Congressman Jamie Raskin (D-MD) took issue on Friday with the constitutionally-mandated manner in which presidents are elected, calling the Electoral College “an accident waiting to happen.”
Raskin, who was a constitutional law professor prior to his time in Congress, told MSNBC host Chris Hayes that the system as a whole was “vulnerable” and that the Electoral College had allowed room for “strategic bad faith actors” like former President Donald Trump.
WATCH:
Former Constitutional law professor and sitting congressman has a problem with the constitutional manner in which presidents are elected: "The Electoral College is *an accident waiting to happen* and we have to deal with that at some point in American history." pic.twitter.com/pF5scFAuiU
— Virginia Kruta (@VAKruta) September 11, 2022
“Final question for you. You were a constitutional law professor before you were a United States Congressman. I wanted to hear you talk about these different aspects of an inquiry or making the case here,” Todd began, noting that the January 6th Committee — of which Raskin is part — did not have the power to prosecute former President Trump.
“Your committee doesn’t have criminal prosecutorial power, and nor should it, it’s a congressional committee,” he continued. “There’s a difference between what I would call the great crime of Donald Trump, which was a frontal assault on the core of American democracy, and whatever statutory violation of the U.S. code he may have committed. Sometimes, it can feel a little bit like a mismatch there, and I wanna know what you think about those two lanes.”
“Obviously, we’re gonna need some legislative changes to the criminal code, to account for, now the possibility of presidents taking a headlong rush at seizing the Presidency,” Raskin replied. “But there are federal statutes out there that will do the job. We have course have seditious conspiracy. We have conspiracy to interfere with the federal proceeding, which I think everybody can agree took place here. After, all the whole chant was ‘stop the steal.'”
Raskin went on to insist that the riot that took place on Capitol Hill had been planned out beforehand.
“So, yeah, I think that we will have to look at some new federal statutory changes,” Raskin continued. “And we have to look at the way that the electoral system itself is vulnerable to strategic bad faith actors like Donald Trump. The Electoral College is an accident waiting to happen and we have to deal with that at some point in American history. Why not now?”