Hi. Welcome to On Politics, your guide to the political news in Washington and across the nation. We’re your hosts, Blake and Leah. ‘Unthinkable’ twin traumas
On the morning of Dec. 31, 2020, Representative Jamie Raskin went down to his basement and found his son Tommy, 25, lying dead on the bed where he had been sleeping while staying with his parents. He had committed suicide after a long struggle with depression.Raskin was shattered. He and his son had been uncommonly close, sharing a passion for legal arcana and late-night Boggle games and an unyielding liberal idealism.One week after Tommy’s suicide, a violent mob burst into the Capitol, forcing Raskin, a lawmaker from Maryland, to seek shelter in a congressional hearing room. His youngest daughter, 23-year-old Tabitha — who had come to Washington to look after her traumatized father — barricaded herself in another member’s office.Six days after that, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi asked Raskin to lead the second impeachment of former President Donald J. Trump.He immediately said yes.“I had no choice,” Raskin said in an interview at his home in Takoma Park, Md., a proudly progressive enclave just outside Washington. “I felt it was necessary, and Tommy was with me every step along the way.”Raskin choked up at this point, bowing his head on folded hands.“Pelosi’s got some magical powers,” he went on, after collecting himself. “That was a very low moment for me. I wasn’t sleeping. I wasn’t eating. And I wasn’t sure if I would ever really be able to do anything again. And by asking me to be the lead impeachment manager, she was telling me that I was still needed.” secret missionMonths earlier, Raskin reveals in “Unthinkable,” his wrenching new memoir, Pelosi had tapped him for a special assignment: to think like Trump.Two men could hardly have been more different: Raskin, an earnest constitutional law scholar who keeps a vegan diet; and Trump, a showman with a cynical disregard for legal niceties and a preference for well-done steak.As early as May 2020, Pelosi had begun to worry that Trump would try to win a second term as president by any means — even if he lost at the ballot box.Understand the Jan. 6 Investigation
Both the Justice Department and a House select committee are investigating the events of the Capitol riot. Here's where they stand:
Inside the House Inquiry From a nondescript office building, the panel has been quietly ramping up its sprawling and elaborate investigation.Criminal Referrals, Explained Can the House inquiry end in criminal charges? These are some of the issues confronting the committee.Garland’s Remarks: Facing pressure from Democrats, Attorney General Merrick Garland vowed that the D.O.J. would pursue its inquiry into the riot “at any level.”A Big Question Remains: Will the Justice Department move beyond charging the rioters themselves?She confided in Raskin, who had long been obsessed with the Electoral College system, which he thought was full of “booby traps” that someone like Trump could exploit.So when Pelosi asked him to game out what Trump might do in November, Raskin undertook the task with characteristic vigor. Over the next few months, he tried to piece together the Trump team’s likely strategy.“We all had become great students of Donald Trump and his psyche,” Raskin recalled. “I just figured out what they would do if they wanted to win.”Raskin summed up his findings a few months later in a memo to Pelosi’s leadership team.“Everything he ended up doing we essentially predicted, other than unleashing the violent insurrection against us,” Raskin said. “I fault myself for not having taken seriously the possibility of the outdoors violence entering into the chamber.”When investigators later unearthed a proposed six-step plan by John Eastman, a fringe conservative scholar who advised Trump on his Jan. 6 gambit, Raskin found it eerily similar to his own thinking.“It was not as good as my memo. I would have done a better job,” Raskin said, allowing himself a sly smile. “It was a shoddy, superficial product, but it was as I predicted.”Some colleagues, Raskin said, suggested he was overthinking the prospect for Republican misdeeds, saying, “There’s the constitutional law professor again, you know, lost in the nooks and crannies of the Constitution.”12th Amendment arcana
As Raskin delved deeper, he realized that Democrats were vulnerable to one potential Trump move in particular: the triggering of a “contingent election” in the House of Representatives.Under the 12th Amendment, if no candidate musters a majority of the Electoral College to Congress on the appointed day, the House must immediately vote to choose the new president. ButBy: Blake Hounshell and Leah Askarinam
Title: Jamie Raskin’s Year of Tragedy and Trump
Sourced From: www.nytimes.com/2022/01/06/us/politics/jamie-raskin-unthinkable-jan-6.html
Published Date: Fri, 07 Jan 2022 00:00:05 +0000
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