Raskin Dips Out of Democratic Retreat to Hear Trump Ballot Case

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) said he played “hooky” from the House Democrats’ annual caucus retreat to attend Supreme Court oral arguments over whether Donald Trump’s actions at the Jan. 6 Capitol riot disqualify him from returning to the White House.

Raskin, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee who led the second impeachment effort against Trump, was one of few members of Congress to attend the arguments, which lasted more than two hours on Thursday.

The justices are weighing a Colorado Supreme Court ruling that found Trump isn’t eligible to hold office against because he engaged in an insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021, when the former president’s supporters stormed the US Capitol in an effort to block the certification of the 2020 presidential election.

In an interview following the argument, Raskin said he decided to attend because his Republican colleagues in the Senate — most of whom voted against convicting Trump of having incited an insurrection during the second impeachment trial — “kicked the can” to the courts to hold Trump accountable for his actions.

“In our constitutional democracy with separate branches of government, the law is the product of a dialogue between and among the branches, and I wanted to hear for myself and see for myself what the justices were thinking about this,” Raskin said.

The visit was hardly out of character for Raskin, who spent more than two decades as a constitutional law professor at American University’s Washington College of Law. Raskin also served the House select panel investigating the Jan. 6 attack.

Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), who serves on the Senate Judiciary Committee and is the son of a former US solicitor general, also attended, a spokesperson confirmed.

Other Republican senators posted on Twitter, rebranded as X, that they visited the high court earlier in the morning to support the former president. Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.), standing in front of the courthouse, said in a video posted on X that the Colorado voters’ legal theory “twists the words of our Constitution into something that has never been.”

Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) also posted that she visited the Supreme Court “to show my support for President Trump.”

The high profile argument attracted roughly 100 members of the public, who began lining up for a seat on Tuesday afternoon. Some people came to protest, including Stephen Parlato, a Boulder, Colorado resident, who held a sign calling Trump a “mob boss.” Dozens of US Capitol police officers looked on from across the street next to a line of police cars and trucks.

—With assistance from Jacqueline Thomsen