Jamie Raskin Discusses Going on the Offense against Trump

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2:23Ben Meiselas:modern way and get half off your first year with code budget at monarch.com. That's code budget at monarch.com. Democratic Congress member Jamie Raskin, the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, is responding to Donald Trump's latest midnight threats. Donald Trump was posting all night that Jamie Raskin, the Democratic congressman, needs to be expelled. Donald Trump was literally seething with rage and sweating out his fear. He was saying that Jamie Raskin's a loser in life who worked endlessly during my first term to impeach me. And he goes, we need to expel the bum. Congress can never be great with people like this.

3:03Ben Meiselas:And he was reposting Mark Levin, who said the House should trigger the expulsion process against Jamie Raskin. He's leading a plot to impeach the president. If the Democrats take the House, he led the prior two impeachments against the president. He's pushed for his resignation in the past, also was involved in twisting the 14th Amendment to ban candidate Trump from the ballots. Wah, wah, wah. Like invoke Article 1, Section 5, Clause 2, and expel Jamie Raskin. I want to bring in Democratic Congress member Jamie Raskin to respond to Donald Trump's latest threats, because it certainly seems that Congress member Raskin's living rent-free in Donald Trump's head.

3:45Ben Meiselas:I also want to speak to Congress member Raskin about some of his major pieces of legislation to block Donald Trump's$1.8 billion slush fund, as well as Donald Trump's attempt to basically give himself a super pardon from all of his past tax evasion and any other conduct relating to taxes or any other misconduct that was one of the things that was put in the settlement that Donald Trump bade with himself. Let's bring in Democratic Congress member Jamie Raskin. Congress member Raskin, it's great to see you. And so Donald Trump's been posting a lot about you. He's been posting reposts of Mark Levin, talking a lot of stuff about you, saying you need to be expelled and saying that, you know, they're terrified that when Democrats take over the House, you'll be leading a third impeachment against him.

4:35Ben Meiselas:So they got to get rid of you now. And I mean, he's posting it late at night. So you're clearly living rent free in his mind. I guess before we get into some of the other pieces of legislation that you're pushing forward, what's your immediate response to kind of Trump's constant posts about saying you need to be expelled from the House? Well, it tells me we had a very fine week in terms of stopping his absurd and lawless$1.776 billion political slush fund, which we've been working on in the Judiciary Committee. And it tells me we had a great week in terms of exposing their utterly ridiculous and devious attack on the Southern Poverty Law Center.

5:17So his attack on me seemed to be kind of coming out of the blue. We don't quite know exactly what triggered him, but it was a rough week for the president in the Judiciary Committee. And so, I don't know, maybe he's got Raskin derangement syndrome or something. But the bottom line is we're doing our job. We're going to get back to work. We're on the front lines of this struggle against corruption and authoritarianism. And we're not going to be deterred by that. This is not middle school where he thinks he can expel someone for questioning his authority. And look, we're in the middle of a war that he started illegally and unconstitutionally.

5:59And there are a lot of dead Americans and a lot more dead Iranians. And he should really be focused on that. These are very serious times. And so I'm going to try not to take the bait as tempting as it is to go back and forth. I will just say though, in his attacking me on the impeachment stuff and what he describes as a loser cause, he was impeached by the House of Representatives right after the insurrection in 2021, in January 2021 on the 13th. And it was a vote of 232 to 197, and all of the Democrats and 10 Republicans joined us. And so when we went over to the Senate to prosecute the case, and I was the lead impeachment manager, he may be recalling now that it was a 57 to 43 vote to convict him.

6:54Now, I know he's proud of that because that fell just short of the two-thirds requirement, but most presidents of the United States would not be proud of the fact that they have 50 % of the presidential impeachments in history and 57 % of the U.S. Senate voted to say that he had incited a violent insurrection against our constitution.

7:16Ben Meiselas:Yeah, it's a good point. I don't think people remember how close he actually was to being convicted as well. But for some of the people, by the way, who he now attacks, I mean, there could have been a conviction there in the Senate. Now, talk to us about your legislation that you're pushing forward on the slush fund for the insurrectionists. Because one of the things that I find fascinating is this macro picture that gives you insight into, I think, Donald Trump's entire life as a con artist and a scammer, which is he doesn't want to reduce anything to writing. Even when he's cornered, he always wants to do a trust me, bro, I got this.

7:52Ben Meiselas:And then he always tries to wiggle out of it and say, because his word is meaningless. I mean, we see it in Iran where it's like, okay, reduce it to writing, make the deal, stop saying you have concepts of frameworks of concepts of frameworks even judge brinkham was speaking to the doj lawyer on the slush fund case and she was saying to the doj lawyer look okay i hear you you're saying to me that you're going to stop the slush fund so why aren't you putting it in writing and the doj lawyer goes i yeah i don't know and judge brinkham was like don't you find it weird that you don't know that and you this is a pretty big case and you're saying you don't know why you don't want to put that in writing very suspicious I mean, the day after Todd Blanch appeared in the Republican caucus before an outraged, scandalized membership, and he promised them it was going nowhere, we're not moving forward, and so on.

8:43The very next day, Donald Trump said, I love the idea. We're going forward. We're going to make this happen, and so on. So you can't trust these people, even when they do commit it to writing, but at least have the decency to commit it to writing. I don't think we're going to fall for all of these verbal disclaimers of interest and proceeding. In any event, we are the Article I branch of government in Congress. We appropriate money. It's up to us at this point to both completely defund their fraudulent settlement and their anti-weaponization fund, but also to affirmatively declare that no federal taxpayer dollars should go to the purposes of paying the insurrectionists, the Proud Boys, and the Oath Keepers.

9:25For one thing, it's unconstitutional If you read Section 4 of the 14th Amendment, it says that no money may be appropriated for the purposes of paying for insurrection against the union. And, of course, that came out of the Civil War period. So that's an emphatic categorical point. But also we're saying the president should not be able to make a deal with himself. This is basically Trump versus Trump. And guess who wins in litigation like that? This is a totally fraudulent, collusive litigation and totally fraudulent, collusive settlement, which is why the judge in Florida yanked the whole thing back.

10:00They had tried to dismiss the case. And she said, no way. I think this is a fraud on the court and it's going to be a fraud in the country. Now we got two different federal courts trying to throw the brakes on it. And Judge Brinkema just said there shall be no money going out of this fund. And we're going to try to make the same thing happen by passing a robust bipartisan legislation in Congress that we hope lots of Republicans will join us on, saying that the president should not be allowed to settle any cases with himself for his family or for his cabinet members or for his political appointees.

10:35If they think they've got a real case that can sustain judicial scrutiny and they want to go to court, fine, let them go to court. But we cannot allow them to settle their own cases against themselves. And we saw what happened with Michael Flynn. They did that with Michael Flynn. Michael Flynn actually lost his case about selective prosecution or malicious prosecution. He lost it. And then still they gave him one point two five million dollars just as a handoff from the Department of Justice. And the same thing with Carter Page, who got$1.25 million. Enrique Tarrio is out there saying, I don't need the anti-weaponization fund.

11:09I'm going to get my money from the judgment fund. So we need to cut off that spigot immediately in Congress.

11:17Ben Meiselas:the fact that he did this super pardon settlement with himself with the irs um waiving all past tax liability to me that was one of the main things that he was after anyway because you know he's been railing about these audits for a long time what i worry is i know people have talked about the number as a hundred million dollars that it potentially is waiving in terms of what the irs was looking at. But as I read that waiver in California, we'd call it a 1542 waiver, any and all conduct, you know, that predates it. So what I worry too, is all of these quid pro quo deals he's been doing with the UAE and the crypto and all of this stuff now, where he would normally have to pay capital gains or whatever, whatever this, whatever it would be, he's not going to pay those.

12:02Ben Meiselas:Cause the way I read the language, you could do a look back of all tax liability that predates it. And knowing him, why wouldn't he claim all of the billions of dollars that he's made during these first two years in office? He doesn't have to pay taxes on that stuff. And so it's a waiver of that. So to me, the number that he could be waiving, just to take the best case scenario, capital gains, classification, 20, whatever, 20, 25%. If he made$2 billion, we could be talking about$600 million in taxes that he's not going to pay. Yeah, but he's made$4 billion at least. So it's double that amount.

12:40I mean, we're talking about billions of dollars in taxes. He's escaping. And by the way, I thank you for reading it because as you saw, it's not just taxes. This nullifies any liability for the president, his family, his businesses for any criminal, civil or tax violation or any other administrative law violation. And so Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, bribery, embezzlement, insider trading, as you say, other violations of the domestic emoluments clause. He's not allowed to take any money from the federal government. But if he took that one point eight billion dollar slush fund, that's money that's taxable to him.

13:17But they're just trying to nullify all of it and wipe the slate clean. And what's interesting about it is that none of that has anything to do with what his original case was about. His original case was trying to sue the federal government because a private third party government contractor had leaked information about thousands of people's tax returns, including Trump's. And everybody has lost their case in trying to get paid for that. Now, the guy who did that, he obviously should not have done that. Charles Littlejohn is in jail. He's in federal prison for five years, but there's no private right of action against it.

13:51And Todd Blanche, despite the fact that the Department of Justice had been winning on all of those cases, refused to advance a very clear motion to dismiss on that basis. And he also refused to advance a motion to dismiss on the basis that the statute of limitations had run. As all the IRS lawyers were saying, this was many months too late after the expiration of the statute of limitations. Todd Blanche was not acting as a lawyer, as you say, for the American people or for the government. He was acting as a lawyer, as always, for Donald Trump. He just happens to be getting his salary paid by the U.S.

14:25government.

14:26Ben Meiselas:Yeah, Trump was the president when the data leak took place, too. It'd be like the head of Microsoft suing Microsoft for a data leak of Microsoft stuff while you were the CEO and then paying yourself$10 billion and settling it for yourself. I mean, it's the most deranged. Before we go, though, Congressman, I want to talk to you about the National Democracy Summer Program. I know this is a big deal and very important to you. What should our audience know about that? So we need a whole new generation of Democratic organizers and leaders across the country. And our program recruits them in every state in the union.

15:01Last summer, we had more than a thousand. We're hoping this summer we'll have more than 2 ,500 of them working in House races and Senate races. But we start off the day with lectures. We have a whole curriculum on the fight for democracy and freedom in America. historically in the fight for democracy and freedom today. So we have Tim Snyder, we have Heather Cox Richardson, we've got Benny Thompson, we got Maxwell Frost, who's the co-chair of the program with me. And we talk about the fights for voting rights and democracy and women's reproductive freedom and so on that we've been through. And then we have people like Mark Elias come in and talk about the fight for the right to vote today, our struggle against the Roberts Court and the racist gerrymandering of our congressional districts and their dismantling of majority African-American districts throughout the South.

15:56And then these young people are spending the rest of their days knocking on doors, canvassing, registering voters, working for the Democratic title wave that we need in order to cleanse all of the corruption and authoritarianism and get America back on track.

16:12Ben Meiselas:Congress Member Raskin, thanks for all you're doing. We appreciate you. Come back soon. See you real soon. Thanks for everything you guys are doing. Thank you, everybody. Hit subscribe. Let's get to 7 million subscribers. Want to stay plugged in? Become a subscriber to our sub stack at MidasPlus.com. You'll get daily recaps from Ron Filipkowski, ad-free episodes of our podcast, and more exclusive content only available at MidasPlus.com.