Transcript: Rep. Jamie Raskin on "Face the Nation," Dec. 25, 2022
The following is a transcript of an interview with Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland that aired on Sunday, Dec. 25, 2022, on "Face the Nation."
MARGARET BRENNAN: We're joined now by Maryland Democratic Congressman Jamie Raskin, a member of the committee investigating the January 6th attack. Good morning to you.
REPRESENTATIVE JAMIE RASKIN: Hello, Margaret. Pleased to be with you.
MARGARET BRENNAN: This is an incredible body of work, all coming to this conclusion now, what do you think Americans at home need to know?
REP. RASKIN: It's a story of some real villainy and some real danger to democracy, but also of real heroism and commitment to American democratic freedom. And with democracy under attack all over the world, like with Putin invading Ukraine, and the Ukrainian people standing up for their democratic freedom and tyrants and autocrats on the march everywhere, it's good to know that we have a strong resurgent democratic spirit in America.
MARGARET BRENNAN: The institution's held. But at the conclusion of this, because you've spent almost two years investigating, what happens next for you? Are there pieces of this that in the new Congress, even under Republican control, need to be further investigated or somehow legislated around?
REP. RASKIN: Well, when you say the institution's held, they did hold just barely. The truth is that we need to continually be renovating and improving our institutions.
MARGARET BRENNAN: How so? What do you mean?
REP. RASKIN: Well, I think that the Electoral College now, which has given us five popular vote losers as president in our history, twice in this century alone, has become a danger not just to democracy, but to the American people. It was a danger on January 6th, there are so many curving byways and nooks and crannies in the Electoral College, that there are opportunities for a lot of strategic mischief. We should elect the president, the way we elect governors, senators, mayors, representatives, everybody else, whoever gets the most votes wins.
MARGARET BRENNAN: So, you don't think that this reforming of the Electoral Count Act, which is really just making clear that the Vice President's role is just ceremonial with the electors, you don't think that solves the issue?
REP. RASKIN: It doesn't solve the fundamental problem. I'm for that, and that's the very least we can do and we must do. It's necessary, but it's not remotely sufficient. You know, we spend hundreds of millions of dollars every year exporting American democracy to other countries, and the one thing they never come back to us with is the idea that, 'Oh, that Electoral College that you have, that's so great, we think we will adopt that too.' You know, Thomas Jefferson said that he deplored the sanctimonious reverence with which some people look at the original handiwork of the framers when they should be looking to their own experience. He said the framers were great and they were patriots, but they didn't have the benefit of the experience that we've lived and we know that the Electoral College doesn't fit anymore, which is why I'm a big supporter of the national popular vote interstate compact, where it's bubbling up from below, but there are now 15 or 16 states and the District of Columbia, who've said we're going to cast our electors for the winner of the national vote once we get 270 electors in our coalition.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Let's get back to the work that you have just concluded, because you did make this historic decision to refer to the Justice Department for potential prosecution a former president of the United States. It's never been done before, but in doing so it doesn't have the requirement that the Justice Department act. Why did you think making that referral was necessary? Why not just let your work stand on its own with the public hearings?
REP. RASKIN: Well, because of the magnitude of the attack on democracy. You know, we don't have a formal statutory offense called crimes against democracy, but that's what everything was together. And then there were hundreds of actual statutory offenses under that and we identified four. There was a deliberate attempt by Donald Trump to interfere and obstruct and impede a federal proceeding. That was the whole plan, 'stop the steal,' meaning go in there and blockade the House and the Senate and the Vice President from doing their job. It was an attempt to defraud the United States, there was a conspiracy to defraud the United States, to exchange an honest-to-goodness presidential election for a counterfeit election complete with fake electors, and forcible violence being used to overthrow the process. It involves the introduction of false statements, these fake electors that were put in and finally, there was aiding and abetting an insurrection, giving aid and comfort to insurrectionists. That's an old crime in America, our constitution repeatedly opposes insurrection and condemns it. And of course, we thought we had solved that problem in the Civil War. But that statute that we referred to there was passed after the Civil War, to make sure that people who incite insurrection, and aided and abetted and give aid and comfort to the insurrectionist by saying things like, 'I love you, you're very special,' those people are guilty of an offense against the United States, even if you're president when you do it.
MARGARET BRENNAN: But- but don't you fear in some ways, because this referral you're making doesn't have the weight of prosecution behind it, that has to be up to the Justice Department to decide to move forward—
REP. RASKIN: And that's a good thing, too.
MARGARET BRENNAN: But do you fear that because it is a political body making this recommendation, that it makes it easier for people to brush away some of what you just laid out that it makes it easier to characterize it or dismiss it as political in nature?
REP. RASKIN: Look, in a democracy, the people have the right to the truth, and so our bipartisan panel, with overwhelmingly Republican witnesses coming to testify, has laid out the truth, the best that we could find it. It's not been contradicted or undermined in any way that I'm aware of. And we're turning it over to the people and we're turning it over to the Department of Justice, and at that point, your point is correct. It's up to them. And it should operate like that, Congress doesn't prosecute, but like everybody else, if we're aware of offenses, we've got to turn that evidence over to people who are prosecutors.
MARGARET BRENNAN: And you're in that process now of sharing with the Justice Department some of what you found. The Department of Justice has a far vaster panoply of investigative resources available to them than we do—
MARGARET BRENNAN: And a higher benchmark they have to meet to actually move ahead and prosecute. So you know, one of the things I've heard people often parse the language, coup, attempted coup. And those skeptics that you referred to earlier, would argue that to substantiate a coup, you'd need to actually prove that the President was cooking up this plan, directing people to do things and that he had the support of the military in there. Whereas some of what has been laid out, it's kind of this unwieldy muddy plan. How do you actually, you know, assert that it was almost democracy that was lost at that moment?
REP. RASKIN: Well, in our report, we lay out every element of the plan, including going to the legislatures to try to get them to nullify the popular vote, and pass new statutes that would just appoint Trump's electors. That failed. We lay out his plan of going to election officials like Raffensperger in Georgia, but he wasn't the only one. There were more than a dozen cases like that. And trying to get them just to concoct votes, 'Just find me 11,780 votes.' That wasn't Donald Trump trying to stop election fraud, that was Donald Trump trying to commit election fraud and a conspiracy to perpetrate it right there. So we lay it out, it's not muddy at all. It's very clear. This is really about the future, because the political scientists and historians tell us that the best sign of a successful coup coming, is a recently failed coup where the coup plotters get to diagram the weaknesses in the existing structure. And they're emboldened if they're not held accountable for what they did. I know, Mike Pence said that it would be divisive for the government to prosecute the case. That's not the test for whether or not prosecutors prosecute a case, the test is whether there was a crime committed, it's the facts and the law. I mean, you could just as well say it will be divisive, not to hold a president accountable, who's guilty for offenses. But in any event, it's not part of the calculus.
MARGARET BRENNAN: I want to follow up on what you've just said, which is sort of a dress rehearsal for a coup. Congress is putting millions of dollars towards bolstering security for members of the House, for members of the Senate when they are home, and for those who are involved in the prosecution of those who carried out January 6th. Are you fearful of your own security? I mean, what does it say about where we are now, this far after January 6?
REP. RASKIN: There's very dangerous rhetoric going on out there that's a real break from everything we've known in our lifetimes. What it means to live in a democracy with basic civic respect is that people can disagree without resorting to violence. But the internet has played a negative role, especially for the right wing, the extreme right, which now engages in very dangerous hyperbolic rhetoric that exposes people to danger. But democracy also requires courage. I'm so impressed by the elected officials around the country who have stood up against all of the threats and all of the intimidation, and those people don't get enough credit.
MARGARET BRENNAN: We agree. Congressman, thank you for your time.
REP. RASKIN: Thank you for having me.
MARGARET BRENNAN: We're going to take a quick break and be right back. Stay with us.