The back-and-forth soon escalated into a full-blown shouting match.
"While some of my colleagues may not want to hear the truth, the same outrage you feel about Renee Good and Alex Pretti —," Lawler said, as he was asked to end his statement.
"I do feel that outrage," Raskin said.
"You do not!" Lawler yelled back.
"Do you feel the outrage about Alex Pretti and Renee Good?" Raskin yelled back at Lawler.
"You should be ashamed of yourself!" Lawler said, calling the Democrat "a disgrace."
"You don't belong in this committee; you should get the hell out of here!" Raskin yelled back, pointing at the GOP lawmaker.
"You don't understand the rules of the committee, you don't understand the Constitution, you're full of it. You're absolutely full of it. Say one word about Alex Pretti and Renee Good," Raskin demanded.
Former CNN broadcaster Jim Acosta warned that President Donald Trump could be considered a "vandal" accused of damaging federal property — just as the president has threatened to others over the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.
Acosta spoke with Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) about the president's threat to arrest and charge anyone who damaged the remodeled monument during an episode of "The Jim Acosta Show" on Wednesday. He suggested Trump could be facing questions over vandalism.
"The Trump administration is talking about how destroying federal property is a crime, and it's true," Acosta said. "There is a law that says you can't destroy federal property. And I think if it's over $1,000 or something like that, it becomes potentially a felony and you could go to prison for 10 years."
Raskin responded to the comment.
"And we want restitution for that," Raskin explained. "We want the felon vandal who destroyed government property to pay for it. So that's hundreds of millions of dollars of damage that Trump did unilaterally, lawlessly, with no permit at all — bulldozing the White House. And now he's asking for a billion dollars from us to build his gold ballroom, for which Congress never appropriated any money. We didn't legislate that. And it's Congress that decides on the disposition of federal property."
Should Trump Be Charged with Vandalism in DC? With Rep. Jamie Raskin and Ty Cobb by Jim Acosta
Plus Jim asks why Republican senators only challenge Trump after losing an election?
The officials running Epstein accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell's prison dodge questioning from visiting congressional staff, according to reporting by Politico.
Maxwell transferred from a prison in Florida to the minimum-security Federal Prison Camp in Bryan, Texas. Politico noted that Democrats have wondered whether her transfer to a "cushier" facility was part of a deal to keep her quiet about Trump's ties to Jeffrey Epstein.
Whistleblowers have alleged that officials running the Texas prison have gone out of their way to make Maxwell's life easier behind bars, and staff for the House Oversight and Judiciary Committees paid a visit to the facility on Tuesday to find out.
Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) and Rep. Robert Garcia (D-CA), the ranking members of the two committees, said in a statement that their staff was there for "answers about Ms. Maxwell's unprecedented transfer and VIP treatment," Politico reported.
However, during the three-hour visit, congressional staff weren't able to gather much from the warden or facility staff. The warden argued that Maxwell wasn't really given special treatment, according to Politico.
"The lawmakers added that they received little in the way of new details," Politico reported, adding that those lawmakers "doubted the truthfulness of the information that they did receive."
"Bureau of Prisons leadership repeatedly shut down our lines of questioning or could not provide basic information about our central concerns, including Ms. Maxwell's extraordinary treatment, allegations of sexual assault at the facility, and retaliation against inmates who tried to blow the whistle," Raskin and Garcia said in their statement, per Politico.
Raskin and Garcia also promised to investigate Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche's "role in ensuring Ms. Maxwell remains comfortable and quiet."
The top-ranking Democrat in the House Judiciary Committee published a letter on Tuesday accusing Trump's Department of Justice of forcing the FBI to pay a "merry band of looters" and disgraced agents, including white nationalist allies and a Jan. 6 participant.
"It has come to our attention that you have used your office to improperly shower government cash on Donald Trump's political operatives and sycophants," Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) wrote in a letter to Acting U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche.
According to Raskin's seven-page letter, Blanche oversaw a DOJ office that ordered the FBI to "pay millions of dollars" to nearly a dozen "disgraced" agents accused of "criminal activity" and "major breaches of national security."
One such agent had their clearance suspended and then revoked because of "his presence within the restricted area of the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021," referring to the violent riots that infamous day.
"The agent provided false and misleading information to investigators," Raskin wrote. "Despite this damning evidence, DOJ Office of the Deputy Attorney General agreed to make a lump sum payment of $63,500 to him and backpay amounting to hundreds of thousands of additional dollars."
Special agent Steven Friend was similarly reinstated despite his illegally recording FBI conversations, downloading classified FBI documents, and participating in "unsanctioned media interviews with Russian state media outlets," Raskin wrote.
The DOJ Office of the Deputy Attorney General again ordered the FBI to pay Friend more than $61,000 and "give him hundreds of thousands of dollars in back pay."
The same DOJ office directed the FBI to reinstate an FBI agent who refused to investigate "a violent white nationalist group, Patriot Front," and procured prostitutes while on assignment.
Raskin pointed out in his letter that the DOJ official negotiating the payments to these disgraced agents is Vance Day, who is known for "hanging up a picture of Adolf Hitler in his chambers" and "refusing to marry same-sex couples as an Oregon state court judge."
He added that the senior-most current staffers for Senator Grassley "explicitly instructed DOJ to issue these payments." Raskin called Grassley and the DOJ Office of the Deputy Attorney General a "merry band of looters."
In a Tuesday article, Politico reached out to Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and his office framed the payments as whistleblower settlements.
"This seven-page screed is a disgusting and defamatory attempt to smear legitimate whistleblowers while protecting their Biden administration retaliators," Grassley's spokesperson Clare Slattery told Politico. "Senator Grassley stands by his efforts to defend and protect all whistleblowers."
Rep. Jamie Raskin laid out an ambitious agenda for Democratic reforms if the party regains control of Congress, describing the Trump administration's dismantling of DOJ functions as so extensive that restoring the department will require years of sustained effort.
Appearing on MS NOW, the Maryland Democrat and constitutional expert outlined the scale of what he characterized as institutional destruction. "We need a sweeping de-Trumpification of the Department of Justice. There are huge parts of the DOJ that have just been dismantled," Raskin said.
Raskin detailed specific capabilities the Justice Department has abandoned under Trump:
"When they started off, they said they're no longer going to enforce the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. They've stopped monitoring foreign subversion of American elections. In other words, they want to facilitate all of that," he explained, suggesting the administration has actively worked to enable foreign interference rather than prevent it.
He also highlighted the politicization of the pardon process. "The pardon office was dismantled so it could become a totally political operation run out of the White House and Donald Trump's brain and the political operatives," Raskin stated.
When asked whether Democrats should prioritize impeaching Trump if they retake the House, Raskin aligned with Democratic leadership in rejecting that approach as a distraction.
"Our problem isn't Trump anymore. Our problem is Trumpism and the whole MAGA domination of the government and the conversion of the government into an instrument of money making and profit taking for the corporations and the people who surround Donald Trump," Raskin said.
He acknowledged that while "almost daily impeachable offenses" are occurring, Democrats cannot waste political capital on impeachment when Republicans control Congress. "It doesn't make sense to talk about something right now that we couldn't accomplish, because obviously the Republicans control the house and the senate," he explained.
Raskin framed the Democratic mission as far more expansive than holding Trump personally accountable. "We need to deTrumpify this government and restore it as an instrument for the common good and for American constitutional democracy, rather than the private self enrichment of one guy and his family," he said.
Most strikingly, Raskin characterized the restoration work as generational in scope. "That's the work of a generation. That's not going to happen in three months or six months when we get the House, the Senate and the White House back," he said, tempering expectations about how quickly institutional damage can be repaired.
Raskin emphasized that Democrats are currently winning electoral battles in states like Virginia, New Jersey, California, and Texas, suggesting momentum exists for a broader reclamation effort. "We are in a mass movement to reclaim American government and to defend and rehabilitate our constitution against these people," he concluded.
WASHINGTON — Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) had a serious response on Thursday to reporting involving allegations of FBI Director Kash Patel's conduct and excessive drinking.
In an exclusive interview with Raw Story, the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee described what could come after midterms if Democrats take control of Congress.
"It's going to look pretty good from my vantage point because, you know, we've been trying to investigate so many of the corrupt schemes that we see taking place, and a lot of the incompetence that we see taking place and just the mismanagement," Raskin told Raw Story. "And it comes out this week in The Atlantic magazine that the director of the FBI is passing out drunk; people can't find him. We already knew that he was abusing a lot of the resources of office in terms of the jets and the airplanes. We know that he's been working to cover up the Epstein files. And now it turns out that there's this major drinking problem, which is why we sent him a letter saying he needs to come clean."
Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee this week called on 46-year-old Patel to take an alcohol-abuse test or testify under oath after The Atlantic published a deeply sourced report on his alleged excessive drinking. Raskin sent him a letter seeking a sworn statement statement authenticating the accuracy of his answers.
Patel has since filed a lawsuit following The Atlantic story, denying the accusations.
"He's suing The Atlantic magazine, but it's not just between him and a magazine," Raskin added. "It's between him and the whole country. And we need to know whether or not the director of the FBI has a serious drinking problem that's interfering with his ability to successfully execute the duties of his office."
A hearing with lawmakers and Attorney General Pam Bondi erupted into an explosive shouting match Wednesday.
Bondi was testifying before lawmakers at a House Judiciary Committee Hearing on Capitol Hill when the tensions heightened, as she started shouting insults, name-calling and interrupting congressional members asking her questions under oath. Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) pushed Bondi to respond to the Department of Justice's investigation of late convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and argued that the she and the DOJ had not apologized or acknowledged the survivors whose personal information was unredacted.
"Your'e obsessed with Donald Trump. You have Trump derangement syndrome," Bondi claimed.
Raskin pushed back on Bondi's statement and focused again on Epstein survivors and brought up that Bondi was avoiding responding to lawmakers' questions and not adhering to committee rules.
"I want the whole country to look at this, because this is the attorney general of the United States whose job is law enforcement," Raskin said. "We've never had a witness who has misunderstood our rules and been unable to conform his or her conduct to our rules before. We have only five minutes. And so we use our time to ask you specific questions."
"How long are you giving me to answer?" Bondi interrupted.
"Excuse me? I'm not yielding to you right now," Raskin said. "I'd like that second restored to. So, Miss Bondi, the way it works is we ask you a question and you answer it. And if you go off on a wild goose chase, another tangent. You start reading statistics or you start talking about stuff going on our district. And by the way, I invite you to my district, come to my district. But that's not what we're here to do today. OK. So and you do that, then we're allowed to say we reclaim our time. At that point, you have to be quiet. You have no choice. You have to be quiet."
Raskin demanded a joint task force to investigate the crimes against survivors of Epstein. That's when Bondi started discussing another topic and interrupting again.
Raskin responded to Bondi's remarks and directed his comments to chairman Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH).
"This is your committee, andshe is embarrassing you," Raskin said.
Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) Wednesday delivered a scathing opening statement and directly criticized Attorney General Pam Bondi, accusing her of deliberately blocking the investigation into late financier and convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Raskin, a ranking member, was one of several lawmakers questioning Bondi during a House Judiciary Committee Hearing on Capitol Hill. In a fiery speech, he demanded answers from Bondi about the Epstein files and investigation, and recent Department of Justice actions — reminding her that her clients are the American people — not President Donald Trump.
"But to promote justice for the people, you've got to listen to the victims like the women seated behind you today," Raskin said. "Those are just some of the hundreds of survivors of Jeffrey Epstein's global sex trafficking ring who are demanding that the truth be told and are demanding accountability for the abusers who trafficked and raped them you still haven't met with these survivors."
Raskin named several survivors and family members in the room and described his concern that Bondi and the DOJ have not met with them or taken interest to hear their stories. He accused her of standing on the wrong side of history.
"Now, you're not showing a lot of interest in the victims, madam attorney general, whether it's Epstein's human trafficking ring or the homicidal governmental violence against citizens in Minneapolis, as attorney general, you're siding with the perpetrators and you're ignoring the victims that will be your legacy unless you act quickly to change course," Raskin said.
"You're running a massive Epstein coverup right out of the Department of Justice," Raskin said. "You've been ordered by subpoena and by Congress to turn over 6 million documents, photographs and videos in the Epstein files but you've turned over only 3 million."
Raskin called Bondi out for redacting names of abusers, enablers and accomplices in the Epstein files and not redacting the names of survivors, which she was required to do by Congress.
"Someof the victims had come forwardpublicly, but many had not," Raskin said. "Manyhad kept their torment privateeven from family and friends.But you published their names,their identities their images onthousands of pages for the worldto see. So you ignored the law.And even with over 100,000employees at your disposal, youacted with some mixture ofstaggering incompetence coldindifference, and jaded crueltytowards more than 1,000 victimsraped abused and trafficked.This performance screams coverup."
He criticized the DOJ's move to move Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein's co-conspirator, to a Texas minimum security camp where she has "five start treatment, including catered meals, private gym time and access to a therapy puppy."
Raskin then described the ongoing attacks on protesters, the killings of two American citizens in Minneapolis under ICE and the DOJ's response.
"There's no sign of anymovement at the Department of Justice," Raskin said. "You even launched acriminal investigation into Renee Good's grieving widow. Howsick is that? But it's evenworse. You've turned thepeople's Department of Justiceinto Trump's instrument ofrevenge. Trump orders up prosecutions like pizza, and you deliver every time."
His last comment was a stark warning for Bondi.
"So we ask you politely but firmly, madam attorney general please do not waste one second of our precious time by evading questions, by changing the subject, or engaging in personal attacks against members of Congress. We saw your performance in the Senate, and we're not going to accept that this isn't a game," Raskin said. "The Senate you brought something with, you called a burn book, a binder of smears to attack members personally for doing the people's work of oversight please set the burn book aside and answer our questions."
Shouting broke out between lawmakers during former Special Counsel Jack Smith's first public testimony on Thursday.
Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) and Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) got into a yelling match during the House Judiciary Committee hearing over Smith's investigations into President Donald Trump. Issa was questioning Smith, who was attempting to answer the lawmaker's questions over seeking phone records following the Jan. 6, 2021 Insurrection probe, when the lawmakers started to interrupt each other — and Smith.
"My office didn't spy on anyone," Smith said.
"Wait a second. I, the question I asked you, Mr. Smith, was pretty straightforward," Issa said.
"We complied with the department," Smith responded, when Issa elevated his voice and interrupted him.
Raskin then interjected, calling Issa out for not letting Smith respond. Issa attempted to question Smith again.
"Mr. Smith, I asked you a question and you were not responsive to it and I want you to be responsive to it. Did you, whether you think it was legal or not, whether you think it was right or not, did you withhold the name of Kevin McCarthy, speaker of the House, when you were seeking records on Kevin McCarthy, the speaker of the House or Jim Jordan, the chairman of the committee."
Then Issa's time expired. He tried to argue that he wanted his time back.
"We did not provide that information to the judge when we requested a non-disclosure order, consistent with the law and consistent with the department policy," Smith said.
More shouting erupted among the committee.
"We have the evidence... with that I yield back in disgust of this witness," Issa said.
Smith was speaking on his decision to prosecute Trump on a series of federal crimes in 2023. He wasted no time declaring that Trump "broke the law" at a congressional hearing Thursday.
Smith, a career federal prosecutor, was appointed as a special counsel by Attorney General Merrick Garland in November 2022 to investigate Trump's handling of classified documents and his role in the events surrounding the Insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021.
Smith led high-profile criminal investigations and prosecutions against Trump on multiple counts, including obstruction of justice and violations of the Espionage Act related to classified materials at Mar-a-Lago, though the cases faced significant legal challenges and delays, with Trump ultimately avoiding trial on these charges following his 2024 election victory.
Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) got into a screaming match with controversial UK right-winger Nigel Farage during a presentation about free speech, Politico reported.
Raskin was in London as part of a bipartisan congressional delegation led by House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan (R-OH) to discuss the free speech implications of the UK's new Online Safety Act. Republican lawmakers argue the law "violates free speech and unfairly targets U.S. tech companies," according to the report.
In an interview with Politico, Raskin said he had begun talking about the history of free speech in the United States when he brought up "current threats posed by President Donald Trump."
That's when Farage, a Trump supporter, interrupted, exclaiming, "We’re not here to talk about Donald Trump,” Raskin said, adding, “[Farage] said that I am a guest here, and I should act like a guest. And I told him that he was a host, and he should act like a host.”
The leader of the right-wing Reform UK Party then accused Raskin of being “the most pig-headed person he’d ever met,” causing Raskin to retort, “This is why we had a revolution against you guys.”
Politico said the story was confirmed by Democratic reps Lou Correa (CA), Jasmine Crockett (TX) and Eric Swalwell (CA). "All called Farage’s eruption ironic for happening at the tail end of what had been a respectful discussion on free speech," the report stated.
Swalwell remarked, "Farage just looked unhinged and like a giant manbaby."
"Raskin said the outburst was the 'explosive reaction of one British politician who obviously didn’t want any challenge to his view that he’s a free speech victim,' a reference to Farage saying he’d been locked out of banking services and threatened online over his political speech," according to the report.
