And that pretty well captures my state of mind at the time. And I was just repeating over and over, I've lost my son. When we lost Tommy on December 31 of 2020, my chief of staff, Julie Tagen, who came over to the house, said that, you know, just for hours I just sat in one seat. JAMIE RASKIN: Well, I wasn't sure whether I was ever going to be able to do anything again.
But the assignment became, paradoxically, a salvation and sustenance for me, a pathway back to the land of the living. You know, about accepting the position of lead manager of the impeachment trial, you write, it was the hardest thing I've ever been asked to do professionally at the most difficult time I have ever experienced personally. And I want to tell you what I told you before the interview, which is that your book really made me wish I knew him. Our interview was recorded yesterday morning.Ĭongressman Raskin, welcome to FRESH AIR. Prior to serving in the House of Representatives, Raskin served three terms in the Maryland state Senate. Getting back to my question, how did he manage to get through this work after his son's death? He tries to explain how and why in his new memoir "Unthinkable: Trauma, Truth And The Trials Of American Democracy." The book is about what he describes as the two impossible traumas that he will probably spend the rest of his life trying to disentangle and understand, the death of his son and the insurrection. Now he's a member of the House Select Committee investigating the January 6 attack, the events leading up to it and the people behind it.
He had been a professor of constitutional law at the American University Washington College of Law before entering politics.
Tabitha and Hank hid in the office of House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer under Hoyer's desk, afraid they were going to die.Īfter the insurrection, at the request of Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Congressman Raskin served as the lead manager in the second impeachment trial of Donald Trump. They were not expecting a violent mob to storm the Capitol, trying to overturn the election results. They didn't want him to be alone that day. His daughter, Tabitha, and his other daughter's husband, Hank, went along with him. Despite Raskin's grief, he showed up at the Capitol the next day to do his constitutional duty and certify the election. When I watched my guest, Congressman Jamie Raskin, give his closing remarks at Donald Trump's second impeachment trial in the Senate, I wondered, how is he managing to get through this? His 25-year-old son, Tommy, who had been suffering with mental illness, had died by suicide December 31, 2020. Tommy Raskin graduated from Amherst College and was a student at Harvard Law School when he died.This is FRESH AIR. The post noted Tommy Raskin’s many interests and volunteer gigs, including teaching Sunday school at Temple Emanuel in Chevy Chase, a Maryland suburb of Washington, D.C., and at J Street, the liberal Jewish Middle East policy group.
“He ordered and devoured books on the Civil War and Maryland’s history in it, World War II and resistance to Nazism, Jewish history, libertarianism, moral philosophy, the history of the Middle East conflict, peace movements, anything by Gar Alperovitz on the decision to drop the atom bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and anything by Peter Singer on animal rights.” “Tommy grew up as a strikingly beautiful curly-haired madcap boy beaming with laughter and charm, making mischief, kicking the soccer ball in the goal, acting out scenes from To Kill A Mockingbird with his little sister in his father’s constitutional law class, teaching other children the names of all the Justices on the Supreme Court, hugging strangers on the street, teaching our dogs foreign languages, running up and down the aisle on airplanes giving people high fives, playing jazz piano like a blues great from Bourbon Street, and at 12 writing a detailed brief to his mother explaining why he should not have to do a Bar Mitzvah and citing Due Process liberty interests (appeal rejected),” the post said.