Anderson Cooper 360 Degrees: Interview With Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD)
Interview
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Well, it certainly seems like they're closing in on the target and the person who undoubtedly set all of the events of January 6 into motion.
I mean, I recall, one of the things we learned in the January 6 committee was that all of the right-wing protests against Biden were set up for January the 20th, for Inauguration Day, as if to say we are going to be your opposition, we question you and so on, but not January 6th.
But Donald Trump got everybody to switch it to January 6th. He galvanized the focus on January 6th. So, you know, Donald Trump really is the mastermind and the ringleader of the entire operation. And I think that it's his intimates and his enablers in his immediate vicinity, who have now been called forward, including Steve Bannon, and including Mark Meadows.
And so nobody knows what's going on with the investigative questioning, but it certainly seems like it's a serious and methodical investigation.
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Well, right. He was sort of doing the hokey-pokey, one foot in and one foot out, and when Trump got mad at him, he sort of pulled the plug on his participation. But you'll recall from the January 6 hearings, Cassidy Hutchinson reporting in a lot of different ways that Mark Meadows was really privy to what was going on with Donald Trump and when --
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And he intimated to her at numerous points, that Donald Trump wanted to keep the insurrectionary violence going. He didn't want to interfere. And of course, we know through his inaction that he did not operate like the commander-in-chief. He did not get in touch with the Armed Forces. He did not get in touch with the local police. He did not activate the National Guard.
But what we need is more indications of what he was affirmatively saying during that time. And undoubtedly, Mark Meadows was in a position to know.
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Well, yes. I mean, look, Mark Meadows proved to be a very weak chief-of-staff. I mean, what I took from all of the people who testified about him before our committee was that he agreed with whomever was talking to him at the time, but fundamentally, he would go with whatever Donald Trump's will was.
So he was really an empty vessel for Donald Trump's determination to stay in office and overthrow the 2020 presidential election.
So I think Trump was obviously the mastermind and ringleader, not Mark Meadows. And so I think it would make sense to, you know, figure out how to get his complete, comprehensive, truthful testimony that makes sense to me.
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Yes. Let me take one moment to observe that the people that we held in contempt in the last Congress like Steve Bannon or Dan Scavino or Peter Navarro were people who did not provide a single document to our committee, and did not come and testify before our committee and utter a single sentence before us, so it was primarily people like that.
Whereas, they are talking about holding the FBI director, Christopher Wray, a Trump appointee in contempt for actually turning over a document giving the majority exactly what they wanted to see, but they just want to be able to keep it into, you know, distribute it as they see fit, but he overwhelmingly and substantially complied with what exactly they were are asking for.
But any event, look Steve Bannon I think was primarily involved at the strategic and philosophical level for Donald Trump. He was trying to develop a plan based on how the Electoral College works, based on the convening of Congress in joint session, kicking everything into the House of Representatives for so-called contingent election.
I think that he was probably involved in trying to get Vice President Pence to step outside of his constitutional role, and simply declare that certain states' Electoral College votes wouldn't be accepted.
So I would want to ask him about all of that. What was the grand theory of how they were going to overturn the election in the final analysis? And what was the interaction contemplated between the violent insurrection, the unleashing of the extremist groups against us with the inside political coup, the attempt to put the coercive pressure on Pence and to pull a rabbit out of the hat in terms of the machinations of the Electoral College?
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Thank you so much for having me, Anderson.
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