MSNBC "All In with Chris Hayes" - Transcript: Interview with Rep. Jamie Raskin

Interview

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HAYES: Congressman Jamie Raskin is a Democrat from Maryland, who serves on the select committee investigating January 6th. He`s also a member of the Judiciary Committee, and he joins me now.

Well, Congressman Raskin, I mean, that memo has attracted a lot of attention. It`s incredibly controversial. It`s been disowned by its author seemingly, what is your understanding of its status and Eastman`s relationship to it?

REP. JAMIE RASKIN (D-MD): Well, I think it was the driving political and legislative and constitutional strategy of the political coup on January the 6th.

Then, if you look at Eastman`s interview with Steve Bannon on the 6th, clearly, Steve Bannon had bought into it, and it was the organizing principle of what they were doing.

You know, the whole point was to inflate the Vice President`s role to the size of the Goodyear Blimp and say for the first time in American history, the vice president could himself repudiate and reject electoral college votes from Arizona, Georgia and P.A. denying Biden a majority in the electoral college and kicking the whole thing into the House for a contingent election where we know the state by state voting would have favored Trump.

And so, you know, politically, it was a great strategy for them. Constitutionally, it was utterly fraudulent as Eastman himself seemed to recognize a couple of days ago when he said it was crazy, facing disbarment charges, he decided to say it was crazy, but then in that interview, you know, like, I suppose he thought it was confidential. He expressed great pride in what he had done.

HAYES: Well, so there`s one theme here that I think has emerged from at least the public reporting, partly from the Senate Judiciary report, and I imagine you`re involved, the fact gathering is the president is looking for anyone that will help him overturn the election. It`s very clear.

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The vast majority of the lawyers he encounters say no, or don`t help him. The White House Counsel`s office doesn`t really -- that the top part of the DOJ, there`s kind of two lawyers who stand out. One is Eastman who`s just a random law professor. And then there`s Jeffrey Clark, who`s the number three at the Department of Justice and their key fingers because they give some kind of plausible claim that this is more than just essentially a coup to Donald Trump.

RASKIN: Well, it had been rejected by the coterie of legal advisors really around Trump and Pence and then Richard Cullen, who was Pence`s lawyer said that it was ridiculous, Judge Luttig told him, it was ridiculous. All of them were trying to explain and get it into Trump`s skull that it was ludicrous.

But he was, of course, looking for someone who would say what he wanted. And so, he kept reaching for more and more extreme views. And that`s how he ended up with Eastman.

And, you know, Eastman performed, he delivered by saying, this is something we can do. And of course, it was eaten up by everyone. And they coordinated that political coup with the violent insurrection.

And so, a lot of what I`m looking for in the January 6th committee is what were the Nexus points between the quasi parliamentary political coup side and the violent insurrection side with the Proud Boys in the Oath Keepers and so on.

HAYES: Are you interviewing Clark this week? Is that correct?

RASKIN: Clark I think the committee has acknowledged was scheduled this Friday for an interview. So, I believe that that is still on.

I saw some reportage today that his current lawyer had quit and I don`t know whether or not that`s affected the timing of it. If it did, you know, obviously, the committee is trying to accommodate people for their various issues.

But, you know, we`re not going to play cat mouse and hide and go seek with these people.

So, but I would expect that he`s still coming Friday. If not, you know, the committee will be reasonable and accommodating whatever schedule change he needs.

HAYES: All right, Congressman Jamie Raskin sitting on the select committee, thank you very much.

RASKIN: Thank you very much, Chris.

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