JUDY WOODRUFF: For more
takeaways from last
night's hearing, we
turned to a member of

the January 6 Select Committee,
who also served as the
lead impeachment manager

in former President Trump's
second impeachment trial.

He is Maryland Democratic
Representative Jamie Raskin.

Congressman Raskin, thank
you very much for joining us.

What do you think the
committee accomplished
with last night's hearing?

REP. JAMIE RASKIN (D-MD): Well,
we showed not only that the
whole plot against the 2020

presidential election was based
on a big lie, but that Donald
Trump knew it was a big lie,

that all of his closest
legal advisers, including
Attorney General William Barr,

the White House counsel,
all of them told him
that this was nonsense,
there was nothing there.

And yet he proceeded
anyway. And he engaged
in the seven-part plan

to try to strip Joe Biden
of his lawful majority in
the Electoral College vote.

He tried to usurp the will
of the American people
and replace the will of
a sitting president who

wanted to seize the
presidency and essentially
become an autocrat, a
tyrant over the people.

And we are also showing -- and
you saw a good piece of this
last night -- the way in which

mob violence was
recruited to the cause,

and there were domestic violent
extremist groups that came
together to overthrow the

election and to engage in
insurrectionary violence against
the constitutional order.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And,
Congressman, given that, what
do you say to Republicans
who are out there, like

Congressman Jim Banks,
who spoke today with my
colleague Lisa Desjardins,
who are saying that the

committee used selectively
edited videos, that it
was mainly theatrical,
and that you really didn't

do -- prove anything with regard
to President Trump directing
what happened at the Capitol?

REP. JAMIE RASKIN: Well, they
have obviously been over our
hearing with a fine-tooth comb.

In other words, they come
back, and they cannot
challenge a single fact.
They cannot challenge a

single piece of evidence,
but they have to call
the whole thing a sham,
which is meaningless.

They have tried that in
court too, and all of the
courts that have looked
at it have rejected their

claims that somehow we're
unlawfully composed.
No, they say we are a
perfectly lawfully composed,

bipartisan entity, unlike our
critics, who are all of one
particular political party.

And we are engaged in the
essential legislative work
of trying to investigate
an assault on the

constitutional order
itself. And the first rule
of thumb for a democratic
government is survival

and self-preservation against
those who would tear it down.

And it's sad, because, as
we have been able to show
already, a lot of them

were very upset about what
had happened. They were
begging the president to act.

They were very tough on the
president for the first few
days later. Then, essentially,

Donald Trump brought
them all back into line.
It's a sad thing to say.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Congressman, one
other point that Republicans
continue to make is that

House Speaker Nancy
Pelosi and others in the
Democratic leadership
prevented, in effect, the

National Guard from being
there to bolster what
security, the Capitol
Police were able to provide.

What's the response to that?

REP. JAMIE RASKIN: Well, that's
utterly false and baseless.
There's nothing to support that.

And we will explain,
best we can, how

the National Guard's response
was so slow. But it's the
president of the United States

who oversees the Army, which
oversees the National Guard
of the District of Columbia,

which has no governor for
itself. So that's a bizarre
argument for them to make.

But they're throwing up a lot
of ridiculous stuff because
they don't want to focus on

the essence of this
investigation, which is that we
have a disappointed president

who was defeated by more than
seven million votes, 306 to
232 in the Electoral College,

who refused to accept his
defeat, and decided to
disseminate propaganda
about this big lie,

and then work in a whole
bunch of different ways
to try to illegitimately

undermine and destroy his
opponent's victory in the
presidential election.

And that is not going to work
for us as a constitutional
democracy in this century.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And,
Congressman, given how divided
the country is politically,

how do you expect to change
the minds of the millions
of Americans who today

believe former President Trump
that the election was stolen?

REP. JAMIE RASKIN: Well,
it's divided because of this.
It's divided because there

has been a big lie. It's
divided because there's been
this onslaught against fair

elections across the country
administered by Republicans,
Democrats, independents.

I think it's a responsibility
that's not just on
the shoulders of the

nine of us on this committee or
everybody in Congress. It's the
responsibility of everybody,

and the parents to talk to
their kids and teachers to
talk to their students and to

explain how a constitutional
democracy works,
and that there's a
difference between fact

and fiction, there's a
difference between truth and
lies and conspiracy theories.

And the struggle to
defend democratic
institutions is interwoven

with the struggle to arrive
at the truth and to tell
the truth to the people.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Representative
Jamie Raskin of Maryland,
a member of the House

January 6 Select Committee,
thank you so much.

REP. JAMIE RASKIN: It's always
a pleasure to be with you.