Busboys and Poets Books Presents: CONGRESSMAN JAMIE RASKIN
Date and Time
Apr 14, 2022 6:00 pm
Location
Takoma
235 Carroll St NW, Washington, District of Columbia, 20012
Apr 14, 2022 6:00 pm
Takoma
In this searing memoir, Congressman Jamie Raskin tells the story of the forty-five days at the start of 2021 that permanently changed his life – and his family's – as he confronted the painful loss of his son to suicide, lived through the violent insurrection in our nation's Capitol, and led the impeachment effort to hold President Trump accountable for inciting the political violence.
On December 31, 2020, Tommy Raskin, the only son of Maryland Congressman Jamie Raskin, tragically took his own life after a long struggle with depression. Seven days later on January 6, Congressman Raskin returned to Congress to help certify the 2020 Presidential election results, when violent insurrectionists led by right wing extremist groups stormed the U.S. Capitol hoping to hand four more years of power to President Donald Trump. As our reeling nation mourned the deaths of numerous people and lamented the injuries of more than 140 police officers hurt in the attack, Congressman Raskin, a Constitutional law professor, was called upon to put aside his overwhelming grief--both personal and professional--and lead the impeachment effort against President Trump for inciting the violence. Together this nine-member team of House impeachment managers riveted a nation still in anguish, putting on an unprecedented Senate trial that produced the most bipartisan Presidential impeachment vote in American history.
In his honest and heart-wrenching book UNTHINKABLE, Congressman Raskin discusses this unimaginable convergence of personal and public trauma, detailing how the painful loss of his son and the power of Tommy's convictions fueled the Congressman's work in the aftermath of modern democracy's darkest day. Going inside Congress on January 6, he recounts the horror of that day, a day that he and other Democrats had spent months preparing for under the correct assumption that they would encounter an attempted electoral coup--not against a President but for one. And yet, on January 6, he faced the one thing he had failed to anticipate: mass political violence designed to block Biden's election. With an inside account of leading the team prosecuting President Trump in the Senate, Congressman Raskin shares never before told stories of just how close we came to losing our democracy that fateful day and lays out the methodical prosecution that convinced Democrats and Republicans alike of Trump's responsibility for inciting insurrectionary violence against our government.
Through it all, he reckons with the loss of his brilliant, remarkable son, a Harvard Law student whose values and memory continually inspired the Congressman to confront the dark impulses unleashed by Donald Trump. Congressman Raskin joins us at Busboys to tell us more about this moving story of a father coping with his pain and a revealing examination of holding President Trump accountable for the violence he instigated.
The program will begin at 6 PM with an introduction from a member of our team. There will be time for Q&A with the audience before the end of the program, and you can purchase a copy of UNTHINKABLE and have it signed by Congressman Raskin. Signed copies will be available for purchase through Eventbrite. Dinner service will be available throughout the event. Please note that this event will not be live-streamed.
We recommend that viewers RSVP in order to receive updates on the event from Busboy and Poets Books.
Congressman Jamie Raskin is the U.S. Representative for Maryland’s 8th Congressional District. He served as the Lead House Manager in the second Senate impeachment trial of former President Donald Trump, which ended with a 57-43 vote to convict the president for inciting a violent insurrection against the government to overthrow the 2020 presidential election. He serves on the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol. He is serving his third term on the House Judiciary, Oversight and Administration Committees and is serving his second term on the Rules Committee. Prior to Congress, Raskin was a three-term State Senator in Maryland and a professor of constitutional law for more than a quarter-century at American University Washington College of Law. He is a magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School, where he served as an Editor of the Harvard Law Review. He has authored several books, including We the Students, the Washington Post best-seller Overruling Democracy: The Supreme Court versus the American People, and the New York Times number one best-seller Unthinkable: Trauma, Truth and the Trials of American Democracy (2022)
