During a new podcast interview, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) raised the possibility of Donald Trump going to jail — for a long, long time.
Asked about the new evidence gathered by the House committee investigating the Capitol riot, where he serves, Raskin noted testimony from former Trump White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, who worked while on the presidential team with Mark Meadows, who was then the chief of staff. Raskin noted how she outlined knowledge on Trump’s part the crowd in D.C. that day was armed. (She specifically said Trump was resistant to security staff requiring attendees at his rally on January 6 to undergo security checks.)
“What transpired was precisely what he arranged to happen,” Raskin said. “It was very clear from multiple witnesses that Donald Trump knew he had lost. He was told by his White House counsel. He was told by the Attorney General of the United States. He was told by his campaign lawyers… He plays on the fact that some people think he’s crazy, so they give him a pass on doing things that they would never accept from someone else.”
“I’m very serious about him facing the consequences and paying for the cost of his actions,” Raskin added. “He could spend the remaining days of his misanthropic life behind bars, presumably with Secret Service agents — some of whom might belong with him there, I don’t know…. That fundamentally now is not going to address the primitive forces of authoritarianism, racism, anti-Semitism that Donald Trump has unleashed in the country and set free, and that’s to me the larger concern.”
The riot panel recently recommended Trump for prosecution by the Justice Department on a series of criminal charges, including conspiracy to defraud the United States and involvement in insurrection. Raskin noted in a different interview he recently did that Trump’s aid to those who participated in the riot extends to recent developments. Already, he has repeatedly discussed the possibility of issuing pardons for participants in the Capitol violence if he regains the White House, which could provide charged rioters with an excuse to use in bargaining around potential plea deals and trials. Watch Raskin’s podcast commentary below:
.@RepRaskin talks evidence revealed by #January6thCommittee & how it implicates #Trump. “I'm very serious about him facing the consequences” of his actions, adding that he could spend “the remaining days of his misanthropic life behind bars.” @Isikoff @dklaidman @VBass @YahooNews pic.twitter.com/tmSyssEqJ5
— Skullduggery (@SkullduggeryPod) December 24, 2022
Raskin was among those helming a bill introduced this year that would outline a civil court procedure by which the attorney general or private citizens could seek the formal disqualification for office of some candidate under the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which broadly blocks those involved in insurrection from running for office. Under the proposal, a losing party could appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court after an initial decision in federal court in D.C. The bill would also formally class what happened at the Capitol and related political schemes as insurrection, although the contours of the latter would no doubt warrant specific delineation.
