Press Releases

Washington, D.C. (April 7, 2025)—Today, Rep. Jamie Raskin, Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Committee, delivered opening remarks at the Bicameral Spotlight Hearing entitled “Restoring Accountability: Exposing Trump’s Attacks on the Rule of Law.” 

Below are Ranking Member Raskin’s remarks, as prepared for delivery, at today’s spotlight hearing.

WATCH Ranking Member Raskin’s remarks.

WATCH Ranking Member Raskin’s opening statement.
Ranking Member Jamie Raskin
House Judiciary Committee
Bicameral Spotlight Hearing: “Restoring Accountability: Exposing Trump’s Attacks on the Rule of Law”
April 7, 2025

Thank you, Senator Schiff and Ranking Member Durbin, for working with us to hold this oversight hearing which Republicans in both of our chambers have refused to call.

Special thanks to our witnesses. Your bravery is inspiring and encouraging to an anxious nation. Even in the face of tremendous pressure, each of you has held fast to your oath to uphold the Constitution and the integrity of the legal profession. 

Just as the president has crashed the stock market with his imbecilic and illegal tariffs and is crashing the economy, he has also crashed the justice system with his dreadful appointments and vindictive policies. He has filled the leadership of the Department of Justice with his personal lawyers—completely incompetent and inexperienced, but fiercely loyal and unapologetically extremist, sycophants like Kash Patel and Ed Martin who elevate their cultish devotion to Trump over any semblance of fidelity to the Constitution, the law or the rules of professional conduct. Every day Trump is trying to crash the rule of law by bringing down harassment and persecution on his chosen enemies.

You have refused to bow down and be complicit in the way so many of our Republican colleagues have been complicit. The President fires dozens of DOJ lawyers simply for doing their jobs and prosecuting the January 6 insurrectionists who violently assaulted and wounded more than 140 of our police officers. The Republicans say nothing about this illegal mass firing. The President issues Executive Orders banning disfavored lawyers and law firms from federal buildings, federal courthouses, federal employment and federal security clearances unless they offer blind loyalty and millions of dollars in pro bono services for his pro malum causes. The Republicans say nothing about this outrageous illegal shakedown even though it has been invalidated by the courts under the First, Fifth and 6th Amendments. 

Trump sacked 18 Inspectors General, who saved us $91 billion in waste, fraud and abuse last year. His team dismantled the Office of Public Integrity and suspended enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. They withdrew prosecution of NYC Mayor Adams on serious bribery and corruption charges because he formed a political alliance with Trump, causing seven top prosecutors to resign their offices, including Danielle Sassoon, the US attorney for the Southern District who clerked for Justice Scalia and was an active member of the Federalist Society. Our GOP Colleagues are almost entirely mum about these scandalous offenses against justice. 

But House Republicans are outspoken about this—many are calling for impeachment of some of the judges who have rendered 56 preliminary injunctions and TROs against this reign of fear and terror. The President and Elon Musk go on-line and call them radical left rogue judges, even Judge Boasberg, a pillar of the bar and the Chief Judge of the D.C. District Court who was first appointed to the bench by President Bush and was Justice Kavanaugh’s roommate at Yale. We have only impeached 15 judges in the history of the United States, always for corruption— bribery, tax evasion, habitual drunkenness—never for doctrinal disagreement with their rulings, much less when their rulings are manifestly correct. As Chief Justice Roberts said a few weeks ago, the proper response to a decision you disagree with is to appeal the decision. 

They’re not making America great again but they’re definitely making the government corrupt again. We are grateful to you for having the courage to speak up against this outrageous corruption of our justice system as it came to affect you. At a time when so many voices have fallen silent, you have made the honorable decision to speak up and speak out once again. Today, your important stories will help to teach America how to stand tall against a regime of lawlessness and fear. 

Ms. Oyer, I understand the Deputy Attorney General tried to send armed marshals to your home at night to deliver a clear message: do not speak up at today’s hearing. And yet you are here today undaunted and unbowed, proving to Mr. Blanche and any other Trump official that you can’t bully and silence everyone. 

That kind of courage is contagious, but we must emphasize to a watchful nation that courage is not the opposite of fear. Real courage, in fact, is experiencing all the fear, even terror, of these official threats and harassment, registering the fear of vigilante attack, metabolizing the fear of your own government hounding you but then pressing on anyway with conviction and passion for what you know to be right and lawful and just. 

No, courage, which is a virtue, is not the opposite of fear, which is an emotion, and indeed a necessary and adaptive emotion; courage is a virtue and it is the opposite of cowardice, which is a vice. The worst cowards are the tyrants and despots themselves who choose to terrify other people because they have allowed their own fears and insecurities to turn them into monstrous, deformed and cruel people. But the people who enable tyrants and despots, who do their bidding and work their will and flatter them and bow and scrape before them, they are cowards too undoubtedly, at least if they have any choice in the matter. 

Every authoritarian regime runs on lies and runs on fear. Every authoritarian regime fears the truth and fears people who act justly and defiantly based on the truth. And that means they fear people like you and what you have to say. 

Thanks for recognizing the fear of this moment, feeling it, and nonetheless acting with courage and composure against a rampaging tyrant and his accomplices. 

I yield back to my good friend, Senator Schiff.