Jamie Raskin is ready for the biggest battle of his career

WASHINGTON — After leading the second impeachment trial of former President Donald Trump and then serving as a member of the select Jan. 6 committee, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) is readying for a new role come January: Democrat’s lead constitutional watchdog in Congress.

This week, after relinquishing his party’s top slot on the House Oversight Committee, Raskin looks to have secured the ranking member position on his chamber’s all-important Judiciary Committee. The committee jockeying doesn’t mean he thinks there won’t be any action in Oversight under the incoming Trump administration.

“Oh, I think it's going to be all over the place,” Raskin told Raw Story at the Capitol Friday. “It's like they tell the little kids in soccer, ‘don't bunch, spread out’ — we need people everywhere, you know, defending constitutional institutions and principles.”

After Trump shocked the Democrats by winning the popular vote in November, they are reassessing some of their party’s lesser-known leaders on Capitol Hill.

On Monday, Raskin infuriated 17-term Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) by challenging him for the top slot on the Judiciary Committee, but by Wednesday, Nadler bowed out of the contest because his support withered on the proverbial vine.

That leaves a clear lane for the four-term Marylander to secure the blessing of Democratic leaders when they meet on Tuesday to officially decide the face of their party in some of Congress’ hottest committees.

As a constitutional lawyer by trade, Raskin says his skills will be more beneficial to his party atop the sometimes arcane legal committee on Capitol Hill.

“The assault on the federal workforce and the professional civil service are likely to be headquartered in Oversight, but the attack on the Justice Department, the FBI and the rule of law is going to be centered in the Judiciary Committee,” Raskin said.

After Trump and the GOP expanded their electoral appeal in November, Raskin says he hopes to start a new conversation with the American people — the one his party failed to make stick this election year — when the new administration takes over Washington in the new year.

“The problem is that I've not heard of any agenda other than instrumentalizing the Department of Justice and the FBI for purposes of political retaliation and revenge. You know, that's not generally advanced as a proper principle for the U.S. government,” Raskin said. “It’s a sign of how far the discourse has shifted that this has become normalized.”

Democrats already successfully sidelined Trump’s initial attorney general nominee, former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), but the new AG nominee — former Trump defense attorney and Florida attorney general Pam Bondi — has Democrats worried as well.

And Trump’s pick to lead the FBI, Kash Patel, is the pick that has Democratic lawyers like Raskin really freaking out.

“Does Kash Patel — a name we didn’t even know months ago — like, does he worry you particularly?” Raw Story inquired.

“He's somebody who embodies the ethos of using the government as a partisan and political instrument for the will of the president,” Raskin said. “Again, that's a massive departure from decades of understanding that the president does not get involved in particular cases, and we have to try to uphold that traditional understanding as much as we can.”

“Doesn’t it almost feel like they're becoming the rhetoric they decried?” Raw Story pressed. “Like, they’ve become the lawfare party?”

“Bingo,” Raskin replied. “They have been attacking the Department of Justice for ‘lawfare’ and for partisan weaponization as preparation for implementing their own plans to do precisely that. They want to make it seem as if it's somehow normal and bipartisan — it's not.

“You really can't find an example of any president — with the potential exception of Richard Nixon — who directed the Department of Justice to engage in criminal investigations and prosecutions targeting his political foes.”

With Raskin readying to take over as the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, his current vice-ranking member on the House Oversight Committee, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), jumped in the race to replace Raskin as their party’s top Democrat on that high-profile committee.

It’s a part of what many Democrats hope is a makeover after the party was trounced this cycle.

While ‘inside baseball,’ two other senior Democrats — 11-term Reps. Raul Grijalva (D-AZ) and David Scott (D-GA) — are also being challenged for their party’s top slots atop, respectively, the Natural Resources and Agriculture Committees.

Younger congressional Democrats see these shake-ups as essential for the party’s vitality moving forward.

As for his plan to play defensive offensive in January, Raskin tells Raw Story he hopes to confront the ‘deep state’ myth that’s metastasized in today’s GOP.

“I hope that we're going to be advancing a strong vision of what it means to live in a free and democratic society,” Raskin told Raw Story. “That means playing defense against authoritarian maneuvers and violations of people's rights.”