Raskin Says Democrats Aren’t Afraid to Impeach Trump for a Third Time

Maryland Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin, likely the next chair of the House Judiciary Committee, has expressed greater openness to impeaching President Donald Trump following his party’s “blue wave” of election victories earlier this week.

Although Raskin previously served as manager of the Trump impeachment that followed the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by a mob of the president’s loyalists, he has been reserved in recent months about the possibility of a third Trump impeachment.

In April, for example, following renewed calls for Trump to be impeached after he issued genocidal threats against Iran, Raskin told Time magazine that such moves should not yet be pursued, describing the effort as politically unviable.

“For people to say we should just go ahead and impeach him simply denies this political reality: There is not a single Republican who has called for impeachment or indicated to us interest in impeachment at this point,” Raskin said at the time.

With Democrats attaining 54 seats in the Senate following the midterms (and potentially as many as 56 seats, pending two “too close to call” elections that are still being tabulated), that math changes. Trump’s diminished power due to Democratic gains in Congress could also result in some Republicans being more open to the idea of removing the president, depending on the specific charges against him, if a Senate trial occurs.

In an Election Day interview with The Baltimore Banner, Raskin indicated that impeachment was definitely on the table.

“We’re not afraid to impeach Donald Trump. We’ve done it twice,” Raskin said. “He has 50 percent of all the presidential impeachments in American history. It’s Andrew Johnson, Bill Clinton, and two for Donald Trump.”

“It cannot be a fetish, but it also can’t be a taboo either,” Raskin went on. “It is one of the people’s major instruments of constitutional self-defense against a president who continues to act like a king or an emperor.”

The shift in Raskin’s stance comes as another top Democrat, Rep. Adam Smith of Washington, has also expressed a new outlook on impeachment.

After refusing to back the idea early this year, Smith, who is currently the ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, told Time last week that he now believes impeachment isn’t just viable, but necessary.

“Trump has become beyond dangerous. He is just completely out of control in what he says and how he is governing,” Smith said. “I think we have to try [to impeach], even if it doesn’t succeed.”

Yet presumptive Speaker-elect Hakeem Jeffries (D-New York) has dismissed efforts to hold Trump and other administration officials accountable. Speaking on MS NOW’s “Morning Joe” program on Wednesday, Jeffries stated:

The American people don’t want us to get even; they want us to get things done on their behalf, because life is way too expensive.

While affordability ranks highest on most voters’ lists of priorities, accountability is not far behind, recent polling has shown.

In an Economist/YouGov survey conducted just before the elections, 26 percent of likely voters said that “presidential leadership,” “corruption and waste,” and “democracy and the rule of law” were their top issues.

Impeachment is also likely to be embraced by voters if Democrats pursue it. A Politico poll from October found that 54 percent of Americans believe there are already grounds for impeaching Trump, while only 33 percent disagreed.