Raskin defends Jan. 6 committee against criticism it didn’t fully investigate law enforcement failures during attack
Jan. 6 committee member Jamie Raskin joined Yahoo News’ “Skullduggery” podcast and countered criticism that the select committee didn’t thoroughly investigate the law enforcement response to the attack on the Capitol.
Video Transcript
MICHAEL ISIKOFF: You are getting quite a bit of criticism on one front, and that is the relatively little you had to say about the performance of federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies in the events related to January 6. That was part of your authorizing resolution. In fact, it's the first purpose of the committee was to investigate that. And in this 845 page report, that entire issue is relegated to a pretty skimpy 18 page appendix with only 11 pages of footnotes. And nobody held accountable, no explanation for why the intel warnings that were being collected by the Secret Service, the FBI, and others never made it their way to the proper people at the Capitol Police who could have been better prepared. What explains the committee's failure to do what it's-- one of its original purposes was, which was to do a thorough investigation of these issues?
JAMIE RASKIN: Well, I think we did a very thorough factual investigation of what happened the best that we can reconstruct it with lots of divergent viewpoints and testimony. And we get into the weeds and the details of everything that everybody said, and what we were able to learn, and what we were not able to learn. You know, having said that, it's clear none of the law enforcement or national security agencies that had received information knew anything about Donald Trump's intentions that day.
MICHAEL ISIKOFF: Well, why does that matter? There were plenty of warnings out there that-- on social media that people were coming to kill, to invade the Capitol. What difference does it make what Donald Trump said or doesn't say? They were coming, and federal law enforcement agencies did not coordinate, they did not distribute the information. There's a lot that a lot of people think--
JAMIE RASKIN: And we say all of that. We talk--
MICHAEL ISIKOFF: Who do you hold accountable for that? Who--
JAMIE RASKIN: I mean, I--
MICHAEL ISIKOFF: Who in the FBI, Homeland Security, or Secret Service do you hold accountable for the failure to do their job?
JAMIE RASKIN: Well, ultimately, I mean, if you buy the unitary executive theory that the--
MICHAEL ISIKOFF: But you don't buy the unitary executive theory.
JAMIE RASKIN: Well--
MICHAEL ISIKOFF: That's a right-wing theory that you ridiculed.
JAMIE RASKIN: No, but under the Republicans, I do. Donald Trump was clearly in control of the executive branch government. And he had no interest in activating anybody, whether it was the army, the Navy, the Marines, the National Guard. He didn't call the D.C. Police. He didn't call the Capitol Police. So what we had was a commander and chief who was just acting as the inciter and chief. He went over to the other side. And so fundamentally, it demonstrates what happens when you don't have leadership at the top. He was inciting. He was assisting in aiding and abetting. So I'm not averse to doing what you're talking about. You know, we-- you know, if we want to engage in a completely different investigation, we can go further into detail on all of that. But we laid out all the facts that we got. We spent a lot of time doing interviews on it.
And it seemed like the kind of thing, like to me, where there was no coherent theory of how to deal with this and nobody took responsibility for being in charge. And ultimately, it was because the President of the United States had no interest in anybody being in charge. And he played on the fact that he just left everybody to their own devices, and some of them may have been trying to intuit what Donald Trump wanted them to do. It's just-- it's very hard to know. So we laid out the facts the best that we could. We wanted to investigate the crime first. And we did spend more time on the crime, and we spent a lot of time also on the law enforcement and national security response and the failures of preparation. But nothing that took place absolves the masterminds, and the ringleaders, and the perpetrators of the offense.
It's sort of like a bank robbery, where somebody plans a bank robbery, gets away with it, and then afterwards you ask, "Well, was there anybody cooperating on the inside, or why wasn't there a more effective response?" That's all legit. We want a more effective response to stop them next time. So I agree with that. But nothing absolves Donald Trump and his henchmen for what they did. And, of course, the Republicans want to say, "Oh, you know, this is Mitch McConnell, Nancy Pelosi's fault." Well, you know, I-- that's-- that is certainly not where the trail led us.
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