Democratic Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin said Sunday that he believed President Donald Trump’s second impeachment was a “dramatic success” despite ending in acquittal.
Raskin, who served as the lead House Impeachment Manager, told NBC’s Chuck Todd that he felt the trial had been a success because it was the most bipartisan impeachment in history.
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Todd began the interview by asking Raskin whether he viewed the trial as a success or a failure. “You got seven Republicans to convict,” he said.
“Well, I think it was a dramatic success in historical terms,” Raskin replied, arguing that it was the largest conviction in an impeachment trial. “It was by far the most bipartisan majority that’s ever assembled in the Senate to convict a president, which has traditionally been a kind of partisan thing in American history.”
Noting that seven Senate Republicans voted to convict — and 10 House Republicans had voted to advance the impeachment — Raskin called the result “by far the most bipartisan decision and a complete repudiation of the president’s conduct.”
“Now, unfortunately, it didn’t reach the two-thirds majority in the Senate,” Raskin continued, adding that he viewed the prosecution as a success.
“I think we successfully prosecuted him and convicted him in the court of public opinion and in the court of history. He’s obviously a major political problem for the Republican Party. As long as he’s out there attempting to wage war on American constitutional democracy, he’s a problem for all of us,” Raskin continued.
Raskin went on to say that, based on Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s floor speech lambasting the former president’s behavior, he would have liked to have the Republican leader on the impeachment manager’s team. (RELATED: ‘An Absurd Deflection’: McConnell Accuses Trump Allies Of Using 74 Million Voters ‘As A Human Shield’)
Raskin concluded by saying that the only reason the conviction hadn’t reached the necessary two-thirds majority was that some on the party were still loyal to Trump “in a really cultish and dangerous way.”
