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

Interview

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

So, there`s precedent but it`s as you can tell, pretty rare. It`s now up to Attorney General Merrick Garland and his department to decide what happens next for Steve Bannon. Congressman Jamie Raskin is a Democrat of Maryland who serves on the Select Committee investigating January 6 which issued that subpoena to Steve Bannon last month.

Today`s vote came down I would say roughly where I thought it was. Although I -- if I had to give an over-under, probably a few more Republican votes than I would have guessed. What did you think?

RASKIN: Yes. There were definitely more Republican votes than I was expecting given that Kevin McCarthy was whipping the vote very hard to try to get everybody, you know, on the side of not issuing the criminal contempt referral for Bannon.

And so, I was pleased to see there were both a number of people on the Republican side who had voted to impeach Donald Trump also in this group but there were also some new ones like Nancy Mace from South Carolina who is my counterpart on the Oversight Subcommittee on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties and she just said she believes in the rule of law and how can Congress with the straight face go forward in ever issue subpoenas again if we`re not going to stand by our subpoenas. So, more power to these people who stood by the rule of law.

HAYES: Yes, Nancy Mace`s statement basically making the point which I thought is a good one is look, if you have a privilege you want to assert, an immunity you want to assert, you got to come down and assert it. That the sort of going out of his way to, as I think you said on the floor, show his contempt for the subpoena was essentially an insult to the institution of Congress. And I thought, you know, that was a well put by her.

RASKIN: That`s the way it works. You know, if you get subpoenaed by a court or by Congress to come down and testify, you think you might have a Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination to invoke at some point. You take all of the questions starting with what is your name, what is your address and so on. When you get to a question where you think you might incriminate yourself as to a bank robbery or an insurrection or whatever it might be, you say I take the Fifth Amendment. I assert my privilege.

At that point, the Committee has an option, will the committee just accept that or will the committee say we will give you use immunity which means you`ve got to testify but we will guarantee that nothing that you testify about will be used against you.

HAYES: All right, so whose office is this sitting in right now, this referral?

RASKIN: It`s at the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia. And the statute -- well, it can be read to either give them some flexibility or the way that Jim Jordan read it like back with the Eric Holder contempt or the lowest learner contempt is the U.S. Attorney must go before the grand jury to demand an indictment.

And -- but, you know, we think that it`s very likely given that the gravity of this matter is so overwhelming and that the facts are so clear that he just blew us off that we think that the Department of Justice will move forward. Of course, we`re not putting all our eggs in one basket because we`re continuing to do whatever we need to do to obtain his testimony as we`ve compelled it.

HAYES: What is the timeline or you`re understanding of the timeline? This really does seem like once again we`re in a situation in which there`s sort of the law and then there`s the timeline of an investigation. And the obvious thing that Donald Trump and Steve Bannon and all those people like to do is just delay it until it`s -- you know essentially can`t -- you can`t keep doing it or it`s too long in the future to have much import.

[20:10:19]

RASKIN: No, we won`t tolerate perpetual denial here. And remember, we`re collecting evidence every single day. The vast majority of the people that we`ve reached out to are testifying voluntarily or they`re meeting with the committee. They`re doing interviews. We`re picking up lots of information about everybody and everything. And our goal of course is to present a comprehensive and detailed portrait of the events of January 6, the causes of January 6, and then what we need to do to prevent this from ever happening again.

But we`re certainly not going to let anything drag on for eight months, nine months, ten months, nothing like that. We`re on a much more rapid timetable. And if you think about it, what could be a more important issue than the safety of Congress and the security of democracy itself moving into the future. And the way we see it is this insurrection/coup is really still going with the big lie.

Just today, President Trump issued a statement asserting that the insurrection was on November 3rd. The day of the election is what he`s calling the insurrection, again to further confuse people and to cloud the issue. That demonstrates we`re in a continuing danger.

HAYES: Speaking of which, there was a strange moment today in the halls of Congress that I saw you speak to, and I just wanted to get first hand from you in which Marjorie Taylor Greene who`s a freshman Congresswoman from Georgia of course who has been -- doesn`t have any committees and you know, she tweets a lot I guess. She approached you and Liz Cheney, I believe. What happened?

RASKIN: Well, first she started shouting at me, when are you going to start to investigate the violence at Black Lives Matter protests. And I said, you know, we really should look into Kyle Rittenhouse and the two people he killed and the other violence that was ginned up by right-wing forces against Black Lives Matter. And then she began to mix it up with Liz Cheney.

I couldn`t follow all of it. Obviously, it`s been a continuing conversation there. But the part that I caught was when Congresswoman Greene was saying something to the effects of she never said that about Jewish space lasers. That was made up by the media.

HAYES: Yes, I just want to be clear here. She never used the phrase Jewish space laser. She said that the California wildfires may have been started by space lasers possibly under the control of the Rothschild family, so just to be clear on what she said here. I want to be -- make sure -- make sure that claim is very clear.

RASKIN: Well, I think she`s pressing that same point.

HAYES: Yes, no, I mean, you know, the people should know what she said. The final thing, is this -- is it a bit -- is she doing a world wrestling heel thing? Is it -- is it a person? I just -- what`s the deal?

RASKIN: I mean, it`s hard to know. I mean, she seems to be inspired by a lot of the QAnon mythologies and stories that are out there. And she`s certainly had a lot of contempt herself for Liz Cheney. And, you know, Liz Cheney has become a hero to millions of Americans by her constitutional patriotism, by the fact that she`s standing up for the rule of law far beyond a particular political party or a particular political leader.

But I think that her colleagues in the Republican conference are regarding her with great derision and contempt right now. And they`re basically seeing her as the anti-Trump. And you can choose Trump or you can choose Liz Cheney.

HAYES: Congressman Jamie Raskin, thank you very much for your time.

RASKIN: Thank you so much, Chris.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source