State of the Union: Interview with Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD)

Interview

"Well, I think the critical thing is that Donald Trump and his co-defendants be treated exactly like everybody else would be treated in a similar prosecution. Fani Willis, the prosecutor involved, has undertaken numerous state RICO prosecutions, and as long as this is consistent with everything that's happened before, I think it's the right thing to do.

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Well, RICO has been used mostly not against the mafia, if you look at all of the RICO prosecutions in the country at the federal and state level, and of course there would be something strange about a law that applies only to one group. It applies to a pattern of racketeering activity that is organizing people together into a conspiracy in order to achieve an illegal end, in this case the overthrow of a presidential election and substituting a counterfeit process made up of fake electors for the actual process that the people voted on.

So there are lots of component criminal parts to it and there were a lot of people involved, and that to me seems as if it's custom made for a RICO prosecution the way that we've developed it. If people want to talk about reforming the RICO statute, then we can analyze that. But it's been upheld against constitutional attack repeatedly.

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Well, there is no question that the state has the power to prosecute someone who is a federal official or a federal employee. You can just think about a federal official employee who engages in a

bank robbery or a murder, obviously the state would get to prosecute them. That is a statute which says that if a federal office or employee is conducting their federal work under an order from a superior to execute a federal policy, then they can petition to have that removed to federal court. If they're being prosecuted for work they were doing as part of their job.

So, that, of course, raises the question, when Mark Meadows tries to remove from Georgia state court to federal court, whether he was actually engaged in the work of the federal government and he was acting pursuant to a federal policy, the court is going to have to rule on that.

In any event, even if it is removed, all that this means is that the federal court will conduct the state criminal prosecution under the auspices of the federal judiciary.

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Well ...

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That's right. Well, we won't be able to see it and also obviously after four years of packing the courts with Federalist Society bloggers, someone like Mark Meadows is going to feel a lot more comfortable in federal court. There is a political irony there of course because these are supposedly the big champions of state courts and state law. But they're trying to flee from it as quickly as possible to get into the warmer climate of the federal judiciary which they have worked so hard to gerrymander.

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I imagine so. You know, I think that the key thing here is the establishment of the fact because Mr. Chesebro has petitioned for a speedy trial, that it's perfectly legitimate to have a trial this year to make it happen in the fall. And that the courts are fully equipped to do that. But I think obviously the defendants are going to be able to learn from each other's experiences. But they're up against a mountain of evidence that they were involved in this complex conspiracy to accomplish a single criminal objective which is to overthrow our actual presidential election and substitute a counterfeit process for it.

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Well, absolutely, and we've been saying all along that Section 3 of the 14th Amendment presents a clear and unequivocal statement that anyone who has sworn an oath of office, and by the way not just the president but members of Congress and others who hold federal office, who engage in insurrection or rebellion, having sworn an oath to uphold the Constitution against enemies foreign and domestic, can never serve again in federal or state office.

And this was added after the civil war as a general constitutional principle, and we have to abide by it. Donald Trump was impeached by the House of Representatives for inciting an insurrection against the union and then 57 of 100 senators determined as a constitutional fact that Donald Trump had incited an insurrection.

So I think you've got robust, bicameral, bipartisan majorities that have already established this as a fact and I agree with the conservative Federalist Society law professors who are out there saying as well as Mr. Hutchinson that Donald Trump is disqualified just as if he were running and not a born U.S. citizen or if he were running and he were 24 years old.

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I mean, I think it would be strange if President Biden had to organize his campaign schedule around all of the court appearances and pleas and mug shots of Donald Trump. I think Joe Biden should be free to run his campaign and if it happens to coincide with something happening in Donald Trump's extremely voluminous and complex legal docket, that's Donald Trump's problem, it's not Joe Biden's problem.

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The pleasure is all mine. Thanks for having me, Dana.

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