Raskin Eyes Judiciary Gavel, Private-Sale Gun Checks and a Possible Third Trump Impeachment
Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland said he is moving closer to chairing the House Judiciary Committee and outlined an agenda that includes private-sale gun background checks, tougher antitrust settlement scrutiny and openness to a third impeachment of President Donald Trump.
In an Election Day interview with The Banner, Raskin said Democrats are “not afraid to impeach Donald Trump. We’ve done it twice. He has 50% of all the presidential impeachments in American history.”
“It’s Andrew Johnson, Bill Clinton, and two for Donald Trump,” Raskin said, according to The Banner.
He also said impeachment “cannot be a fetish, but it also can’t be a taboo either,” calling it “one of the people’s major instruments of constitutional self-defense against a president who continues to act like a king or an emperor.”
Raskin, who was lead House manager in Trump’s second impeachment trial after Jan. 6, 2021, becomes the presumptive Judiciary chairman if Democrats organize the House in January. He would be Maryland’s first holder of that gavel since 1839, The Banner reported.
As chair, Raskin said his priorities would include legislation requiring background checks on private gun sales, not only purchases from licensed dealers.
Republicans argue those bills restrict hobbyists and people selling firearms to friends or from personal collections. Gun-rights groups quickly framed the private-sale push as a step toward a universal registry, a characterization amplified by Townhall and the National Association for Gun Rights after the midterms.
Raskin also said Congress should increase scrutiny of antitrust settlements, which he accused the Trump administration of using in a “pay-to-play” system that rewards politically connected corporations, The Banner reported.
That combination — guns, corporate probes and impeachment talk — matches the accountability message House Democrats ran on while promising kitchen-table relief.
Some Democrats, including potential 2028 contender Rahm Emanuel, have warned a third impeachment would be unlikely to remove Trump and would let him cast himself as a victim, The Banner noted.
Removing a president still requires a two-thirds Senate vote. Even with Democrats taking the Senate, that conviction threshold remains out of reach unless a large bloc of Republicans joins them.
Raskin said any impeachment decision would be weighed “in the full context of everything else we’ve got to get done,” signaling investigations and legislation may come before articles of impeachment.
Political Wire highlighted the Banner interview as Democrats contemplate how aggressively to use their new House majority against Trump.
For conservatives, the practical takeaway is a Judiciary Committee with roughly double the minority’s staff, a chairman already experienced in impeachment trials, and early targets on guns and Trump-world business deals.
Raskin celebrated his own reelection Tuesday night in Bethesda, calling the national results “a critical turning point.” The fight over how far Democrats push that turning point starts when the new Congress convenes in January.
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