Otherwise, you may think that the author sometimes got himself entangled in those oh-so-common literary weeds. If you are an aficionado of American constitutional law, you will be thrilled by Raskin’s descriptions of the oral arguments he and his managers made. Ultimately, partisan politics won out, and although the Senate voted 57-43 in favor of conviction, the vote fell well short of the 2/3 (67 votes) needed to ratify a conviction. Most of the book relates in great detail the work of the managers as they made their case to the senators. It was a difficult assignment but “became, paradoxically, a salvation and sustenance” for him on his way out of this low point in his life, the former constitutional law professor says. Speaker Nancy Pelosi “threw me a lifeline,” Raskin writes, by asking him to lead the delegation of nine managers who would be sent to the Senate to prosecute Trump. The building was cleared of the insurrectionists, and the lawmakers returned to certify the election results.Īfterward, House Democrats decided to impeach Trump for inciting the mob that attacked the Capitol (though the Senate blocked a conviction). The door was bolted from the inside, furniture was pushed up against the door as a barricade and Tabitha and Hank were hiding under a desk before being rescued. They had been whisked away and hidden in the office of Rep. He was even more apprehensive because one of his daughters, Tabitha, and a son-in-law, Hank, had come to the Capitol and were in the visitor’s gallery when the insurrection began. Masked and frantic, our staccato steps bouncing off the walls, we kept bumping into one another, especially with so many phones pressed to ears to call spouses, children, parents, staff.” “Our downward flight into the darkened basement of the Capitol was chaos,” he notes. Raskin describes the fear felt by the legislators. Shortly thereafter, the legislators were evacuated through the tunnels running under the building.

The police told the members to get back from the bolted door and drew their guns. Not long after, they heard the mob trying to break into the chamber. At 2 p.m., as House members were giving speeches, members - through text messages – became aware of the attack on the building and the mob that was walking its floors and threatening lawmakers. On January 6 – one day after burying Tommy – Raskin was at work at the Capitol to witness the certification of the election results. The youngster wrote the article, had it accepted by a journal and scheduled the online debate – all before arriving in Boston. He emailed the author challenging him to a debate on the subject, but was told that it would only take place if Tommy published his views in a peer-reviewed journal. One story in the book illustrates both traits.īeing chauffeured back to college in Massachusetts by his mother, Sarah, for his sophomore year, Tommy read an article by a professor critical of animal rights, one of his passions. His son, who suffered from depression, apparently was a remarkable person, both compassionate and extremely bright. I will probably spend the rest of my life trying to disentangle and understand them to restore coherence to the world they ravaged.” An explosion caused by a police munition is seen while supporters of US President Donald Trump gather in front of the US Capitol Building in Washington, US, Janu(credit: REUTERS/LEAH MILLIS) “Although Tommy’s death and the January 6 insurrection were cosmically distinct and independent events, they were thoroughly intertwined in my experience and my psyche. The author acknowledges the lasting trauma that these two events caused him. Raskin, who represents my congressional district, tells the story of that “unthinkable” week and the resulting impeachment hearings against Trump, in this book that was assuredly painful to write and, at times, to read, as I identified with his anguish. NOTE! Consider delaying until first div on page If (slot) slot.addService(googletag.pubads()) (function (a, d, o, r, i, c, u, p, w, m) Jamie Raskin recounts son's suicide, Capitol riots in new book - The Jerusalem Post

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