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

Interview

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Politico reports the panels held its first closed-door transcribed interviews with willing witnesses. And Congressman Jamie Raskin of Maryland who led the second impeachment of Donald Trump now sits on the January 6 Commission joins me now.

Congressman Raskin, it`s good to have you. What can you tell us about the first rounds of interviews that are happening?

REP. JAMIE RASKIN (D-MD): Well, I can tell you that there are voluntary witnesses who are coming in who are cooperating who want to describe the whole sequence of events that led both to the inside political coup against the vice president and the Congress waged by the president and also the parallel insurrection which enveloped and surrounded the coup and tried to aid that process of coercing the vice president to reject electoral college votes for the first time in American history to declare a power that`s not in the constitution. And that`s what you know led to him being chased out of the body and people yelling hang Mike Pence and so on.

And you know the problem with the word coup is people think of a coup is something that takes place against a president. This was a coup waged by the president against the vice president and against the Congress.

HAYES: So, you go to work every day in the United States Capitol. You guys have lots of stuff to do. I`m sitting here talking to you on -- you know, in early October months after this happened. You know, the root of the word news is new. We report on new things that happen. It continues to be this - - the case to me that like what happened then is the most like, gaping wound in the American bodym politic, has not been sutured up, has not been really treated to or attended to.

And yet you work next to these people. And I do feel the power of the inertia of everyone just sort of forgetting it happening getting back to business.

RASKIN: Well, I mean, business for them of course is a very simple agenda. You know, the Republican Party had no program adopted at its convention in 2020 for the first time I think in modern political history. There`s never been a major party without a program, without a platform, but it`s very clear what their agenda is voter suppression, gerrymandering of our congressional districts, use of the filibuster to thwart all progress, and then packing the courts with right-wing judges and justices to cement this whole system.

There`s a very troubling situation because the vast majority of the American people rejects Trump, Trumpism, violent insurrection, and all of their big lies on everything from climate change to COVID-19, to the election to January 6. And yet, they manipulate so many of the key levers of political power in the country.

HAYES: The consequences though have been largely absent. I mean, there has been no sanction. There is no sanction. Again, the 600 people been arrested, the folks that actually went in there -- the president was impeached which is definitely not nothing. It was the most bipartisan impeachment in American history which is also not nothing.

But as far as I can tell, like again, there really hasn`t been sufficient, to my mind, accountability or sanction. It`s basically your committee is left with that job even though at one level, you`re really a fact-finding investigatory committee. How do you understand your dual roles in that respect?

RASKIN: Well, we are primarily a fact-finding investigative committee which is going to produce a report that I trust and hope will change American history because it will basically present to the American people this whole sequence of shocking events and lay out the case for defending democracy against dictatorship and autocracy.

Because all over the world, the dictators and the autocrats and the kleptocrats, the Putins, and the Xis, and the Duterte`s, and the war bands are simply saying democracy doesn`t work, we can`t get it together we can`t move quickly enough, and you need authoritarian regimes and authoritarian rule.

So, we`re going to lay out a very strong case for democracy and what we need to do to repair our democracy so we`re not vulnerable to fascist violence in the future.

[20:15:07]

HAYES: The subpoenas that have been issued so far, there are some talk about invocations of big executive privilege, non-cooperation, court appeals. What is the status thus far of the subpoenas that have been issued?

RASKIN: Well, on Thursday, I think all of the documentary evidence is due in. We have subpoenaed a whole bunch of documents relating to everything connected to January 6th and the coup and the insurrection. And then there`s another week within which we are arranging for interviews and depositions against people who`ve been called forward.

So, you know, again, we don`t do these in any sense as discretionary or optional. People used to understand, when you get a subpoena from the United States Congress, you snap to attention and you come -- you bring the documents that you ask for and you come and testify unless you`ve got some kind of Fifth Amendment privilege or some other lawful privilege that you can assert.

But these are not optional things. And you know, of the many excesses and depredations of the Trump administration, one, was the idea that when you get a subpoena, you just figure out a way to fight it. And that`s a guy, of course, who`s been surrounded by an army of lawyers for his entire adulthood if not before that.

HAYES: Congressman Jamie Raskin, as always, good talking to you. Thank you very much.

RASKIN: Thank you so much, Chris.

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