Jamie Raskin

Having a constitutional law professor in a hearing like today's turns out to be a really useful thing when you're talking about the criminal indictment of a United States president.

Joining us now exclusively is Congressman Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee.

Congressman, I know it has been a long and busy day.

Thank you so much for being with us tonight.

First of all, I'd like two top line results from you or two top line takeaways from you.

Number one, why did this happen today?

Why do you think your Republican colleagues wanted to do this?

And how do you think Jack Smith did?

I will say, live in the moment, as Congressman Jordan was trying to gavel the hearing to a close, and you jumped in with that explanation, essentially making that case in very plain English that you, as the Democrats on the committee, planned to bring him back,

Jim Jordan seemed quite surprised.

It really felt like you'd pulled a rabbit out of a hat.

We then got the letter from you formalizing your explanation, pursuant to Rule 11, Clause 2J1 of the Rules of the House, we the undersigned majority of the minority, right, to notify you of our intent to call Jack Smith the testifying continuation of this full committee hearing.

The way that I hear you're explaining it now, the way that I understand it from your letter is that Congressman Jordan, as surprised as he may have been to have heard this from you today, he doesn't have a choice.

You guys now get to bring Jack Smith back again when that when volume two is unsealed and you can talk to him about that case.

Congressman Raskin, it's Rachel again.

I just wanted to ask you one last question because I feel like you are a keen and unreserved observer of your colleagues in a way that not every member of Congress is.

But I feel like sometimes I get my best insights into what's going on in the Republican conference because you're willing to be very blunt about it.

So I have a blunt question.

Do you feel like you understand right now what your Republican colleagues take is about

on January 6th, because I feel like today, sometimes they were saying, oh, January 6th was not that big of a deal.