Rep. Jamie Raskin Says He Hopes to Have One More Jan. 6 Hearing to Share Committee’s Recommendations Before the Midterm Elections

Sarah RumpfSep 25th, 2022, 12:12 pm
 
Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) at TribFest22

Photo by Evan L’Roy/The Texas Tribune.

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) spoke with Mediaite at the 2022 Texas Tribune Festival on Friday about his work with the House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, the search of former President Donald Trump’s residence at Mar-a-Lago, and what he hopes the American people get from the committee hearings.

The Jan. 6 committee has a hearing this coming Wednesday, Sept. 28, at 1:00 pm ET, currently the only one scheduled. During his TribFest interview with CBS News’ Robert Costa, Raskin left observers with the impression that this week’s hearing would be the last, including his comments near the very end of the hour when he said, “we’re about to finish this story on Wednesday.”

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) was also at TribFest and NBC News Capitol Hill correspondent Ali Vitali reported that he had “echoe[d] Raskin that Wednesday’s J6 hearing is likely their last, though he hopes to do presentations of their final reports and findings,” adding that Committee Chairman Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS) had said the same to her before.

In Raskin’s interview with Mediaite, however, he seemed to express more optimism that there would be at least one more hearing before the midterms, for the purpose of sharing the committee’s recommendations. Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) made a similar comment during her closing keynote address that she too expected the committee to have one more hearing.

A lightly edited transcript of Mediaite’s conversation with Raskin is below the video.

Have any of the recent revelations from the FBI search warrant at Mar-a-Lago or New York Attorney General Letitia James’ civil lawsuit against Trump shifted or affected the work of the Jan. 6 committee?

The fascinating thing about Mar-a-Lago, of course, was that it was a completely independent crime. We were taken totally by surprise like the rest of America was. You know, we didn’t know that he’d been pilfering huge numbers of government documents, which is obviously against the law, much less some that were classified and top secret in nature.

So that really is an independent criminal investigation. It would be relevant if it intersects with ours because somehow evidence were to surface in that investigation relating to January 6th. So if there is January 6th related materials there, we would be very interested in receiving them. But otherwise, if it relates to independent criminal activity or potential independent criminal activity related to Saudi Arabia or Turkey or any other country, that would not be something within our provenance.

With less than two months before the midterms, the two Republicans on the committee ending their terms in Congress, and it not being a guarantee that Democrats keep the House, what is on the priority list for the committee in these next few months?

We want to tell as comprehensive and fine-grained a story as we can about Donald Trump’s systematic efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. We want to fill in those details. We want to figure out to what extent there may have been a cover up. And we want to determine what is the clear and present danger that’s still out there against American democracy. And all of that is on the investigative side.

But on the legislative recommendation side, we also have to offer proposals for fortifying American constitutional democracy against coups and insurrections and political violence and electoral sabotage. So I hope that we’ll be able to agree on a robust and muscular legislative program for strengthening democratic institutions and values in this century.

Other than the Electoral Count Act, what would that legislation look like? 

It’s clear that the right to vote is not sufficiently well protected. Gerrymandering is a major threat to us and is polarizing our politics. It’s clear that the filibuster has become a problem.

You know, in general, I’m with John Dewey, who said that the only solution to the ills of democracy is more democracy. We have all of these anti-democratic instruments that are being used against democracy — and not just political violence, although that’s a serious one. So we should hope, at least I hope, that we will do a roundup of these threats to the continuing viability of constitutional democracy in our century and then try to address them systematically.

Does the committee plan to have one more public hearing before the midterms or multiple ones? What’s the timeline? 

Well, we definitely have one more planned on the 28th, which which I believe will be the final investigative hearing. And then I hope we will be able to have a hearing where we will disclose and discuss the recommendations that we have going forward.

And that would be done before the elections?

Yes, I hope so. And I trust so. But then again, you know, we have a committee of people with really strong and passionate views about democracy and about how to proceed. And so, we haven’t we haven’t made our final conclusions about that yet.

For the average American watching this process —

We’re all average Americans.

Yes, yes, yes. But for somebody who’s not following the news 24-hours a day every single day, what are you hoping that Americans are getting from the work of the committee, what are you hoping that they learn?

We want people to see that there were forces in America, that are still at-large today, that meant to overthrow the 2020 presidential election. There is no doubt about that.

And it was not just Donald Trump, but it was forces that he galvanized and worked with. We face a threat from that kind of internal political subversion against our institutions. We also face a threat from domestic violent extremist groups that worked with political elites to try to knock over our constitutional democracy and our election on that day.

And so all of us have to take responsibility, all of us hundreds of millions of Americans, have a responsibility to educate ourselves on what happened and then to take action to defend our democracy and our freedom.

You know, Lincoln said that constitutional democracy is like a beautiful silver platter upon which rests the golden apple of freedom. And that’s why democracy is so important, because we’re not going to have freedom without it. If we turn everything over to kings and tyrants and queens and bullies and autocrats and commissars and czars, we’re going to lose our freedom.

Look what’s happening with Putin. Attacked the democracy, and then began putting his political opponents in prison, trying to censor the newspapers, then shutting down newspapers.

And now these leaders who have fallen out of the window mysteriously.

There are a lot of people who are dying by poison at the hands of Vladimir Putin’s team. And then he plunges the people of Russia into a vicious, bloody imperialist war against Ukraine. Assaulting their democracy and their freedom. And now he’s trying to do a call up of hundreds of thousands of more soldiers to keep the bloodshed and the rape and pillage and the murder going in Ukraine.

That’s what happens when you lose democracy.

Video by Sarah Rumpf for Mediaite. Follow Mediaite’s coverage of TribFest here.

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Sarah Rumpf - Contributing Editor

Sarah Rumpf joined Mediaite in 2020 and is a Contributing Editor focusing on politics, law, and the media. A native Floridian, Sarah attended the University of Florida, graduating with a double major in Political Science and German, and earned her Juris Doctor, cum laude, from the UF College of Law. Sarah's writing has been featured at National Review, The Daily Beast, Reason, Law&Crime, Independent Journal Review, Texas Monthly, The Capitolist, Breitbart Texas, Townhall, RedState, The Orlando Sentinel, and the Austin-American Statesman, and her political commentary has led to appearances on television, radio, and podcast programs across the globe. Follow Sarah on Threads, Twitter, and Bluesky.