Jamie Raskin, the House Democrat who led the impeachment of Donald Trump, remembered his son Tommy on Sunday and said, “I will not lose my son in late 2020 and I will lose my country and my republic in 2021. I will not lose to happen.”
Tommy Raskin, a Harvard law student struggling with depression, died on New Year’s Eve. He was 25 years old.
His father, a constitutional law professor and Maryland representative, was appointed this week as the chief impeachment manager for Trump’s second Senate trial. The president was impeached a second time for inciting the attack on the US Capitol on January 6, in which five people died, to further his baseless claim that the election was stolen.
Trump’s trial could begin immediately after Joe Biden came to power on Wednesday. Raskin discussed CNN’s State of the Union impeachment on Sunday. He was also asked about his son.
“Tommy was a remarkable person,” he said. “He had an overwhelming love for humanity and for our country, in his heart and really for all the people in the world. We lost him on the last day of that terrible year of God, 2020, and he left us a note that said ‘Please forgive me, my illness won today, take care of each other, animals and the global poor for me, everyone my love Tommy. ‘
“And that was the last act in a life that dazzled.”
People were asking, he said, why he agreed to take on such an important role in the impeachment trial at such a difficult time.
“First,” he said, with a laugh, “I don’t know if you’ve tried to say no to the Speaker [Nancy] Pelosi about anything. In fact, she has been very sensitive and caring, but she wanted me to do it because she knows that I have dedicated my life to the constitution and the republic. I am a constitutional law professor, but I really did it with my son at heart and helping to show the way. I feel it in my chest.
“When we went to count the votes of the electoral college and [the Capitol] suffered that ridiculous attack, I felt my son with me and was more concerned about our youngest daughter and my son-in-law, who is married to our other daughter, who was with me that day and who was caught in a room near the floor of the house.
“Between them and me was a violent armed mob, who could have easily killed them and was knocking on the doors where they were hiding under a table with my chief of staff, Julie Tagen.
“These events are personal to me. There was an attack on our country, there was an attack on our people ”.
Asked how he could deal with this “trauma over the trauma”, Raskin said: “I am not going to lose my son in late 2020 and lose my country and my republic in 2021. It will not happen.
“And the vast majority of the American people, Democrats, Republicans and independents, reject armed insurrection and violence as a new way of doing business in America. We are not going to do that.
“This was the most terrible crime ever committed by a President of the United States against our country. And I want everyone to feel the gravity and solemnity of these events at the same time, of course, that we are all deeply involved in President-elect Biden and vice-president-elect [Kamala] Harris, moving the country forward. “
According to the Federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, one in four Americans under the age of 25 has considered suicide since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic. Raskin was asked if he had a message for people dealing with depression, either in person or in family members.
“We don’t want to lose anyone else,” he said. “We have heard from thousands and thousands of people across the country and if any of them are out there, thank you for your kindness to our family.”
He added that the family had “established the Tommy Raskin Memorial Fund for People and Animals, which now has more than $ 400,000, his colleagues at Harvard Law School raised $ 5,000 or $ 6,000 for the causes in which he believed they would continue.
“But we don’t have to wait for people to die in order to hear them. We can hear you now. “