Jamie raskin tragedy5/4/2023 We can’t hope that the next president won’t try a coup we have to strengthen those democratic guardrails now. Either Congress says armed insurrections are not OK and protects the principle and practice of a peaceful transfer of power, or next time the coup succeeds. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., announced the loss of his 25-year-old son, Thomas Bloom Raskin, in a statement on Thursday, and said they are 'demolished to be without him.' Tommy was pure magic. I’m not sure if these impeachment managers were that much better or if the world has just shifted so much in the year since Trump was last tried, but impeachment no longer feels like a punishment for Trump so much as a necessity for democracy. 6.Īnd luckily for democracy, Democratic impeachment manager Jamie Raskin’s emotional speech Tuesday put what’s at stake in stark relief. But there’s no moving on when the preservation of our democracy could come down to how well Democrats narrate what happened on Jan. Republicans just want to pretend the whole storming-the-Capitol-at-Trump’s-behest thing never happened. Democrats, eager to get to lawmaking, were nervous about looking partisan and burning political capital. No one was exactly excited to be here to impeach Trump, again. It was an odd impeachment from the moment it began, with lawyers arguing to a jury filled with victims and co-conspirators (hey, Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz) in a trial being held at the scene of the actual crime, in a chamber that had been breached by Trump’s insurrectionists. 6, Trump exhorted his followers to march to the Capitol and “fight like hell.On the first day of the president’s second impeachment, Democrats finally brought the fire. Trump’s claims of fraud were repeatedly dismissed, including by Republican judges who have ruled the lawsuits lacked evidence. Of course they’d be safe, Raskin remembered responding, because “this is the Capitol.” Raskin recalled how the pair wondered if going with him would be safe given Trump had exhorted his supporters to come to Washington for a rally championing the then-president’s baseless claims that he lost November’s presidential election because of fraud. 6 - when rioters unleashed their rampage. Raskin’s grown daughter, Tabitha, and his son-in-law, Hank, accompanied him to the Capitol the next day - Jan. Raskin’s 25-year-old son, Tommy, a law student at Harvard, his father’s alma mater, killed himself on New Year’s Eve after years of struggles with depression, and was buried the following Tuesday. On Tuesday, he punctuated harrowing accounts of rioters laying siege to one the leading symbols of American democracy by drawing on tragedy in his own life. 'I continue to arraign and prosecute myself for every sign, every clue. A rising legal star, Thomas Bloom Raskin died at the age of 25. ![]() ![]() Though acquittal is likely thanks to Senate Republicans who have remained loyal to the ex-president, the proceedings have greatly raised the national profile of Raskin, who is serving as the Democrats’ impeachment manager. For Raskin, that days events were an added layer of trauma. On the last day of 2020, Raskin lost his son to suicide. Trump is the first president to face an impeachment trial after leaving office and the first to be twice impeached. Five people died as a result of the insurrection. Raskin, 58, a former constitutional law professor, is leading the impeachment prosecution in the Senate of former President Donald Trump, who is charged with inciting last month’s siege of the Capitol to overturn the election he lost to Democrat Joe Biden. “Of all the terrible, brutal things I saw and I heard on that day and since then, that one hit me the hardest.“ “She said, ’Dad, I don’t want to come back to the Capitol,’” Raskin said softly, squeezing his nose and shaking his head to clear away tears. Capitol on the day a deadly mob overran it.īut it was recalling what she said to him next, after he assured her nothing like that would happen again, that made Maryland Democratic Rep. WASHINGTON - The congressman’s voice cracked and he paused to drink from a bottle of water as he told of apologizing to his daughter for bringing her to the U.S.
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