Representative Jamie Raskin (D-MD) said Sunday on NBC’s Meet the Press” that the argument that former President Donald Trump did not break laws and was only expressing his First Amendment rights in the days after the 2020 election is a “deranged argument.”
Discussing the January 6 indictment, Raskin said, “A technical violation of the Constitution is a violation of the Constitution. The Constitution in six different places opposes insurrection and makes that a grievous constitutional event. Our constitution is designed to stop people from trying to overthrow elections and trying to overthrow the government, but in any event, there’s a whole apparatus of criminal law which is in place to enforce this constitutional principle.”
He added, “That’s what Donald Trump is charged with violating. He conspired to defraud the American people out of our right to an honest election by substituting the real legal process we have under federal and state law with counterfeit electors. There are people who are in jail for several years for counterfeiting one vote. If they tried to vote illegally once, he tried to steal the entire election and his lawyers are out there saying that’s just a matter of him expressing his First Amendment rights. That’s deranged. That is a deranged argument.”
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