As part of our continuing coverage of Trump’s multi-pronged push to interfere with the upcoming midterm elections, we have been talking to a variety of voices on what they fear most from the administration. In this discussion with Democratic Congressman Jamie Raskin, he accuses the Trump administration of constructing a private police force within the federal government and seeking to fund an extrajudicial efforts to also interfere with free and fair elections.

Credits:

• Production: Taya Graham/Stephen Janis
• Post-Production: David Hebden

Transcript

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. It will be updated as soon as possible.

Stephen Janis:

At the Real News Network, we have been covering the threat to midterm elections. Now, we came to the Networks Conference here in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to speak to Congressman Jamie Raskin. When he told us about what he thinks might happen in November should scare all of us. You know, you introduced a Blanche Act, is that what it’s called? Yes. Yeah. So the Senate just passed the reconciliation bill and did nothing to it. So what are your thoughts at this moment that can be done to prevent it and what are your concerns about this slush fund that has been proposed by the Trump administration?

Rep. Jamie Raskin:

Well, the vast majority of Americans reject the idea that the Trump regime should be able to take 1.776 billion of taxpayer money and give it to convicted criminals, Proud Boys and Oath Keepers and other extremists who tried to storm or who stormed the Capitol and tried to overthrow a presidential election. It’s outrageous and it violates about a dozen different federal laws and constitutional provisions. So we need to pass legislation to block it and also to block the other part that they’re trying to sneak through, which is a lifelong immunity from criminal civil tax prosecution of Donald Trump or his family or his businesses for crimes and civil offenses that they’ve committed up until this point.

Stephen Janis:

Is this personal for you? I mean, you were there and the idea that they would pay the people that tried to overturn the election. Does this affect you in a personal way?

Rep. Jamie Raskin:

Democracy is personal to me and fascism is personal to me and I think it should be personal to everybody. I mean, they want to destroy our basic institutions in the country. They want to destroy the freedom of press. They want to control the media. So they put minders and spies into CBS in 60 minutes. They want to take over. They denounced the mainstream of media just so they could take over the mainstream media and make it their official state propaganda apparatus. They’re trampling the freedom of press. They’re attacking the separation of church and state. I was on the floor. One of their guys got up and said the moral downfall of America was 1962 when the Supreme Court banned prayer in the public schools. And I got up and I said, the Supreme Court never banned prayer in the public schools. As long as there are pop math quizzes, there will be prayer in the public schools.

Anybody can pray whenever he or she wants to, but what they want is the government writing out religious scripts and then compelling your children to participate in it. So literally our entire Constitution and Bill of Rights are being demolished by these people and they want to turn us into a mafia state, a gangster state.

Stephen Janis:

Now, looking forward to the midterms. There’s a lot of pretextual stuff, the Trump administration, subpoenaing ballots in Wayne County or taking ballots in Fullton County. Is that a playbook they’re trying to roll out by having all these pre-elections sort of cast enough doubts so they can so chaos? What are your concerns about the midterm election and Trump administration interference?

Rep. Jamie Raskin:

Yeah. I mean, people ask me like, “Are they going to try and steal the election?” I say, “No, they’re not going to try and steal the election.” They’re trying to steal the election. Every day we’ve got lawyers all over America from the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, ACLU, Mark Elias fighting every one of these operations, which is an attempt to steal the election when they say, “Oh, we’re going to throw everybody off the rolls who missed voting an election, or when they’re closing polling places throughout Texas.” All of these voter suppression mechanisms are an attempt to steal the election. But I also want to say we have never been better mobilized and we’ve never had better lawyers engaged out in the field. We’ve never had a stronger civil society infrastructure fighting back, which is why they’re attacking the civil society infrastructure. We just had a hearing two weeks ago.

We’ve got another hearing this week. They’re trying to bring down the Southern Poverty Law Center, which is our major group fighting the Ku Klux Klan and the Aryan nations and the neo-Nazi right. They’re trying to destroy it saying that the Southern Poverty Law Center defrauds its own donors because they send people undercover into the extremist groups to find out what’s happening so they can prevent the next attack on a church or a synagogue or the Oklahoma federal building or what have you. That’s who the Trump Department of Justice is going after. That’s who Todd Blanche wants to attack the anti-Klan fighters.

Stephen Janis:

Now let me ask you a question. We spent a lot of time covering this reconciliation. They gave ICE and CBP $70 billion with no explanation. We ask Republicans why. What do you think that money’s for? Because I still has like $70 billion in the bank. Why do they need $70 billion? What are your concerns about that?

Rep. Jamie Raskin:

Well, this is what’s very concerning because if you talk to historians of fascism, they will tell you that what authoritarians do, what fascists try and do is build up a paramilitary force within the government and also one outside of the government. So that’s the meaning of this $1.8 billion political slush fund meant for the extreme right political foot soldiers who attacked our police officers on January 6th, 2021, attacked the Congres, attacked the vice president. That’s the outside version, but ICE is acting like a paramilitary secret police force reporting to the president of the United States and they have killed American citizens like Renee Goode and Alex Pretty. And just like we know dozens of people have died in ICE detention. So that is not a decent sane civilized immigration policy. We’ve got to make it a lot harder for people to get into the country illegally, but a lot easier for people to get into the country legally and we cannot use the immigration crisis the Republicans have created as the excuse for them to set up a paramilitary police force inside our government.

Stephen Janis:

So from the Epstein perspective, Estee files, you’ve been intimately involved in that. What do you think we haven’t seen yet? What do you think could be coming? We had that crucial testimony coming on Tuesday before the oversight committee. What do you think we haven’t seen or what’s to come?

Rep. Jamie Raskin:

Well, we need further legislation to strengthen the Epstein-Files Transparency Act. We need legislation that is going to actually make them turn over the documents and to stop hiding them. We have to keep passing laws to try to get them to comply with the law. It is difficult, but we’ve got to keep this very much in the forefront of people’s consciousness. There’s a culture to authoritarianism. There’s a politics to it, but there’s a culture to it. And the culture to it is all about authoritarian misogyny and sexual violence and sexual harassment and sexual assault. And this administration has been doing everything in their power to dismantle the infrastructure that we have to try to support victims of sexual violence and victims of sexual assault and sexual harassment. So the Epstein case is critical for us to keep moving forward on exposing this culture and then standing by the victims and the survivors of sexual violence and sexual assault.

Stephen Janis:

And do you think there’s something in the other three million files that is going to be important for the public to see and do you think there’ll be evidence there they’re hiding right now?

Rep. Jamie Raskin:

Absolutely. They were supposed to turn over six million files. They’ve withheld three million. There are completely scandalous and outrageous things we’re finding in the three million. They did turn over, but the files that they haven’t turned over undoubtedly contain more information that will implicate this administration and lots of names that we know in truly shameful and scandalous actions. But we’ve got to make sure that the victims are heard and the victims and the survivors have been critical in moving this process along. That’s a model, by the way, for every sector of public life. We’ve got to hear from the people who are being hurt, the millions of people being hurt by being thrown off of Medicaid or being thrown off of the Affordable Care Act, tax credits. We’ve got to hear from the people in the media about the crackdown like at ABC with Jimmy Kimmel.

People have got to speak up. The victims and the targets of government oppression have got to strike the first blow against this onslaught.

Stephen Janis:

Last question. Grand Planner, did you endorse him? Are you going to endorse him? And if so, why do you think people are … A lot of progressives, the Democrats get skittish about progressives you have not been. How do you feel about Grand Platner now? What are your thoughts?

Rep. Jamie Raskin:

Well, I’ve not made formal endorsements there. I would say I think that Graham Platner’s politics are right for this time. They are a working class centered politics of progressive change. That’s what we need. He has spoken about how damaging his time was psychologically and emotionally, and he came back a damaged person and damaged people, damage other people. And so there have been problems with that. But having said that, this is really a question for the people of Maine. Has Graham been able to show people that he’s been able to learn from the experiences that he’s had and the transgressions that he’s committed? And that’s what we can demand of him. That’s what we can expect from him. I mean, he said he’s interested in transformational politics and that means not just for society but for each person and he is pledging to continue that process of transformation for himself.

So the people of Maine have got, luckily they’ve got a small state. They can go out and talk to him and he’s been nothing if not open to taking questions and he’s at, I think, like 80 town hall meetings. And so I hope that he continues on that journey and the people of Maine reached the right solution for the rest of the country because it’s a critical race.

Stephen Janis:

Have you ruled out endorsing him or would you consider endorsing him in the future?

Rep. Jamie Raskin:

So I don’t know that I’ve been specifically asked to endorse him and I would not rule it out. If he’s our Democratic nominee, I’m certain I will endorse him and do everything in my power to get him elected. But at this point, I think there are elections coming up in a week or two. The people are working it out and I’m following it closely and I really wish the best for everybody involved in this situation.

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