Now for Raskin…

Rep. Jamie Raskin has a long history of trying to check Donald Trump’s power. He led Trump’s second impeachment after the January 6 breach of the Capitol, and served on the January 6 Select Committee, which investigated the president’s role in the violent attempt to prevent Joe Biden’s election certification. Now in the minority with little power, Raskin is ramping up scantily resourced investigations into the administration, laying the groundwork for what oversight might look like should Democrats win control of the House in November. (Also on his wishlist: investigations into F.B.I. director Kash Patel steering bonus payments to loyalists and special envoy Jared Kushner’s “staggering” financial conflicts in the Middle East.)

I recently sat down with Raskin, where we discussed his sweeping legislation to prohibit Trump’s $1.776 billion “anti-weaponization” fund and nix the D.O.J. immunity deal that purports to absolve his family of any past tax crimes. Congress has rejected the fund, but the Justice Department—now led by Trump’s former personal attorney—has refused to commit in writing that it won’t be revived. (Raskin believes that Trump has much more sinister plans for the fund, including “to turn that January 6 army into a permanent private militia for future political entanglements.”) And because Congress neglected to address Trump’s tax immunity, Raskin included that in his legislation, too.

Naturally, I also asked Raskin whether impeachment is on the table if Democrats win back Congress. His answer was more nuanced than you might expect. (The following conversation, a version of which originally appeared on 535 News, has been lightly edited for length and clarity.)

Leigh Ann Caldwell: As the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, you have a package of bills pertaining to the president’s $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund, as well as the D.O.J. agreement granting him and his family immunity from any sort of prosecution over taxes. You believe both deals were illegal?

Rep. Jamie Raskin: The vast majority of Americans and members of Congress say no, the president cannot act as the legislature and appropriate $1.776 billion to give away to his political foot soldiers in MAGA and the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers and Three Percenters, to pay them for their service working for insurrection against the government.

First of all, it’s unconstitutional. The 14th Amendment specifically forbids payment of anybody who’s participated in insurrection against the United States. Secondly, it’s not the role of the president to legislate—that’s up to Congress. And third, if they’re going to be doling out money because they’re bringing legal actions against the government, that would be up to the courts to deal with as actual cases and controversies against the United States, not five people that they mysteriously appoint under the direct control of the president.

Everybody can see what’s going on here. He wants a political slush fund for his movement to turn that January 6 army into a permanent private militia for future political entanglements, and we won’t have it. So our legislation says no, we’re going to shut down the anti-weaponization fund, and we’re going to shut down any effort to take federal tax dollars to use for these purposes.

And the tax immunity?

[Acting Attorney General] Todd Blanche snuck in there the day after they announced the fund and said, “Oh, yeah, we’ve got a little codicil, a little amendment to this.” Apparently he doesn’t need the consent of the other side, because he’s representing both sides, just making it obvious, exposing the plan for what it is. But he said we’re also going to say that President Trump and his family, however defined, and all of their businesses are immune from all criminal prosecution, civil prosecution, tax prosecution, and administrative law prosecution for all time for any crimes or civil transgressions that may have been committed up to this point. We’ve never seen anything like that in American history.

So, our other legislation simply shuts that down and says the president can sue for whatever he wants, but that goes to a real court. The president cannot settle with himself—that’s a collusive settlement. It’s collusive litigation, and I think the country is beginning to understand that’s not an honest lawsuit, that’s not an actual case or controversy, which is why two different federal courts shut it down also and froze the action. The judge in the Southern District of Florida recalled the case and said, I’m not going to allow you to dismiss that case, because I think the settlement is a fraud on the court, and that could become a fraud on the country.

On the slush fund, specifically: There’s been this thing within Justice called the Judgment Fund, which Republicans have actually been adamantly opposed to for a long time. What is the difference between this and the Judgment Fund? And is that Judgment Fund acceptable?

That’s a great question. Thank you for digging a little deeper into the whole thing. It was created in the 1950s because it used to be up to Congress, any time anybody sued the federal government—say a Civil War doctor committed malpractice—Congress had to go and vote on paying for a verdict. It wasn’t paid automatically. But after the passage of the Federal Tort Claims Act, there was an avalanche of new litigation against the government, and the members said, We can’t be spending all of our time just voting on litigation relating to the federal government. So they created a judgment fund to be administered by the Department of Justice.

And like most other things, it worked just fine until the Trump administration, when Trump saw a pot of money and decided to seize upon it to use for his own personal purposes. So, just in the past couple months, he paid $1.25 million to Michael Flynn, his disgraced former national security advisor, who pleaded guilty to lying about contacts with the right. That was from the Judgment Fund. After Flynn had already lost his case, he actually brought a case about malicious prosecution in federal court. He lost the case, and then the Department of Justice, under Todd Blanche, decided to settle the case that Michael Flynn had already lost. They did the same thing with Carter Page.

So, if you’ve got a real case, you bring that case in court, but now the word is out on the street in MAGA land: Just go directly to Donald Trump, and he will cut a deal with you. Enrique Tarrio, the head of the Proud Boys, has said he doesn’t need the weaponization fund—he’s going to get his millions of dollars directly from the Judgment Fund. So that’s why our legislation doesn’t just deal with this so-called weaponization fund in the settlement; it deals with the Judgment Fund itself.

I’m assuming this legislation is not going to go very far in this Congress with the Republicans in control.

I wouldn’t assume that.

Why?

The country is in an uproar about this blatant rip-off of taxpayer resources for convicted criminals in Donald Trump’s personal political army, and there are a lot of Republicans under pressure in swing districts around the country, and Donald Trump’s not giving them much to run on. I mean, the illegal unconstitutional tariffs that drove up prices for everything in the country, the illegal unconstitutional war, which is costing Americans a billion dollars a day and has sent gasoline over $4.50 a gallon. So there’s not a lot to run on. Do they want to have the J-6ers wrapped around their neck, too? I don’t think so. So a bunch of Republicans have been talking to us about this.

Let’s say that Democrats take back the House. What’s the priority of this Democratic caucus? You have a very powerful and convincing message as far as corruption and investigations into the president more broadly. How important is that going to be?

Well, I mean, you’ve got to ask [Democratic leader] Hakeem Jeffries about that, because unlike this majority, we’re going to be disciplined, we’re going to be focused. But I will tell you thematically what I want to focus on as one member in what we hope will be a new Democratic majority: We have two different visions for government in the country right now. One says that the government must be an instrument for the common good for everybody, healthcare for everybody, voting rights for everybody. The other vision is that government is an instrument for private self-enrichment and corrupt moneymaking for the guy who gets in, his family, and his best friends. So we need an agenda that is going to be all about promoting strong democracy in America as opposed to corruption for the few.

Is impeachment on the table?

Again, everything’s on the table. Nothing is off the table. You know, we have a number of different mechanisms for checking the corruption and lawlessness that have overtaken our country. Nobody on our side is afraid of impeachment. It is not a taboo, but we also know it’s not a panacea, and it is a fetish for nobody. It is one more tool in the toolkit, and we will use it if we need to use it.

But really, what we need to do is win this election in November. Donald Trump already has 50 percent of all the presidential impeachments in American history. So you know it’s a more meaningful remedy if you can get both the majority in the House to impeach and two-thirds in the Senate to convict. We understand that’s a pretty high order to make happen, but again, it’s a tool in the toolkit.

Public polling shows that corruption is increasingly an important issue for voters, but they also view Republicans and Democrats as equally corrupt. How do Democrats change that narrative?

If you believe that Democrats are as corrupt as the Republican Party and Donald Trump and his family, you are too innocent to be let out of the house by yourself.

Public polling does suggest that. People don’t like stock trading.

Democrats are the anti-corruption party. We’ve got to stop the individual stock trading, absolutely. If you want to put your money in a mutual fund, great, that’s what people do, and let it ride. But the floor of the U.S. Senate, the floor of the U.S. House, should not be like the New York Stock Exchange.

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