Lead impeachment manager for Donald Trump’s second House trial, January 6 committee member, cancer survivor, and now—copy editor? Congressman Jamie Raskin added another line to his lengthy resume on Friday in a tart response to embattled New York Representative George Santos, who had penned a poorly written letter thanking the Maryland Democrat for voting against kicking him out of the House of Representatives.
Santos’s letter came two days after most Republicans and 31 Democrats voted against a resolution led by five of Santos’s fellow first-term New York Republicans who have been anxious to distance themselves from their disgraced colleague. The 179-213 tally fell far below the two-thirds majority needed to expel a House member.
“I am writing to express my gratitude to you for standing up to the principals of due process and the presumption of innocence until proven guilty,” Santos wrote. In copy edits handwritten on his copy of the letter and later reported by Politico, Raskin cheekily let Santos know that “principals” should have been “principles.”
“Dear Congressman Santos, I appreciate your note and only wish someone had proofread it first,” Raskin wrote. “Meantime, you should apologize to the people of New York for all of your lies and deceit. I know you must have thought you could get away with it all in the party of Trump, but the truth is resilient.” The Maryland representative ended the letter with a “P.S.”: “It’s not shameful to resign.”
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The idea is to not set a precedent that a member of the House can be removed before being found guilty of a crime. He’s also at least trying to stop the GOP from employing their usual tactics of “Do what the Democrats did to us, only dumber” and filing random retaliatory motions to expel outspoken Democrats like Tlaib.
He wasn’t voting in favor of Santos. He was voting against opening Pandora’s box.
Excellent explanation. Thanks.
You say that as if Republicans wouldn’t just gleefully throw it open the first chance they got anyway.
Doesn’t mean you open it for them.
I know it’s easy to lump all of the Republicans together as a crazy bunch of morons, but there’s a handful of them that posess a functioning brain and are just evil. It seems like Raskin has a functioning brain and understands this action might have consequences for his party later down the line.
And honestly keeping him around causes a certain amount of chaos that is damaging to the Republican brand. Not sure if that’s the intent buts it’s certainly a welcome side effect.
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yep - it’s all performative. like voting for some bullshit that will prop them up with the dumb yokel vote knowing full well it’s not going to pass anyway. they know how it’s going to go.
I like you. That’s exactly what it is - all politicians are performative and I appreciate you bringing attention to that.
Genuinely thank you.
They will revisit once he has actually been found guilty. If they do it now, it sets a dangerous precedent.
guilt or innocence has never stopped the repugnants from going after a democrat, or from fully supporting their own.
party over principles.
Yeah I’ve seen the dance too many times. Everyone knows so and so did xyz but until very particular thresholds are met, no action is actually made. Otherwise everyone’s got expulsion on the brain.
This doesn’t really explain anything though. So what?
They do a performance to achieve some objective. So I think it matters what kind of performance they do. A fire and brimstone performance is less likely to be effective for me than the bleeding heart version.