GUNFIGHTER Mk 124

Jamie Raskin Warns Trump Allies: Federal Pardons Won't Stop Us from Coming After You On Meet the Press, Jamie Raskin laid out exactly what Democrats plan to do if they take the House. Asked whether preemptive pardons from President Trump would undermine their investigations, the Maryland congressman did not hesitate. "Well, it might be an incentive towards greater lawlessness within his administration," Raskin said. "That's obviously what he's trying to do. He's trying to say, go with me on my full criminal tour of the federal government, shaking down the federal government and turning every part of the executive branch into a money-making operation and a get-rich-quick scheme for him and his family." Raskin then made the threat plain. Pardons, he explained, "apply only criminally and not civilly. Secondly, they don't apply to state prosecutions, only to federal." His advice to anyone working with Trump: "everybody should follow the law and don't end up—certainly the lawyers should not end up where a lot of Donald Trump's lawyers, like Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, have ended up: disbarred, suspended, prosecuted in different ways for participating in his corruption." This is not oversight. This is a preview of the lawfare Democrats intend to unleash. Raskin, who led the second impeachment and pushed criminal referrals as a key figure on the January 6 committee, is signaling that even if the President uses his constitutional pardon power, Democrats will hunt Trump's people through civil lawsuits and friendly state prosecutors. The message is clear: do not associate with this administration or face professional and legal destruction. Democrats spent years insisting that no one is above the law. Now their likely Judiciary Committee chairman is openly promising that the law will be used as a weapon against political opponents, regardless of pardons. They are not talking about accountability. They are talking about revenge.