Lead House impeachment manager Rep. Jamie Raskin on Tuesday delivered a tearful account of his experience during last month’s US Capitol insurrection, charging that the deadly episode „cannot be the future of America.“
Addressing lawmakers during former President Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial, Raskin explained that his younger daughter, Tabitha, and son-in-law, Hank — the husband of Raskin’s oldest daughter — had accompanied him to Capitol Hill to witness the counting of electoral votes on January 6. Just a day earlier, Raskin’s family had buried his 25-year-old son, Tommy. Raskin recalled that Tabitha and Hank had asked him if it would be safe, and he said he had told them, „Of course it should be safe; this is the Capitol.“ The Maryland Democrat then choked up as he talked being separated from the pair as the pro-Trump mob breached the Capitol complex and spurred hours of chaos. „I couldn’t get out there to be with them in that office. And all around me people were calling their wives and their husbands, their loved ones, to say good bye. Members of Congress — in the House, anyway — were removing their congressional pins so they wouldn’t be identified by the mob as they tried to escape the violence,“ Raskin recounted. „Our new chaplain got up and said a prayer for us, and we were told to put our gas masks on,“ he continued. „And then there was a sound I will never forget, the sound of pounding on the door like a battering ram.
