And obviously, we`re going to follow every lead that we`ve got to determine what exactly happened that day, who was giving orders, and what was the president doing.
There were already indications that surfaced during the impeachment trial that while Congressional leaders of both parties were calling the president and begging him to call off the dogs and to do something to help, he just continued to escalate the political pressure on Mike Pence because the whole thing was to try to get Pence to announce new unilateral powers to reject electors coming in from Arizona, Georgia, and Pennsylvania, to cut Biden`s lead below 270 in the Electoral College, throw the whole thing into (AUDIO GAP) election under the 12th amendment and then get himself named president.
They had 27 state delegations. They would have had, I think, 26 votes. I don`t think that Liz Cheney would have cast the (INAUDIBLE) from Wyoming for him. But that`s where it was going. That was the coup inside the insurrection of (AUDIO GAP) inside the riot that was taking place outside.
HAYES: Congressman Jamie Raskin, we will keep having you on throughout this process. Thank you so much for joining us tonight.
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