State of the Union: Interview With Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD)
Interview
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Yes, I...
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Yes. And I got a clean bill of health.
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I'm in remission. They can't find any cancer cells.
So I'm waiting for my hair and my eyelashes and everything to come back.
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Thank you much.
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Well, apparently, the recording also reflects Donald Trump's knowledge that he had not declassified the document, so he knew that it was still classified.
And that's an additional element of importance to this recording. And...
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Well, for a while at least, there was a half-hearted effort claim by Donald Trump that he could just magically declassify telepathically or mentally.
And this seems to reflect his clear understanding that he had not declassified this document and that it was still classified. And so the document is missing at this point, as I understand it, according to published reports.
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I mean, that's obviously a decision for the Department of Justice and for a grand jury.
But the -- I mean, these charges are very serious. I mean, the allegations that he took all of these documents, including top secret documents, and then didn't return them and deliberately withheld them are very serious.
I mean, I don't think any president has ever been accused of doing anything like that before.
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Well, a lot, because I think a key ingredient in determining the intent with which a person acts is consciousness of guilt.
And if a person acts with consciousness of their own guilt or consciousness of their own potential wrongdoing, that demonstrates that, if they go forward nonetheless, there's intent.
And my understanding is that there were hundreds of documents taken. Many of them were classified. Some of them were top secret. And yet they were deliberately withheld. And if the prosecutor, Jack Smith, has information to that effect, that's very serious business.
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So, the FBI is coming tomorrow to show Chairman Comer and me the document that they're looking for. In other words, the Republican majority on the committee is getting everything they're asking for, in terms of seeing the document, which, by the way, they say they have also already seen.
And yet they're still talking about holding the director of the FBI in contempt, even though they're getting exactly what they want, even though the FBI has been overwhelmingly cooperative and accommodating to this request.
So that demonstrates to me that what they're really interested in is in holding the FBI director in contempt, not in getting a document that they have already seen. And I don't know what this document is, because the majority has closed us out, the Democrats. On the committee, they are no longer respecting a bipartisan agreement that the committee's had for the last several Congresses.
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Well, there have been published reports which suggest that it has to do with Ukraine. That was a period, remember, when Rudy Giuliani was running around with a Russian agent who later was found to be so by the Treasury Department, Trump's Treasury Department.
And he was waving different kinds of documents. Attorney General Barr, Trump's own attorney general, was so skeptical that he created a panel to look at all of this information, saying, you have got to take the Ukraine stuff with a grain of salt.
So I think it probably has to do with Ukraine and allegations that went nowhere. In other words, this was looked at by the Trump Justice Department, and I think they ended all of it in August with no prosecutions, no indictments. And they're going back to recycle these unfounded accusations.
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Well, of course, you always want unfettered access. But, remember, you're talking to somebody who was in the majority when Donald Trump was president, when he ordered every department of the U.S. government not to comply in any way with requests of the House Oversight Committee.
So it would have been remarkable if, every time we requested a document, they brought it over to show it to us, much less give it to us. So, they keep changing the demand in order to find some reason to find fault with FBI Director Wray, which is why I say what they're really going after is a contempt citation against him.
And it's all part of what Chairman Comer admitted was an effort to get Donald Trump's poll numbers up. It's all about the 2024 campaign.
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The president? Yes.
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Well, look, there is a MAGA extreme element within the Republican Caucus which really wanted to plunge the country into default and economic crisis.
That's the chaos caucus. I mean, these are the same people that supported Donald Trump's government's shutdown.
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Well, right. So, yes, I'm distinguishing him from them.
I think he recognized and he listened to the voices on Wall Street and in corporate America who said, you cannot crash the economy just because you have an extreme element that is heckling you and hectoring you to do that.
And so, in that sense, the center held briefly, because we were able to avert going over the cliff. But we should never come remotely close to that again. The Constitution says that the validity of the public debt shall never be questioned. That's in the 14th Amendment.
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Well...
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The Constitution already establishes a backstop against what they wanted to do.
But I think, yes, having a debt ceiling statute is a threat to us, because they will keep trying to careen the whole country over a cliff.
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I have never tripped.
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America is a country that loves youth and vitality, which is why we have laws against age discrimination, because we tend to favor youthfulness and the new thing.
In a lot of countries, people who've been in office a longer period of time are praised for their wisdom. And I think that Joe Biden rightly says that he has grown very wise in his many decades in public office. And I respect that.
So I think that he deserves to be judged by the results of his administration and what he's gotten done in terms of a bipartisan infrastructure law, the Inflation Reduction Act, lowering prescription drug prices.
I mean, really, that's what should matter to us as the people.
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I have not decided. I love the House of Representatives, I love the people I serve with, and I love being in the people's house.
But, as some of my House colleagues have pointed out, these Senate seats only open up every 25 or 30 years. A lot of people are encouraging me to check it out, because there are certain constitutional functions the Senate has that the House doesn't have, like advice and consent, Supreme Court nominations, judicial confirmations, a lot of things that I'm interested in.
And that's why I'm seriously considering it, but I have not decided.
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I'm hoping, before the Fourth of July, I will have an answer for everybody. The election is not until May 24, 2024, so it's still 11 months away.
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The primary. And then the election is a year-and-a-half away.
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Yes.
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Well, obviously, Steny Hoyer is my friend, and so I have talked to him. I have talked to all of my colleagues about it.
I mean, we have got awesome political leaders in Maryland, and I would not run against anybody else. I mean, it's totally based on the experience I have had trying to defend our democracy and our freedom and the Bill of Rights against the Trump movement, which I think is such a danger.
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Well, I suppose you can never be too ready.
But I really haven't decided. And there are compelling reasons on both sides that my constituents are presenting me with on a daily basis. And I love hearing from people.
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You're very kind. Thank you, Dana.
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