States who does not plan to attend the inauguration and is now the record holder for impeachments after inciting that terrorist attack on capitol hill that led to multiple deaths and attempts to stop the peaceful transfer of power. This morning, incredible and terrifying new footage from the new yorker shot inside the siege where the insurrectionists make it very clear whom theyre listening to. Outnumbered, [ bleep ], there are a million of us out there and were listening to trump, your boss. Quote, we are listening to trump. This impeachment was the most bipartisan in American History but it remains unclear how the senate trial will work and whether republicans will vote to convict and put an end to his political career which is already, of course, in utter disgrace. We have four significant interviews for you this morning including the president elects incoming chief of staff, President Trumps former National Security adviser and the second highest ranking democrat in the senate, but were going to start with the man who is leading the effort to remove President Trump while also dealing with personal tragedy. Lead impeachment manager democratic congressman jamie raskin of maryland. Congressman, thanks so much for joining us during this time that is tumultuous in so many ways. Lets start with impeachment. The point of impeachment and conviction in the senates, of course, is to remove a president from office, but hes not going to be president anymore after wednesday at noon. So why even go through with the senate trial . Well, the constitution talks about conviction, removal and disqualifications from holding further public office. I dont think anybody would seriously argue that we should establish a precedent where every president on the way out the door has two weeks or three weeks or four weeks to try to incite an armed insurrection against the union or organize a coup against the union and if it succeeds, he becomes a dictator and if it fails, hes not subject to impeachment or conviction because we want to let bygones by bygones. This was the most serious president ial crime in the history of the United States of america. The most dangerous crime by a president ever committed against the United States, and there are republicans who are recognizing it as well as democrats. I want to single out my colleague liz cheney who i think perfectly synthesized our situation, jake. She said that donald trump summoned the mob, assembled the mob, he lit the match that led to the violent insurrection. None of it would have happened without him. Everything is due to his actions and this was the most sweeping betrayal, the most terrible betrayal of a president ial oath in office in the history of the United States. Liz cheney, the number three House Republican, very conservative republican from wyoming. And shes the elected chair of the House Republican yes, although shes now under fire by a lot of House Republicans. You say the president poses a clear danger to the nation. So if thats true, why has the article of impeachment not been delivered to the senate and when do you plan to do so . Well, the senate has not been in session and so the speaker is organizing the formal transfer of the articles and it should be coming up soon. I know the speaker also considers the president a clear and present danger to the republic. So when do you think it will be delivered to the senate . You know, i dont know. I havent spoken to the speaker today about this. Look, i know that everybody wants to focus on trial tactics and strategy and so on. I want people to focus on the solemnity and gravity of these events. Five americans are dead because a violent mob was encouraged, exhorted and incited by the president of the United States of america, which broke into the congress of the United States, into the capitol, and came within a hairs breath of hanging Vice President pence. I mean, the words are still ringing in the ears of the members, hang mike pence, hang mike pence. They built a gallows outside the capitol of the United States. There was an Assassination Party hunting for nancy pelosi. So this cannot be at the level of normal partisan push and pull and just kind of throwing rhetorical bricks back and forth. This was an attack on our country. No, i dont disagree. I dont want to, you know, i know you want to focus on that, but there are tactical questions i do have to ask. Of course. Just in terms of how this is going to work. For instance, Senate Majority leader Mitch Mcconnell noted that the last impeachment trial took 21 days. Do you think thats about how long this one will take . Well, every prosecutor in this case on my team and ive got an Extraordinary Team of prosecutors anyone who ends up defending the president , every senator who is a juror in this case is also a witness to these events. We were all witnesses. Indeed, we were victims to this event. The senate parliamentarian, Elizabeth Mcdonagh had to flee her office. And thank god she brought the mahogany box with her that contained the Electoral College votes. You say you dont need to call witnesses because they all saw it . No. Im not going to get into trial strategy. I guess what im saying is if you invade a Police Headquarters and ransack and rampage the place and you kill officers and people working in the Police Headquarters, you dont need a sixmonth investigation to determine what happened. The impeachment is an indictment. These are the charging articles and were going to conduct the trial in the senate according to the rules that the senate provides for it. Its not up to the house. It is up to the senate to define all of those rules. I trust that all 100 senators will live up to their constitutional oath of office, as senators, but also live up to their oath of office as jurors. Big difference this time as opposed to the impeachment last year, which is this time democrats will control the senate because democrats won the last two senate seats in georgia. So i guess the question is witnesses were not allowed last time because the republicans voted against it with a couple exceptions. Will you want witnesses this time and if so, who would you want . Would you want Capitol Hill Police officers . You see a lot of lawyers representing the insurrectionists, the terrorists, are now putting owl legal documents saying these people were following the president s orders, et cetera. Will you have witnesses . Ive got extraordinary former prosecutors on my team. Stacy plaskett, ted lieu, incredible lawyers. Joe nagoose, you know, madeleine dean, the very finest. And were putting together a trial plan which is designed to get the truth of all of these events out. Now, obviously, were not going to be able to tell everyones story, but were going to be able to tell the story of this attack on america and all of the events that led up to it. This president set out to dismantle and overturn the Election Results from the 2020 president ial election. He was perfectly clear about that. He described it as a fraud, a scam. He said it was a stolen election, and he continued to exhort his followers to do everything in thinks power to overturn the election result. Its interesting you say that. I was going to ask you, obviously, President Trump had been setting the stage for this for months, even before the election, with these lies. The big lie. The big lie. That the election was stolen and fraudulent. An article of impeachment mainly focuses on the january 6th incitement. The speech that the president gave. It gives a glancing acknowledgement that it wasnt the first time he said it, but it focuses on january 6th. Given the fact we know some of this was planned, were getting an indication from Law Enforcement some of the people were not incited that morning, they were incited in previous weeks and months. Does that affect your case . Well, of course the fact that it was deliberated, planned and premeditated underscores the leadership and complicity in donald trump in all of these events. He was out propagandizing his followers as you said for months. First to prepare him that his loss would have to be a fraud, theres no way otherwise he could have lost. Then to attack the Election Results. Some of that took place in utterly freakishly absurd ways like 61 lawsuits, all of which were thrown out and rejected and repudiated by judges. A lot of them trumpappointed judges. But the then it turned to right. Egging on a mob. Right. As liz cheney put it, assembling the mob, convoking the mob, inciting the mob. All of it will be part of the trial. The entire stream of events leading up to this attack on the capitol. Understand, january 6th is not a random date. It wasnt like the president said maybe well do it november 11th or maybe ill call everybody to town december 2nd. Maybe ill tell them it will be wild december 9th or tell the proud boys to stand back and stand by for january 14th. No. January 6th is the day set in the electoral count act in coordination with the 12th amendment of the constitution for congress to meet in bipartisan session and bicameral session all of the members there together to count the Electoral College votes. And this is supposed to be a ministerial proforma kind of action where we count the electoral votes sent in by the states. We know the president brought enormous pressure to bear on Vice President pence to step out of his constitutional oath and outside of his constitutional role simply to reject the results that President Trump didnt like. Yeah. And Vice President pence refused to do it which is why there was a mob that came within seconds of catching him yelling, hang mike pence and then it turned to exhorting the mob, saying go and fight like hell or youre going to lose your country. Yeah, no, i hear you. So its all of it. I want to turn now to a different subject because i think its a lot of people watching how remarkable it is that you have the energy to do what youre doing given the fact youre dealing with a family tragedy. You lost your son, 25yearold tommy, to depression. You wrote a very moving reflection on his, quote, perfect heart, a perfect soul, outrageous sense of humor and dazzlingly radiant mind. My wife, sarah, and i wrote this together. Tell us more about tommy. Well, tommy was a remarkable person. He had overwhelming love for humanity and for our country in his heart and really for all the people of the world. We lost him on the very last day of that godawful year, 2020, and he left us a note which said, please forgive me, my illness won today. Look after each other, the animals and the global poor for me, all my love, tommy. And that was the last act in a life that dazzled anybody who came into contact with tommy. He was a slam poet who wrote these magnificent 20, 30minute poems which he, of course, knew by heart and he would get up and perform them. He was absolutely devoted to human rights for every person. He was devoted to Animal Rights and welfare. He was a passionate vegan and convinced a lot of people to stop eating animals just through the force of his poetry. He was a secondyear student at Harvard Law School. Beautiful kid. When we lost him, he had not only beloved friends at Harvard Law School but he was teaching, of course, with Michael Sandell justice as a teaching fellow, so he had students of his own and graded all of his papers and exams and wrote many pages analyzing the work of the students and writing back to them, and he made donations in each of their names to different charitable groups that he thought would be consistent with the values of the student and some of them went to give directly. Or to oxfam or so on. And i asked him why he did that and he quoted something that father barrigan had said about the great dorothy day. He said, well, like father barrigan said about dorothy day, she lived as though the truth were true. And he said, i want to show them that the truth is true and we can live that way. So, you know, people are asking me why i decided to do this, first of all, i dont know if youve ever tried to say no to Speaker Pelosi about anything, but shes actually been very sensitive and thoughtful, but she wanted me to do it because she knows ive devoted my life to the constitution and republic. Im a professor of constitutional law, but i did it really with my son in my heart and helping lead the way. I feel him in my chest. When we went to count the Electoral College votes and it came under that ludicrous attack, i felt my son with me and i was most concerned with our youngest daughter and my soninlaw who is married to our other daughter who were with me that day who got caught in a room off the house floor in between them and me was a rampaging armed mob that could have killed them easily and was banging on the doors where they were hiding under a desk with my chief of staff julie tagan. These events are personal to me, jake. There was an attack on our country. There was an attack on our people. There are thousands of people that work on capitol hill, not just members but Staff Members and Capitol Hill Police officers pushed and shoved and punched in the face, pummeled and hit over the head with fire extinguishers and the president of the United States did nothing to stop it for more than two hours as members of congress were calling him and begging him to do something and he continued to watch it on tv. And to enjoy their, you know, insurrection Tailgate Party where they were celebrating the attack on our democracy. This president has been impeached already twice, and we just want the senate to conduct a serious trial where every member of the senate lives up to his or her constitutional oath to render impartial judgment as a juror. Congressman, i mean, i cant even begin to express my condolences for what you and your wife and your daughters and family are dealing with. I cant also imagine having that trauma compounded with this other trauma. You just lost your son and now youre in congress worrying about your daughter and your other daughters husband because of these terrorists who had attacked the congress. That trauma on top of trauma just seems so debilitating. Well, i, you know, im not going to lose my son at the end of 2020 and lose my country and my republic in 2021. Its not going to happen. And the vast majority of American People, democrats, republicans, independents, reject armed insurrection and violence as a new way of doing business in america. Were not going to do that. This was the most terrible crime ever by a president of the United States against our country, and i want everybody to feel the gravity and the solemnity of those events, at the same time, of course, that all of us are deeply invested in president elect biden and Vice President elect harris moving the country forward to repair all of the wreckage and the damage of last year on everything from covid19 to the economy, but i was thinking on the way over this morning, jake, about the preamble to the constitution. We the people in order to form a more Perfect Union establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense and promote the general welfare and preserve to ourselves and our posterity the blessings of liberty, do hereby ordain and establish. We have to do all of those things at the same time. We have to establish justice, we have to ensure domestic tr tranquility at the same time were promoting the general welfare. This is america. The people are to up to it, and we got a new administration coming to town that is ready to lead america back on the road of progress. As somebody who watched your son deal with this disease of depression yes. I have to also note that so Many Americans right now have been struggling with Mental Health during this pandemic and then, frankly, during this time of insurrection. During this time where it seems like millions of americans, because they have been lied to over and over by the president and his allies in congress and the media, believe this big lie. One in four according to the cdc, one in four americans under the age of 25 have seriously considered taking their own lives in the last 30 days according to the cdc. One in four. What is your message to people who are dealing with this horrible disease or to the loved ones they have, as a dad who watched your beloved tommy struggle with this disease. Well, we dont want to lose anybody else. We have been hearing from thousands and thousands of people across the country and if any of them are out there, thank you for your kindness to our family and we will somehow get a chance to reply to everyone, but your messages, your heartfelt messages, come as a comfort and solace to us. And we know how many millions of people have struggled with depression, how many millions of families have dealt with it, and there are obviously complicated neurochemical and psychological causes to that and we want to make sure were investing the resources of the country to deal with it so one day there will be a year where nobody loses their life because of depression and other forms of emotional and mental illness. But on a personal note, if you could speak to the people out there who are struggling or who have loved on