Jamie Raskin, the House Democrat who led Donald Trump’s impeachment, recalled his son Tommy on Sunday, saying, “I’m not going to lose my son in late 2020 and my country and my republic will happen in 2021.”
Tommy Raskin, a Harvard law student who was struggling with depression, died on New Year’s Eve. He was 25.
His father, a constitutional law professor and representative from Maryland, was named this week as the chief impeachment manager for Trump’s second senate trial. The president was charged a second time with instigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol, which killed five people, to back up his baseless claim that the election was stolen.
Trump’s trial could begin immediately after Joe Biden took power on Wednesday. Raskin discussed the impeachment on CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday. He was also asked about his son.
“Tommy was a remarkable person,” he said. “He had an overwhelming love for humanity and for our country, in his heart, and truly for all the people of the world. We lost him on the very last day of that terrible year, 2020, and he left us a note that said, ‘Please forgive me, my illness has won today, take care of each other, the animals and the poor in the world for me, all my love Tommy. ‘
“And that was the last act in a life that was dazzling.”
People asked, he said, why he agreed to take on such a high role in the impeachment process at such a difficult time.
“First of all,” he said with a laugh, “I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to say no to Speaker [Nancy] Pelosi about anything. She has actually been very sensitive and thoughtful, but she wanted me to do it because she knows that I have dedicated my life to the constitution and to the republic. I am a professor of constitutional law, but I really did it with my son in my heart, and helped out front. I can feel it in my chest.
“When we started counting the votes of the electoral college and [the Capitol] came under that ridiculous attack, I felt my son with me and I was most concerned about our youngest daughter and my son-in-law, who is married to our other daughter, who were with me that day and who were caught in a room next to the house floor.
“Between them and me was a ferocious armed crowd, who could have easily killed them and with my chief of staff, Julie Tagen, banged on the doors where they hid under a desk.
“These events are personal to me. There was an attack on our country, there was an attack on our people. “
Asked how he could deal with such “trauma on top of trauma,” Raskin said, “I’m not going to lose my son at the end of 2020 and my country and my republic in 2021. It won’t happen.
And the vast majority of the American people, Democrats, Republicans, and independents, reject armed insurrection and violence as a new way to do business in America. We are not going to do that.
“This was the most terrible crime ever committed by a president of the United States against our country. And I want everyone to feel the seriousness and the solemnity of those events, when of course we are all deeply invested in President-elect Biden and Vice-President-elect [Kamala] Harris, move the country forward. “
According to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, one in four Americans under the age of 25 has considered suicide since the start of the coronavirus pandemic. Raskin was asked if he had a message for people dealing with depression personally or with family members.
“We don’t want to lose anyone else,” he said. “We’ve heard from thousands and thousands of people across the country and if there is one of them, thank you for your kindness to our family.”
He added that the family ‘had established the Tommy Raskin Memorial Fund for People and Animals, which now contains more than $ 400,000. His classmates at Harvard Law School raised $ 5,000 or $ 6,000 so that the causes he believed in would continue.
“But we don’t have to wait for people to die before people listen to them. We can listen to you now. “