Jamie Raskin isn’t waiting around to see what happens if Democrats take back the House. He’s already thinking about what comes next.
The Maryland Democrat and former constitutional law professor is preparing for the possibility of a third impeachment of Donald Trump, a prospect he says could be justified by more than a dozen potential offenses.
“There are certainly more than a dozen impeachable offenses,” Raskin told HuffPost during an interview last week.
Raskin is in line to become chairman of the House Judiciary Committee if Democrats win control of the House in November.
And he knows exactly what impeachment can—and cannot—do.
He helped lead Trump’s second impeachment after the Jan. 6 attack, just as he watched the first impeachment collapse in the Senate. He also saw federal and Georgia investigations into Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election ultimately fail to remove him from political life.
Then came Trump’s criminal conviction in New York.
Trump still returned to the White House.
So Raskin isn’t exactly under any illusion that impeachment alone will solve the Trump problem.
But that hasn’t stopped him from preparing.
As the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, Raskin has spent much of Trump’s second term sending letters, demanding answers and laying out potential areas of investigation that could eventually become much more serious if Democrats regain subpoena power.
And while he’s doing that, he’s also been crisscrossing the country campaigning for Democrats.
He has visited 22 states, raised roughly $3 million for Democratic candidates and spent time campaigning for both progressives and moderates—including Democrats running in heavily Republican districts.
But impeachment remains very much on his mind.
### Raskin has a long list
Raskin pointed to several actions by Trump that he believes could constitute impeachable offenses.
Among them: launching a war without congressional authorization, usurping Congress’ power over federal spending, improperly imposing taxes on foreign goods, directing prosecutions against political opponents and profiting from the cryptocurrency industry while pardoning people convicted of financial crimes.
Trump himself has repeatedly predicted that Democrats will try to impeach him if Republicans lose the House.
“I’m going to be impeached. They’re going to impeach me. They have no idea why,” Trump said at a campaign event last month.
That prediction may not be as far-fetched as it sounds.
But Raskin is making clear that Democrats aren’t going to treat impeachment as an automatic first move.
“We have to identify where, exactly, impeachment and trial and conviction fit into the complete legislative and policy agenda of the country,” he said.
“Maybe it’s the number one most important thing, or maybe it’s the eighth most important thing, or maybe we don’t know yet, and that’s why I say impeachment is not a fetish with us.”
For many Democratic voters, impeachment has become synonymous with accountability that never quite arrives.
Trump was impeached twice. Republicans acquitted him twice. And he’s now president again.
Several Democrats who built their political profiles around fighting Trump have also run into trouble with their own voters.
Rep. Diana DeGette, a Democrat who helped Raskin manage Trump’s second impeachment, lost her primary.
Alexander Vindman, a key witness in Trump’s first impeachment, also lost a Democratic Senate primary earlier this month despite a major fundraising advantage.
Rep. Dan Goldman, who rose to prominence as majority counsel during Trump’s first impeachment, lost his primary to a former Democratic Socialists of America member.
The political environment has changed, too.
Ahead of the 2018 midterms, the prospect of removing Trump from office energized Democratic voters.
In 2026, Democrats are putting much more emphasis on the economy and kitchen-table issues.
One House Democrat recently described impeachment as “old hat.”
Another warned that simply returning to the failed impeachment strategy could send Democrats “back into the minority pretty quickly.”
Even Democratic leaders are trying to lower expectations.
“We haven’t ruled anything in and we haven’t ruled anything out,” House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries said recently.
Jeffries said Raskin and House Oversight Committee ranking member Robert Garcia would take the lead and that Democrats would follow the facts.
Raskin understands the skepticism.
“When we contemplate impeachment, we have to be realistic about the Republican Party as an authoritarian cult of personality,” he said.
“Democrats in Congress have proven that we are not afraid of impeachment in any way. At the same time, having been through the prior two, we also understand it’s not a panacea.”
In other words: **Raskin knows impeachment is on the table. He also knows it isn’t a magic wand.**
### The Democrat Democrats can agree on
That may be why Raskin has emerged as an unusual figure inside his party.
He has credibility with Democratic leadership, but he also has the trust of the progressive wing.
Rep. Maxwell Frost, the youngest member of Congress and a vice chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, described Raskin as a mentor and a “bridge builder” and “coalition builder.”
Robert Garcia, who succeeded Raskin as the top Democrat on the Oversight Committee when Raskin moved to Judiciary, called him a congressional “legend.”
But Raskin isn’t spending all his time preparing subpoenas. He’s campaigning. A lot.
He has traveled around the country supporting Democrats in races that party leaders might otherwise overlook, including candidates running in districts that have been reliably Republican.
Last week, he appeared with Callie Barr, a Democrat challenging Republican Rep. Jack Bergman in northern Michigan.
Barr is one of roughly a dozen candidates benefiting from Raskin’s “impossible-to-inevitable” fundraising project.
Bergman, a retired Marine Corps lieutenant general, isn’t impressed.
“I’ve served with Jamie for a decade, but he doesn’t represent the values that we have in Northern Michigan,” Bergman told HuffPost.
Raskin sees something different happening.
He believes the MAGA movement may be losing its grip, particularly in places where Democrats can recruit credible local candidates.
During a recent nine-day swing through Michigan, Raskin said he didn’t see a single MAGA hat or sign despite spending much of his time in rural districts.
That may be anecdotal. But Raskin believes the broader political picture is starting to shift.
Trump’s approval rating has fallen, Republicans have questioned some of his priorities, and the president’s foreign policy has created political headaches over rising gas prices.
Meanwhile, Trump has continued putting himself at the center of nearly everything—from his foreign policy agenda to renovations at the Kennedy Center and his increasingly extravagant approach to the White House.
Raskin thinks voters are noticing.
“People are really angry at Trump,” he said, pointing to Trump’s focus on “gilded bathrooms,” the transformation of the Reflecting Pool, the Kennedy Center and what Raskin described as “ripping off the taxpayers.”
If Democrats do win the House, Raskin could soon have the subpoena power to investigate it all.
And if those investigations uncover conduct he believes rises to the level of impeachment, he’s made one thing clear: He’ll be ready.
