MSNBC "All In with Chris Hayes" - Transcript: Interview with Jamie Raskin

Interview

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HAYES: One of those members of Congress seeking records in the White House is Congressman Jamie Raskin. He`s the Democrat from Maryland who serves on the January 6th Select Committee, also the lead House Manager for the second impeachment of Donald Trump. And he joins me now.

Congressman, let`s first start on this -- on the statement by Psaki today in the executive privilege question. Dan Goldman on the program last night and he was -- we were gaming this out a little bit. The the ex-president says he`s going to invoke it. The current president says he will not. What does that add up to constitutionally and then practically for your committee?

RASKIN: Well, when the former president says he`s going to invoke executive privilege, it`s got to make you laugh because he doesn`t have an executive privilege because he`s a former president. I know he thinks he`s the president but he`s not. It`s up to the current president. And if you read the Supreme Court`s decision in U.S. versus Nixon back in 1974, Justice Burger said basically what you`re balancing is the public`s overwhelming interest in the truth versus cases dealing with national security.

Here, you`ve got the public`s overwhelming interest in the truth and national security on the same side because the value of national security is invoked by conducting an investigation into the violent insurrection and attempted coup against the U.S. government.

HAYES: Explain why these four people.

RASKIN: Well, it`s not limited to these four people but, I mean, we could go one by one. I mean, Patel is an interesting case because it does look as if President Trump was trying to plant different people in different agencies in the last several weeks of the administration. And so, we`re very curious about that.

Mark Meadows was with President Trump on an hourly basis through the days leading up to the insurrection, so he knows a lot. Dan Scavino appears to have been integrally involved. And Steve Bannon predicted on January 5th publicly that all hell is going to break loose on January 6 and had other similarly apocalyptic pronouncements about what was going to take place.

So, all of them were clearly involved at least waist deep if not neck deep in insurrectionary planning activity. Everybody remembers Mark Meadows, of course, was at that insurrection tailgate party that they threw where everybody was eating hot dogs and sharing beverages that day.

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So, look, all of them should consider it not just a legal duty which it of course is, but a privilege and a patriotic honor to be able to render testimony to the people`s representatives in Congress as we try to determine what happened in the worst violent insurrection, in the worst attack on the Capitol of the United States since the war of 1812, since 1814.

HAYES: That connects to the block we just did and I imagine you probably saw the Robert Kagan piece today in the Washington Post in which she posits that we`re in the worst constitutional crisis since the civil war. I don`t know if I necessarily would go that far, but you know, there`s a lot of people who are profoundly alarmed. And there`s a through line between what happened and led to January 6 which was the fundamental attack on the legitimacy of the enterprise that continues now.

And I wonder what your level of alarm is as you watch the president about to go down to Georgia to campaign for the man primarily Brad Raffensperger who refused to deliver him the 11,000 votes you need to steal the election.

RASKIN: Well, they`re systematically trying to replace anybody who got in the way of their plans on January 6th and in the weeks leading up to January 6. So, Brad Raffensperger of course was the one who refused to just find Donald Trump 10,781 votes wouldn`t any politician like that present for the New Year.

So, yes, they weren`t trying to fear it out election fraud, they were trying to perpetrate election fraud. And now they`re getting rid of anybody who wouldn`t play ball with them. But look, what`s the basic problem? We`ve got one party now which is committed to democracy and the constitution. That`s the Democratic Party.

Now, you`ve got a political party which is operating outside of the constitutional order which is constantly attacking our electoral processes, our constitutional systems, our bill of rights. And so, I don`t know if we`re at the level of a constitutional crisis right now, but we`re in a severe political crisis because Donald Trump has basically hijacked the entire Republican Party and they`re busily trying to get rid of anybody who won`t kowtow to him like a religious cult leader.

HAYES: There was an interpretation of these subpoena issues that they were born of lessons of the past. And it was interesting to me that Kash Patel basically said, well, you didn`t do me the courtesy of asking for voluntary cooperation. And my read on that was extended period of negotiation or voluntary cooperation is precisely a tactic used in previous inquiries to essentially just delay and delay.

RASKIN: You know, you got it, Chris. I mean, they`re thinking that we`re the pre-Donald Trump Democratic Party. We`re the post-Donald Trump Democratic Party. We`re fighting for democracy right now. We`re fighting for the constitution. We understand every game and gimmick that the Republicans like to play. And we are not going to show them that kind of respect anymore.

No, we`re not going to give them weeks or months to play games and not turn stuff in. If we want something from them, they`re going to turn it over. We`re going to subpoena them, they`re going to follow the law. That`s it.

And if any of them think they`re going to be able to slither away from this, they should be wondering about the information we`ve already got within our possession in our committee.

HAYES: Wow. Congressman Jamie Raskin, thank you very much.

RASKIN: Thank you for having me, Chris.

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