GRIEVING LAWMAKER LEADS IMPEACHMENT EFFORT IN U.S. HOUSE
Congressman buried son one day before riot at U.S. Capitol
Rep. Jamie Raskin’s 25year-old son, Tommy, killed himself on New Year’s Eve and was buried the following Tuesday. A day later, a violent mob launched a deadly insurrection at the U.S. Capitol that forced the Maryland Democrat and his colleagues to evacuate.
Now Raskin, a former constitutional law professor, is leading the effort to remove President Donald Trump from office for inciting the riot.
He authored a House resolution that called on Vice President Mike Pence to invoke the 25th Amendment and declare Trump unable to complete his term, which expires next week. Pence ruled out doing that Tuesday night. That left the chamber quickly moving to articles of impeachment, which Raskin also helped draft.
“That is the groundwork for fascism, when you add racism, anti-Semitism, conspiracy theory and magical thinking. That is an absolute powder keg in terms of an assault on democracy,” Raskin said of the riot in an interview. “So we have to be very tough, and very strong right now in defending the Constitution and democracy.”
With the collision of his personal tragedy and a national trauma, Raskin is emerging as a unique figure in a polarized Congress. He drew extended applause from his colleagues on the House floor last week just before the insurrection began. And even as many Republicans fought the Democratic effort to remove Trump, Raskin was praised by the GOP for continuing his work during such a challenging moment.
“I wanted to tell Mr.
Raskin how much we grieve with him for his loss and how much we admire him for continuing to perform his duties under unimaginably difficult circumstances,” Oklahoma GOP Rep. Tom Cole said Tuesday, during a House Rules Committee hearing.
In the midst of grief, Raskin is bringing a certain clarity in outlining societal ills that led to the Capitol being overrun. Speaker Nancy Pelosi named him lead manager of the House team that will present testimony during Trump’s impeachment trial in the Senate, similar to the role Raskin played when the president was impeached in 2019 and ultimately acquitted last year.
Many of the rioters storming the Capitol, Raskin said, were used to a world in which White people were “a comfortable, commanding majority in this country.” They were unsettled by Barack Obama becoming the nation’s first African-American president, he added, and now “have a full blown, independent reality, totally cut apart from the world of facts.”
In a moving online tribute last week, Raskin, and his wife, former Obama administration treasury official Sarah Bloom Raskin, wrote of their son’s affinity for playing jazz piano, writing and performing one-act plays and “teaching our dogs foreign languages.” But they also noted that he “began to be tortured later in his 20s by a blindingly painful and merciless” depression.
“Despite very fine doctors and a loving family and friendship network of hundreds who adored him beyond words and whom he adored too, the pain became overwhelming and unyielding and unbearable,” they wrote.