Jamie Raskin

Jamin Ben Raskin (born December 13, 1962) is an American attorney, law professor, and politician serving as the U.S. representative for Maryland's 8th congressional district since 2017. A progressive member of the Democratic Party, he served in the Maryland State Senate from 2007 to 2016. The district previously included portions of Montgomery County, a suburban county northwest of Washington, D.C., and extended through rural Frederick County to the Pennsylvania border. Since redistricting in 2022, Raskin's district encompasses much of Montgomery County and a sliver of Prince George's County.

Raskin co-chairs the Congressional Freethought Caucus. He was the lead impeachment manager for the second impeachment of President Donald Trump in response to the attack on the U.S. Capitol. Before his election to Congress, Raskin was a constitutional law professor at American University Washington College of Law, where he co-founded and directed the LL.M. program on law and government and co-founded the Marshall-Brennan Constitutional Literacy Project.

Early life and education

Jamin Ben Raskin was born in Washington, D.C., on December 13, 1962, to Jewish parents Barbara (née Bellman) Raskin and Marcus Raskin. His name is a variant of that of his paternal grandfather, Benjamin Raskin. His mother was a journalist and novelist, and his father was a former staff aide to President John F. Kennedy on the National Security Council, co-founder of the Institute for Policy Studies, and a progressive activist. Raskin's ancestors immigrated to the U.S. from Russia.

Raskin graduated from Georgetown Day School in 1979 at age 16, and then magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Harvard College in 1983 with a Bachelor of Arts in government with a concentration in political theory. In 1987, he received a Juris Doctor magna cum laude from the Harvard Law School, where he was an editor of the Harvard Law Review.

Legal career

For more than 25 years, Raskin was a constitutional law professor at American University Washington College of Law, where he taught future fellow impeachment manager Stacey Plaskett. He co-founded and directed the LL.M. program on law and government and co-founded the Marshall-Brennan Constitutional Literacy Project.

From 1989 to 1990, Raskin served as general counsel for Jesse Jackson's National Rainbow Coalition. In 1996, he represented Ross Perot regarding Perot's exclusion from the 1996 United States presidential debates. Raskin wrote a Washington Post op-ed that strongly condemned the Federal Election Commission and the Commission on Presidential Debates for their decisions.

Early political career

In 1999, Maryland Governor Parris Glendening appointed Raskin as the first chairman of the Maryland State Higher Education Labor Relations Board. He later served as Doug Gansler's campaign manager in the 2006 Maryland Attorney General election.

Maryland Senate

Raskin was elected to the Maryland Senate in 2006 after defeating incumbent state senator Ida G. Ruben in the Democratic primary election, in which he ran to the left of Ruben, and ran unopposed in the general election. He represented District 20, which included parts of Silver Spring and Takoma Park in Montgomery County. In 2012, Raskin was named Senate majority whip and chaired the Montgomery County Senate Delegation and the Select Committee on Ethics Reform, and was a member of the Judicial Proceedings Committee.

Raskin described himself as a "hands-on progressive" while in the legislature, sponsoring bills advocating the repeal of the death penalty in Maryland, the expansion of the state ignition interlock device program, and the establishment of the legal guidelines for benefit corporations, a type of for-profit corporation that includes a material societal benefit in its bylaws and decision-making processes. A former board member of FairVote, he introduced and sponsored the first bill in the country for the National Popular Vote, a plan for an interstate compact to provide for presidential election by popular vote. Raskin long championed efforts to reform marijuana laws and legalize medical marijuana in Maryland. He introduced a medical marijuana bill in 2014 that was signed by Governor Martin O'Malley and went into effect in January 2015.

Raskin helped lead the fight to legalize same-sex marriage in Maryland. On March 1, 2006, during a Maryland State Senate hearing on same-sex marriage, Raskin was noted for his response to an opposing lawmaker: "Senator, when you took your oath of office, you placed your hand on the Bible and swore to uphold the Constitution. You did not place your hand on the Constitution and swear to uphold the Bible."

U.S. House of Representatives

Elections

On April 19, 2015, The Baltimore Sun and The Washington Post reported that Raskin announced his campaign for Congress and said, in response to observations that his positions were notably left-of-center, "My ambition is not to be in the political center, it is to be in the moral center." The district's seven-term incumbent, Chris Van Hollen, gave up the seat to run for the United States Senate.

During the primary, Raskin was endorsed by the Progressive Action PAC, the political arm of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, which grew from 72 members at the time of the endorsement to 92 members in early 2020. Raskin won the seven-way Democratic primary—the real contest in this heavily Democratic district—with 33% of the vote. He was viewed as the most liberal candidate in the race. The primary election was the most expensive House race in 2016, and Raskin was heavily outspent.

During the general election, Raskin was endorsed by the Bernie Sanders-affiliated political organizing network Our Revolution, and the community organizing effort People's Action. He defeated Republican nominee Dan Cox with 60% of the vote.

Tenure

As one of his first actions in Congress, Raskin and several other members of the House objected to the certification of the 2016 presidential election in favor of Donald Trump due to alleged ties with Russia, and Russia's interference in the 2016 election, as well as voter suppression efforts. Then-Vice President Joe Biden ruled their objection out of order because it had to be sponsored by at least one member of each chamber, and it had no Senate sponsor. Raskin questioned the legitimacy of the election, claiming it was "badly tainted by everything from cyber-sabotage by Vladimir Putin, to deliberate voter suppression by Republicans in numerous swing states".

In April 2018, Raskin, Jared Huffman, Jerry McNerney, and Dan Kildee launched the Congressional Freethought Caucus. Its stated goals include "pushing public policy formed on the basis of reason, science, and moral values", promoting the "separation of church and state", and opposing discrimination against "atheists, agnostics, humanists, seekers, religious, and nonreligious persons". Huffman and Raskin are co-chairs.

On January 12, 2021, Raskin was named the lead impeachment manager for the Senate impeachment trial held after Trump's second impeachment. He was the primary author of the impeachment article, along with Representatives David Cicilline and Ted Lieu, which charged Trump with inciting an insurrection on the United States Capitol. During the Senate trial, Raskin recounted that after being there on January 6 as the mob was forcibly entering, his daughter said to him, "Dad, I don't want to come back to the Capitol".

In February 2022, while his wife was under consideration for a position as the Federal Reserve's vice chair of supervision, it was reported that Raskin violated the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act by failing to properly disclose her share dealings. One instance was when his wife received stock for advising a Colorado-based financial technology trust company, and the other was when she sold stock in Reserve Trust for $1.5 million, but the sale was not disclosed for eight months. His wife had sat on the advisory board of the Federal Reserve when it "granted Reserve Trust unusual access to its master account", but it is not clear when she first acquired the shares.

Investigation into the January 6 attack on the Capitol

On July 1, 2021, Raskin was one of seven Democrats appointed to the House Select Committee investigating the January 6 Capitol attack by Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Following the announcement, Raskin said, "As Chair of the Oversight Committee's Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Subcommittee, I've helped lead the Oversight Committee's painstaking investigation into violent white supremacy over the last two years. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has declared domestic violent extremism the number one security threat in the country. We saw that threat explode right in front of our eyes at the Capitol on January 6."