Transcripts For CSPAN Virginia Bar Assn. Discussion On Janua

CSPAN Virginia Bar Assn. Discussion On January 6 Committees Work July 26, 2022

Much, steve. [applause] thank you so much. I want to thank steve bush, Paul Atkinson for their exceptional work and also Richard Collin for putting this together. The events of january 6 are seared in our memories. I use that verb appropriately. The only connection, the only other example i can think of is 9 11. I think probably because in each instance we actually saw it in real time, almost as if we were there. But we have to get past those images and have to ask ourselves why did it occur, who or what is responsible, and perhaps most importantly for our discussion today, how do we prevent it from happening again . That is why this panel and these four individuals are so extraordinary, and particularly so we can heal the hear them altogether. We will spend the better part of an hour with each one of them giving us their thoughts and perhaps i will have a followup question or two. Then we will do the audience questions. At the end of this 90 minute period i expect we will know more than we already do about these critically important events. So, our panel is extraordinary. Most of us, if not all of us have seen congress when raskin on television congressman raskin on television. If you concluded he is area diet and scholarly, you would be correct. He is a magna cum laude graduate of harvard college, phi beta kappa. Also magna cum laude from Harvard Law School where he was noted are of the harvard law review. For 25 years he was a professor of constitutional law at american universitys Washington College of law. We will hear from tim hauthee, chief investigative counsel to the select committee. For those of you who hold this in great honor, hes a double who. [applause] those of us at Thomas Jeffersons other university salute you. He also interestingly enough work for senator joe biden after he graduated. He has been a partner at both Mcguire Woods and hutton williams, now hutton andrews. We will hear from judge mike alluded, perhaps the most famous tweeter with maybe one exception. , although i like like like your tweets better. I would encourage you to look at them. They are momentous. Perhaps changed American History. At 9 53 a. M. On january 5, he spoke by twitter with the Vice President to indicate to the Vice President why there was only one correct constitutional course of action. Betsy woodruffs one is only 10 years out of her college. She has worked for National Review as the William F Buckley fellow. She went to the washington examiner, slate, the daily beast, and is now a respected reporter at politico. She is also a contributing to msnbc. She has appeared on cnn, fox news, and msnbc. I am nominating her to be a Diplomatic Correspondent after this panel. We will begin with congressman raskin. Before i do that, we had initially expected to have one other contributor to this panel, congressman morgan griffith. Due to unforeseen circumstances he cannot be with us today. He had intended to talk with us about the letter he and 36 other congressmen road prior to january 6 explaining why they would vote against the acceptance of ballots from four states. I think its important to note after january 6 had occurred, he went to the inauguration out of respect for both the president , President Biden and the president cy. On february 11, he wrote a letter to his constituents after hearing from 4000 of them in southwest virginia. That full letter is in your materials. I want to quote from it. The counting of the electoral votes in congress ended the constitutional process of the 2020 president ial election. As expected, resulted in a victory for joe biden. This election was not the first president ial election with controversy, nor will it be the last. No matter whom you supported in november or what you think about the process, joe biden is our president now and deserves our respect. It is time to move forward. Those of the words of congressman griffith. Today is we move forward i will ask congressman raskin, sir, you are the foremost expert on january 6 in Congress Based upon your four Different Committee assignments, but also because of the leading role you had played, including in the impeachment. You are also, and i say this with full confidence, the foremost constitutional expert of the 535 numbers of congress. Share with us your thoughts. We may have you take it away from there. Rep. Raskin whenever somebody calls me the foremost expert in congress, i hear them damning me with faint praise. Thank you for the introduction and thank you for having me. For these opening remarks, should i stay here . Justice mims probably stay there. Rep. Raskin that tells me you maybe wanted to be shorter than anticipated being. Eight or nine minutes . Justice mims absolutely. Rep. Raskin i just dont want them to be surprised when i launch into a little discourse here. Justice mims about 50 minutes like a commonlaw class. Rep. Raskin thank you so much, justice mims for inviting me, and thinking to richard cullen. Thank you all to com for coming and inviting a maryland or to cross the potomac ocean to join the virginia bar in this important discussion today. I was thinking on my way here about thomas jefferson, as you always have to do when you enter virginia. I heard a story about him when he was ambassador plenipotentiary to france. Whenever he would toast the people of france, reportedly he would say that everybody on earth who loves freedom has two countries, his or her own in france. I was thinking coming over here that every american who loves the constitution has two states his or her own in virginia. Our constitution was written here by madison and jefferson and george mason and george washington. I dont think there are any other state second quite vye with a cast of founders you sent into battle. I guess new york had hamilton and timothy pickering. Massachusetts had the ad amss and ben franklin he ran away from the puritans in massachusetts. Nothing really comes close in terms of what madison and jefferson gave us. Especially madison with the First Amendment and the idea of separating church and state, the great radical breakthrough of the american constitution. For centuries human beings had lived with theocracy and holy crusades and inquisitions and witchcraft trials and all that. It was a virginians who insisted that everybody be allowed to worship exactly as he or she pleased. The question of faith. Between up person and god the question of faith was between a person and god. It has to do with reason and facts and data and not superstition and conspiracy theories and, you know, someone. So on. Leah will be dead of gratitude to the virginians we owe a debt of gratitude to the virginians. The history of your state is important to the fate of our i i wanted to start by telling a little story because what is a convention without an Oliver Wendell holmes story. The story about Justice Holmes is that he was a famously absent minded guy, and he got on a train at Union Station in d. C. , and headed north and he couldnt find it ticket you had been and he had been looking for his ticket, and he was very upset, and he was looking at a seat and looking at the seat pocket and his jacket and everything. His conduct the conductor said we recognize you. Dont worry about it. But he kept looking for the ticket and he was looking hundred seats, and the conductor said, you dont have to worry about it. We know you have a ticket. You are good for it. Justice holmes said it isnt wheres my ticket, it is where are we going . That is the question for us. Where we going. Were still in the middle of our hearings in the middle of the work of our community committee. In a historical sense, it was not that far away from where we are, so maybe it is too early to say, but i wanted to offer just three thoughts that might provide some clues about where we are going or where i think we ought to be going. I would state them as obvious truths. Others might see them as political provocations, in the nation of my business. I thought i would offer these from a constitutional perspective to help frame our thinking about where we are going. So, i start with what i think clear to everybody watching. By show of hands, how many have been watching the hearings . Good. How many are boycotting the hearings . We have one over there. You dont know what youre missing. I think the hearings tell a story of a violent insurrection, in aid of an attempted political coup. A coup is an odd word to use because we dont have a lot of experience with them, and we think of that is something in the military against a civilian power, but the political scientists have identified a different kind of coup. A self coup. A leader decides to go out against the Constitutional Order in order to perpetuate his stay in office. That is an exact description of what took place here. I want to make one point about the original constitution. How it conceived of insurrections. I want to make a point about the spirit of the evolving constitution. It has changed since the original constitution. Then i want to make one final point about the necessity of what i call constitutional patriotism. My first point is an answer to two kinds of things i have heard from my fellow countrymen, and also from colleagues. We heard the cry of 1776. This is our house. We are the people. We are taking it back. The president invited us to be here. This belongs to us. So on. All in the course of attacking and assaulting our Police Officers, and more than ended up with broken arms, fingers, legs, toes, concussions and traumatic brain injuries. Part attacks part attacks, strokes, broken neck, and several of them died and took their lives in the days that followed. This is an attempt to respond to my colleagues who continue to argue that there is something with the Second Amendment. It gives people the right of violent insurrection. Armed insurrection against the government. So, the first point is, it states in obvious constitutional truth. There is no equivocation to the gravity and danger of what happened on january 6 did our constitution rejects insurrection at every turn. It considers insurrection the very opposite of republican government. It considers insurrection a threat and a danger to government by the people. It considers it a replacement of the deliberated will of the people through elections, and through governmental deliberation and discussion. It is a replacement of the will of the people by the violent will of some small fraction of the people. Second, i invoked hamilton. He warned of a politician who knows how to stir up the negative emotions of the mob to destroy our political institutions. Hamilton said they begin as demagogues, but they end as tyrants. They devour the freedoms and liberties of the people. These sentiments and that analysis were inscribed in the constitution. Madison, who recoiled from and rejected the violent fury of shays rebellion insisted on protecting states with a federal guarantee against internal violence and this became the genesis of the republican guarantee clause in the constitution which says that the United States shall guarantee to every state a republican form of government and protect each of them against invasion and on application of legislature or the executive, against Domestic Violence. There are multiple other places in the constitution where the founders reject violent insurrection. Such as in clause one. It defines treason as leveraging levying war against the United States. What is a violent insurrection . It is levying war against the country. Article one and 12 and 13 authorize congress to create a Standing Army and section 15 gives congress specific power to call forth a militia to execute the laws of the union, suppress insurrections, and repel invasions. When bands of dangerous extremist show up show up in the federal city, as a collection of melissa, and say they have the true sovereign power, and they speak to the people, they are expressing a purely anticonstitutional ideology and sentiment because our constitution contemplates that congress can call forth a real militia, those that are well organized, by the states, to put down and suppress insurrection. Our constitution does not support violet extremist violent extremists insurrection. By the way, all 50 states make private armed melissas illegal and criminal organizations. Congress should do the same. Indeed, the constitution recognizes only the official , and reserves the states, respectively, the appointment of officers in the authority of training militia, according to a discipline from congress. States are not going to appoint officers to overthrow their own governments, nor will congress prescribed organizing of the militias in a way to incite those militias to attack our government. When i point these features of the constitutions out to my colleagues, those who are still in the proinsurrectionist camp will try to rescue the insurrectionist and a couple ways. They will quote the virginian Patrick Henry. I have a friend who would go to that college. They quote him in a number of things he does say, along with an insurrection line, but they conveniently ignore the fact that he was an antifederalist who imposed oppose the constitution and the Second Amendment because he thought it gave too much power to the government and took away the power of the people to overthrow any arrangements they didnt like. Then they turned, and this is the heart of their argument, and they argue that there has to be a right of insurrection in the constitution. The American Revolution itself is an attack on unjust tyranny, so if the founders engaged in revolution, then the constitution must incorporate a right. This confuses a constitutional right to insurrection which does not exist with a natural law or right of revolution. To throw off a tyrannical regime. The founders clearly thought it does exist. Certainly, jefferson thought that in the direct in the declaration of independence. They exercise that right after a long train of abuses and earth to patients by the crown and by parliament. They set forth justification in a very elaborate litany of abuses and grievances against the crown in an appeal to the world. Out of a decent respect for the opinions of mankind. But, they thought the idea absurd that you would appeal to the authority of the crown, to rebel against the crown or the authority of parliament to rebel against parliament. It would be ridiculous to appeal to the authority of the constitution to overthrow the constitution. As pointed out in the great book a necessary evil, Abraham Lincoln teased out the distinction between the natural right of revolution which exists outside of the government, and the claim that there is a constitutional right of insurrection. Lincoln said, in his first inaugural address, whenever people grow weary of existing government, they can exercise the right of amending it, or the new revolutionary right to their natural revolutionary right to overthrow it. But the revolutionary right cannot be a constitutional right. As lincoln put it, it is safe to assert that no proper ever had a provision to destroy itself, except by some action not provided in the instrument itself. That should be obvious to everyone. Theres not even a constitutional right to nonviolent civil disobedience. When dr. King and my former colleague john lewis, a late beloved colleague, when they went to protest, manifestly unjust unequal arrangements deemed unconstitutional, they still submitted to arrest, nonviolently. They submitted to the Lawful Authority of government to put them in jail. They had the courage of their convictions and they went to jail. But if the constitution doesnt give you that right, when you have justice on your side it doesnt give you the right to nonviolent disobedience when you dont have justice on your site and you dont have a legitimate point. The second point i want to make is some people say we have asserted, republicans and democrats on our panel, that we are engaged in the work of defending democracy. Democratic institutions. But we are not a democracy. We are republic. I suppose we could say in a strict semantic sense we are a democratic republic we are a representative government, with representative institutions. But there is more than a semantic difference going on here because i believe that you can read and you should read the constitution with all of the amendments, and the chronicle of the progressive democratization, and inclusion of the people of the country, in the original handiwork of the founders. We did not begin anything like lincolns vision of government of the people by the people. We were a slave republic when it started, with white male Property Owners over the age of 21, but through the social and political and constitutional structures, we have come closer to approximating lincolns ideals. We have built a more perfect union. The 13 amendment abolished slavery. The 14th amendment gave us to process. The 15th amendment forbade race discrimination. The 17th amendment shifted the mode from the state legislatures to the people. The 19th amendment doubled the size of the electric, and it gave women the right to vote a century ago. The 23rd amendment gave our friends in washington dc the right to participate in president ial elections. The 24th amendment abolished taxes, and it lowered the age of voting to 18. You see what is happening. Democracy is expanding. More and more people get to become part of it. Tocqueville said that in america, he wrote democracy and Voting Rights are always either contrasting constricting, or they are growing. They are expanding. We have been in a contractionary mode. There is voter suppression. Gerrymandering of our federal and state legislative districts. It serves the will of the people. With the filibuster. It is not in the constitution. It is not in federal law. It is a rule already with more than 100 exceptions. They continues to be a blockade against popular legislation on e

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