Lead House impeachment manager Rep. Jamie Raskin appeared to tear up while delivering an argument on the Senate as he recounted his personal experience during the Jan. 6 breach of the U.S. Capitol building and his daughter’s reaction to the attack.
The day before the Capitol attack, the Democratic Maryland representative buried his 25-year-old son Tommy, who died by suicide on New Year’s Eve, as Raskin and his wife revealed in a long blog post about their son’s life and depression.
On Jan. 6, Raskin brought to the Capitol with him his 24-year-old daughter Tabitha, who is an algebra teacher, and his son-in-law Hank, who is married to his other daughter Hannah — “Who I consider a son too, even though he eloped with my daughter and didn’t tell us what they were going to do because it was in the middle of COVID-19,” Raskin said.
“The reason they came with me that Wednesday, Jan. 6, was because they wanted to be together with me in the middle of a devastating week for our family. And I told them I had to go back to work because we were counting electoral votes that day, Jan. 6. It was our constitutional duty,” Raskin said. “And I invited them instead to come with me to witness this historic event, the peaceful transfer of power in America.”
His daughter and son-in-law had told Raskin that they heard Trump supporters would be in Washington to protest the counting of Electoral College votes and asked if it would be safe for them to attend. Raskin assured them that it would be.
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer offered Raskin his office that day. “Colleagues dropped by to console us about the loss of our middle child, Tommy,” Raskin said. “Lots of Republicans, lots of Democrats came to see me. And I felt a sense of being lifted up from the agony, and I won’t forget their tenderness.”
His daughter watched from the House visitor’s gallery as he made a speech and then returned to Hoyer’s office, not knowing that the Capitol had been breached.
“By the time we learned about it, about what was going on, it was too late,” Raskin. “I couldn’t get out there to be with them in that office. And all around me, people were calling their wives and their husbands, their loved ones to say goodbye.”
Raskin said his chief of staff, daughter, and son-in-law locked themselves in the office, “hiding under the desks, placing what they thought were their final texts and whispered phone calls to say their goodbyes.”
“They thought they were going to die. My son-in-law had never even been to the capitol before,” he said.
When they were reunited, Raskin told his daughter how sorry he was.
“I promised her it would not be like this again the next time she came back to the Capitol with me,” Raskin said. “You know what she said? She said, ‘Dad, I don’t want to come back to the capitol.'”
The Maryland congressman’s voice broke, and he paused and put his hand over his face, rubbing his brows as he appeared to hold back tears.
“Of all of the terrible, brutal things that I saw and that I heard on that day, and since then, that one hit me the hardest,” Raskin said.
