Raskin says Jan. 6 hearings allowed public to understand ‘the absolute derangement we’ve been living under’

Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., joined Yahoo News’ “Skullduggery” podcast and said the Jan. 6 committee hearings would allow the public to see the “extreme radicalism” that occurred during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, and that “people would come to understand, in time, the absolute derangement that we've been living under. Raskin also said Congress should “develop a statutory mechanism” to reinforce section three of the 14th Amendment, which prevents anyone who participates in an insurrection from holding office.

Video Transcript

DANIEL KLAIDMAN: Congressman, I'm interested in your sense of the, kind of broader, impact of the January 6 Committee's investigation on the country beyond the case that you're making against Donald Trump. It strikes me that the release of the report, your findings is also coinciding with Donald Trump's-- sort of, pretty profound weakening in Donald Trump's power and, kind of, reputation. And a little bit of a sense that the, sort of, fever has broken now.

Clearly, the midterms midterm elections probably have something to do with that, may just be some level of exhaustion with Trump. But do you have a sense, or is there polling that you've seen, or anything that you can detect that would tell you something about the impact that you all have had in terms of the fever breaking in this country? It's a little bit of a subtle question, but I wonder if you have thoughts about that.

JAMIE RASKIN: Well, yeah, I guess I don't really know the answer to that question. I've believed all along that people would focus on the extreme radicalism of the events that we experienced on January 6 and people would come to understand in time the absolute derangement we've been living under. Look, the Constitution itself says in Section 3 of the 14th Amendment that anyone who has sworn an oath to support the Constitution and violates the oath by engaging in insurrection or rebellion shall never be allowed to hold federal or state office again, military or civil. That is a constitutional principle. So I hope that every textualist and originalist in the land will take the time to read Section 3 of the 14th Amendment and understand if you engage in insurrection, you are banned from holding office.

The history of that provision is really interesting because the radical Republicans in the House started by saying anybody who participates in rebellion and insurrection should never be able to vote again, should be disenfranchised. And when it got over to the Senate, they said that sweeps way too far. It shouldn't apply to anybody who participated in the rebellion. Only the people who had actually sworn an oath before to the Constitution and even then it shouldn't apply to voting. It should only apply to holding office again.

In other words, this is the bull's eye core of the meaning of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, what Donald Trump did. So if you look at our recommendation section, we say that we believe that this is self-executing. It's an automatic constitutional bar to hold an office. But we do think that Congress should act in order to develop a statutory mechanism for people getting into federal court and the DOJ getting into federal court in order to block people, so we have a uniform nationwide solution to it.

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