can watch the first tonight, live, at eight eastern on c-span. earlier this week, representative jamie raskin, a member of the committee, spoke about the ongoing investigation with the washington post. >> hello, welcome to washington post live. i'm leigh ann caldwell, i'm an anchor here at washington post live, and coauthor of the early 202 newsletter. thanks so much for joining us, we have such a great interview today with representative jamie raskin of maryland. of course, we are talking to this congressman because today is the first week of the january 6th -- he is a member on that committee. congressman, thank you so much for joining us. >> thank you so much for having me, leigh ann, it's a pleasure to be with you guys. >> first, before we get started, i want to remind the audience that we do take questions. if you have questions, tweeted us at post live and we will try to ask the congressman your questions. congressman, as i just mentioned, this week is the first hearing of a series of hearings that the january six committee is holding. just a big picture, what can we expect on thursday during prime time at 8:00? >> well, i think you will see a comprehensive introduction and overview of the findings that will be laid out over the course of the month of june. we're gonna tell the story of a conspiracy to overturn the 2020 presidential election and block the transfer of power. so this is an extraordinary and unprecedented event in our history. i mean, he really have to go back to the civil war to understand anything like it. of course, there, you have the confederates who never denied that abraham lincoln had actually won the election. they just wanted to see from the union. here we have an effort to lie about who won the election, and then, a concerted multi step effort to overturn the results of the election, and all that was backed up by a violent assault on the u.s. capitol, which drove the house and the senate members out of our respective chambers. it shut down the counting of electoral college votes for the first time in american history for several hours. >> you use that word conspiracy, your colleague, liz cheney, she was -- separate interview. so to the federal judge, david carter, he said that it was more likely than not that donald trump was a part of a conspiracy to overturn the elections. is that what the hearing is going to lay out, is that with the committee is found? >> yes, the committee has found evidence of concerted planning and premeditated activity. the idea that all of this was just a rowdy demonstration that spontaneously got a little bit out of control, is absurd. you don't almost knock over the u.s. government by accident. so, we're gonna lay out all of the evidence we found, the house resolution 503 charges us with defining what happened on january 6th. explaining the causes of what's happened. and then, ultimately, laying out recommendations that would allow us to fortify ourselves against insurrections moving forward. >> and is donald trump the center of this conspiracy? are you able to connect those dots? >> well, i, you know, people are gonna have to make judgments themselves about the relative role that different people played. i think that donald trump and the white house where at the center of these events. that's the only way, really, of making sense of it all. of course, the house in the senate, bipartisan fashion, ready determined that former president donald trump incited an insurrection by majority votes in the house and the senate. although, donald trump wasn't convicted to a thirds majority, commanding majorities found that he had in fact incited this insurrection. the select committee has found evidence about a lot more than incitement here. we are going to be laying out the evidence of all of the actors who were pivotal to what took place on january 6th. do you think that what you do it lay out this month will be strong enough for the department of justice to indict, to bring up criminal charges? >> well -- >> against anyone. >> it is best to look at what a federal judges and prosecutors themselves are saying on that. you referenced judge carter in the john eastman litigation who stated in the decision that it was more likely than not that donald trump had committed federal offenses. there are lots of people -- of course, this gives me the opportunity to distinguish between what the department of justice is doing and will do and what we are doing. we, of course, are a legislative investigative committee charged, with giving a report to the congress and to the people of united states. in a democracy, the people have the right to know the truth about our government and everything that affects it and what's going on. that is our -- the department of justice is obviously collecting evidence of crimes. i believe that they have, they are engaged in more than 800 prosecutions of people for everything from assaulting federal officers to interference with the print credible proceeding, do you conspiracy. which means conspiracy to overturn turn the government in the united states. there already multiple guilty pleas along those lines and outstanding prosecutions along those lines to. we think that there's an overwhelming evidence of this plan to overturn the 2020 presidential election. in coordination of with a violent assault on our bodies. we are going to lay it out out there. the prosecutors are going to have to sort it out with respect to individual defendants, speaking as just one member of the committee, i have confidence in the ability of the department of justice to do their job. >> stay on the department of justice, in march the asked the committee for transcripts from some of the work that you have already done. has the committee handed those transcripts over? has there been any cooperation or any additional giving of what all the information that you have received? >> i cannot speak to specifics about the evidence that we have collected. i will just say, again, speaking as one member, i believe that we are invested in in the success not only of our own committee and the congress in collecting this information and reporting it to the american people. and the congress. but we are invested in the success of law enforcement. i don't even know the details about what you are asking about specifically. i would hope that all of the evidence that we are collecting ultimately goes public and is available to the more merrick and people and also to prosecutors to see that crimes against the government of the united states are prosecute. >> is the point of these hearings and based on your investigations to lay out and connect the dots for the american public, or is it to on earth and reveal things that are new that we did not know about? >> there might be some of the latter. really, it's more of the former. we are communicating those things that we have found, when i think, is a yearlong investigation. we have a mountain of evidence about what took place. our problem is distilling the core elements of all of these events to share with the people. i hope that all of the most important material evidence will be made available to the public. we had 150 of our officers who were winded, injured, or hospitalized by the mob which unleashed violence upon us in order to break our windows, tear down our doors, invade the capital, drive the congress out of the capital and interfere with the transfer of power. and block the counting of electoral college votes. we have officers who have broken ribs, broken vertebrae, broken jaws, lost fingers, traumatic brain injuries, traumatic stress syndrome. this was an act of violence in the nation's capital unlike anything any of us have ever seen before. the investigation launched by the department of justice, i believe, is the most massive and sweeping criminal investigation by that doj in its history. nothing else even comes close to it. we are talking about an event of immense gravity and danger to the republic -- we have to make sure that we never experience like this again. it was not a tourist visit. it was not legitimate political discourse. it was not discourse of any kind. it was violence unleashed against the people of the united states and our representatives in congress. all of it was surrounding a conservative, pre-existing plot to overturn and destroy the results of the 2020 presidential election. >> i have a question from twitter, from ruth lee castle or. she asks, realistically, what legislation do you believe can get past to ensure we don't run into another january six? with emphasis on realistically. >> i appreciate that question very much. there has not been much focus yet. i understand why. on what our legislative responses are going to be. we have to get the complete story out. people need to have. it for that same reason, ruth, i don't want to pine about what's possible. what is considered possible at one moment, is very different from what's considered possible at another moment. i want to tell the complete story. and i think we need to have a far ranging inclusive public dialogue about what needs to be done in order to prevent these kinds of events in the future. a limited agenda forces reforms to the electoral count act, to clarify, for example, to know the vice -- unilateral extraconstitutional unwritten authority to single-handedly reject electoral college vote. if that's all we did, i would consider it very minimal. almost a diversion. nobody believes the vice president has that power. nobody ever believed it, including vice president pence. to his credit, serially rejected all of donald trump's overturned to try to get them to assert such power in reject electoral college votes coming in from arizona, georgia, pennsylvania, and perhaps some other states too. if we just said the vice president doesn't have that authority, that is a very limited response to a very big problem. the essential problem is that there may be political elements in the country right now that do not accept the results of the election. those elements may be organizing to try to throat democracy going forward in future elections. as early as the 2022 election and the 2024 election. we needed to solidify the rights of the people to vote against voter suppression. that is my view. we need to make certain that the creaky processes of the electoral college are not exploited to try to nullify the popular vote. again, i think the best discussion we are going to have to have after we get through all of this, and we have been able to operate and modeled bipartisan fashion, i know all of us want to maintain the bipartisan consensus in our community. >> i want to follow up really quickly on the electoral college. you have said in a previous interview that you think that entire system should be we dial or even dismantled. is that an accurate description of where you stand right now on that? >> yeah, it's no mystery or secret to anybody. my very first bill i introduced as a state senator and maryland was for the national popular vote compound. again, i speak only for myself here. and totally apart from all of this, i take in a position that the electoral college is an undemocratic relic of the early constitution. just like the state legislature selector of u.s. senators, which is something we got rid of and 1913. with the 17th amendment. just like the exclusion of women from voting, which we got rid of in 1920, in the 19th amendment. we did not start out with lincoln's beautiful vision of government by the people, for the people. we started out as a slave republic. it has been through social and historical struggle that we have opened america up. we do still have what i think are some obsolescent political institutions in the country. certainly, some obsolescent political practices. those are things that i think we need to address, whether it's in this context or another. i don't know. we will have to see and engage in that conversation and i am not someone who's afraid of conversation and compromise. that is why i'm in politics. we need to be honest about where our political institutions are and to what extent they are interfering with real democracy in america. and becoming a problem for us. certainly, january six is a day that one of my colleagues in the committee from colorado said, that is a day where the electrode votes would come in, the certificates of ascertainment from the governor's. it would be a day of celebration. it would take 15 or 20 minutes to receive all of them and it would be bipartisan drinking on capitol hill. seven people lost their lives, either on that day, or in the media aftermath of january six. if we have to look very seriously at there are going to be more attempts by bad faith strategic actors to exploit the many different steps along the way in the electoral college. to keep revisiting or threatening the popular result. again, i speak there just for myself. i am happy to have that discussion when we get through telling the american people about what happened on january 6th. and why we think it happened. >> i want to focus on vice president mike pence. who was a critical person in the lead up on january 6th. does the committee plan to call him in to testify? >> we have not been speaking publicly what our plans are with respect to specific witnesses and potential witnesses. i cannot comment on that. >> what about some of the people who were very close to him. like his top counsel, or his chief of, marc short. could they be potential witnesses in the hearing this month? >> again, i don't want to enter into specifics. we have wanted to make sure that we get as much information as possible from as many material witnesses as possible. we want to figure out exactly what happened. vice president pence was obviously the object of this political onslaught on january 6th. we need to fill in the details as much as possible about what happened there. you know, as i understand it, the purpose was to try to get pence to exercise these totally unprecedented and lawless unilateral powers asserted by donald trump. pence had to reject electoral count votes. in other words, they wanted him to single-handedly nullify the votes of tens of millions of people from arizona, georgia, pennsylvania, perhaps nevada, new mexico. that would have either clinched it for donald trump in the electoral college, or what it would've done to create a situation where nobody had a majority in the electoral college votes cast. if that were the case under the 12th amendment, it would've kicked the entire contest into the house of representatives. if you ask why they would want the house under speaker pelosi and democratic control deciding who would be president, and the senate deciding who would be vice president on the 12th amendment, well, they understood perfectly that under the 12th amendment, we would be voting not on the basis of the number one vote, which is how we usually vote, of course, but on the basis of one state delegation, one vote, and they understood that after the 2020 elections the gop was in control of 27 state delegations, the democrats have 22, in one state, pennsylvania is split down the middle with 99. that would have allowed, theoretically, for 27, 22 to 1 vote. even if they had suffered the -- they still would've had 26 votes. this is something that donald trump was very clearly aware of. there is a lot of talk about it under the 12th amendment. that could have been done in conjunction with some kind of invocation of the insurrection act. because that was another line that was being pushed hard by a number of people in trump's inner circle. we will talk about the insurrection act in the possibility that martial law also could've resulted from those events. as you say, vice president pence did the right thing. when we got out to the floor at 1:00, all of us represented with a memo that vice president pence had written explaining why he could not do what donald trump was trying to force him to do. which was to reject electoral college votes, return them to the states, there is no provision for any of that and the 12th amendment or in the electoral count act. he did the right thing on that day. he said he could not do that and for his work, and for maintaining his oath, he was driven out of the capital by a mob chanting hang mike pence, hang mike pence. was mike pence is a life in serious danger that day? as the committee found that? >> we'll watch the hearings. the hearings will tell a story about what took place on monday. >> whose names should we expect to hear over and over again throughout these hearings? what you just described sounds like, you know, what he wrote about and others, who are we gonna hear about the most? what character should be become familiar with? well johnny was the legal architect, for the so-called green bay sweep of trying to destroy joe biden's legitimate majority in the electoral college. biden had won by more than 7 million votes. in the popular vote, he had a 306 to 2:32 margin, in the electoral college. it happened to be the exact same margin that trump had defeated hillary by in 2016, 306 to 2:32, a margin that trump had announced as a landslide. the whole point was by any means necessary to destroy biden's majority in electoral college. we're gonna go through a whole series of steps that were taking. a legitimate one was of course to go to court. thankfully, we have the results of that litigation, more than 60 federal and state court judges, including eight judges nominated to the bench by donald trump himself, finding that there was no electoral fraud, there was no electoral corruption. we have a comprehensive and detailed statement by the judiciary, federal and state courts delight, rejecting every allegation of voter fraud or voter corruption affecting the outcome of this election. that should've been the end of it. but they went on to try to force the state legislatures to nullify the popular vote, and to stall electors. they went to try to get state elected officials, infamously, secretary of state brad raffensperger in georgia, just to find votes, donald trump's that, just finally the votes. that's all i want. i'm a politician, that's all i want, that's all anyone wants. finds thousands of votes. that wasn't donald trump trying to stop election fraud, that was donald trump trying to commit election fraud. they were trying to materialize votes that didn't exist, and distributes that did exist. when all of that didn't work, they moved on to other plans, including a plan that his disgraced former national security adviser was involved in to get the military to seize the election machinery and re-run the election. they will be discussion of that. all of it came down to january 6th, which is why that was a day of such explosive political consequences for our country. >> who is they? >> well, that will also -- >> we're gonna leave this recorded program to take you live to capitol hill for a hearing on the president's 2023 budget request for the forest service. forest service chief, randi moore, is getting ready to test before members of the senate of energy and natural resources committee. this is live coverage here on c-span 3. i'm pleased to welcome the chief of four service in committee to discuss president biden's 2023 budget request for the forest service. chief more, as this is your first time testifying for the committee, i wanted to publicly congratulate you on your appointment to the chief of the for services as well, thank you for joining us this morning. i know that we have lots to discuss this way, from the billions of dollars provided by the american outdoors act and the biden infrastructure lava last two years for the historical wildfire burning