'This Week' Transcript 8-13-23: Rep. Jamie Raskin, Former Gov. Chris Christie and Gabriel Sterling

Interview

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Of course, it's what my Republican colleagues have been demanding and asking for for months. And now, they seem to disapprove of it for some reason.

But to me, it seems to formalize what has basically been the understanding from the beginning, which is that David Weiss, the U.S. attorney for Delaware who'd been nominated by Donald Trump can make the decisions about what to charge, where to charge, and when to charge and with the collapse of the plea agreement that he had apparently worked out with Hunter Biden, now, he wants to be certain that he's got the authority to go bring charges wherever he wants.

So, from my perspective, it is the rule of law and the justice system working itself out the way that it does, and, you know, obviously, it's bumpy and this side or that side doesn't necessarily prefer this course of events, but our job, I think as political people, is to allow the justice system to run its course.

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I mean, I don't know what factors went into the calculus to appoint. Obviously, there had to be some public interest rationale for it.

You know, the material change in circumstance that I can discern is simply the collapse of the plea agreement. There was no need to have a special counsel when it looked like they had agreed to the tax charges, the failure to pay in two cases, two misdemeanor charges, and then a felony gun charge.

But when that agreement appeared to evaporate, then I suppose they wanted to formalize that the U.S. attorney for Delaware had the authority that he needed in order to prosecute the case, and certainly, there was political pressure being brought on it which I don't approve of myself. I think it's not our job as politicians to be second-guessing and trying to micromanage.

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Yeah.

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Yeah. Well, I mean, you may as well just say, how could Kevin McCarthy who told Donald Trump that it was his people who had stormed his own office and the Capitol was at fault, but then turned around, you know, a week or two later to curry favor again with Donald Trump, be trusted on any of this. So, you know, and this is why we have a justice system. Let's just let them do their job.

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Well, look --

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Here's what I'm concerned about. During the Trump administration, we saw the development of a completely new public philosophy, which is that government is not an instrument of the common good in the public interest. Government is an instrument for private self-enrichment, for the guy who gets in, for his family, for his private businesses. And that's a model that we're seeing all over the world now that that's a --

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I do not.

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That's what Putin is doing.

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That -- you know, that's what Orban is doing. That's what Marcos is doing. That's what El-Sisi's doing. That's what president --

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Well, but it's new for America that somebody would get in and basically just say, you know, everything is corrupt and I'm just as corrupt as the next guy, and I'm going to take money, as Trump did, from China, from Saudi Arabia, from the United Arab Emirates.

I mean, look, you know, his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, pocketed a cool $2 billion --

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From Saudi Arabia, in a corporation he --

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Yes.

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So -- but -- so, I am concerned about it. And I'm concerned not just about public officials like Donald Trump and Jared Kushner doing it, but even family members who water ski along for the ride. And I have been, you know, begging my colleague, Chairman Comer, for us to do a serious analysis of what the laws should be about money-making by people --

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Yes, of course, we would. And -- and we're going to release a report about all of the foreign government emoluments, millions of dollars we can document that Donald Trump pocketed at the hotels, at the golf courses, through business deals, when he was president and that his family got. But they've not laid a glove on Joe Biden as president. They haven't been able to show any criminal corruption on his part. What they've got is Hunter Biden. And we've all seen clear that this guy was addicted to drugs and did a lot of really unlawful and wrong things. And we have said, let the justice system run its course. They're not saying that about Donald Trump. Any time Donald Trump actually gets indicted, after a grand jury has already determined that there's probable cause --

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They attack the prosecutors. They attack the judges.

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They attack the system.

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For them, Donald Trump could never be guilty of anything.

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