umm, so, he didn't have anything in there about take some time off. (laughs) and, uh... ♪ crowd: usa! usa! usa! usa! jamie raskin: why is america such an extraordinary country? we are not unified by virtue of being one ethnicity, or one ideology, or one religion. we're unified by one constitution and one rule of law, and then the values under our constitution. it is an aspiration. it's a challenge to us. the constitution shouldn't be some kind of fetish document. it should be the living commitment that we all have to make democracy work in service of the common good. that is the constitution that comes out of the civil war and reconstruction. that is the constitution that we've been fighting for since then. and we've got to keep fighting for it. crowd: trump! trump! trump! trump! trump! trump! trump! trump! trump! trump! (crowd applauding) chief justice roberts: please raise your right hand and repeat after me, i, donald john trump, do solemnly swear. president trump: i, donald john trump, do solemnly swear. man: who is free? crowd: no one is free. man: who is free? crowd: no one is free. president trump: to preserve, protect and defend the constitution of the united states. so help me, god. chief justice roberts: congratulations, mr. president. man: yeah! ♪ (protesters chattering) ♪ (bomb exploding) (bomb exploding) man: fuck you, man. woman: why don't you stop. president trump: mothers and children trapped in poverty in our inner cities. rusted out factories scattered like tombstones across the landscape. and the crime, and the gangs, and the drugs that have stolen too many lives and robbed our country of so much unrealized potential. this american carnage stops right here and stops right now. (audience applauding) jamie raskin: when donald trump talked about american carnage in his first inaugural address, it was a pivotal moment because american carnage, of course, was not a description of anything, it was really a promise on his part. when i saw the violence on january 6, i thought about the american carnage speech. he had foreshadowed the whole thing. american carnage was not what he was running against, it's what he was running for. ♪ (audience applauding) ♪ (audience applauding) reporter: we can now officially project that the democrats will take control of the house. reporter: now, for the first time, donald trump will have an effective opposition party that will be able to thwart his agenda. crowd: jamie! jamie! jamie! jamie! jamie! jamie raskin: thank you! crowd: jamie! jamie! jamie raskin: all right. our next speakers are very special people, if you guys would listen up for a second. just pay attention for one second. i'm bringing on two of my three kids, who are gonna introduce me so i can make my speech. please welcome tommy raskin and tabitha raskin tonight. come on up! tommy raskin: good evening, everybody. (audience cheering) i'm tommy raskin. tabitha raskin: i'm tabitha raskin. (audience cheering) so, if the best representative is the one who works the hardest and who is the most committed, then your representative, my dad, is the best. (audience applauding) ♪ tommy raskin: my father first ran for office when i was 10. and since that time, i've kept an informal tally of all the questions that i've gotten on the campaign trail. and the one i get the most is, do you think your dad is gonna win? i suppose my familial hubris is showing, because i never doubt that he's gonna win. it's not because of his irrepressible, unrivalled wit, charm, and humor, though there is that. it's not because of his smashing good looks, though he has that to recommend him as well. it's because he has deep and abiding moral convictions and he is fighting the trump administration every step along the way, ensuring that our democratic values remain safe. (audience applauding) jamie raskin: thank you, tommy. thank you. (audience cheering) ♪ all right. (audience cheering) (audience cheering and whistling) thank you 8th congressional district! thank you for the honor of allowing me to represent you for another term. i will give it my all. i will give it my all. (audience cheering) it was an amazing feeling to be in the majority. we were gonna have the chance to investigate a lot of the corruption and misfeasance of the trump administration. but, of course, right when we got into the majority and the new term started, donald trump shut the government down. (air whooshing) tabitha raskin: take the tie off. let's see what it looks like without the tie. hannah raskin: that's better. tabitha raskin: much better. so, stand up. let's see. come on, man, we're trying to help you out! okay. all right. that's doable. here. back up, back up, back up. hannah? hannah raskin: it's better. tabitha raskin: dad, that's good. that's fine. jamie raskin: what's wrong with the tie? tabitha raskin: you're too fancy on the top and too casual on the bottom. jamie raskin: and now, i feel like i'm just too casual. tabitha raskin: no, no, no. no, dad, it's a food drive, right? jamie raskin: right, right. tabitha raskin: so then, you should be casual. ♪ reporter: this is the third government shutdown on president trump's watch as lawmakers failed to reach an agreement over border wall funding the president is demanding. reporter: roughly 800,000 federal employees will not be getting paid during the shutdown. more than half of them will still have to report to work, the rest are being furloughed. that means they won't go to work, but they also won't get paid. jamie raskin: hello, jamie raskin. nice to meet you. good to see you. tali: this is wonderful. very, very- jamie raskin: oh manna is the best. i love these guys. tali: oh, yeah. jamie raskin: i'm about to make my contribution right now. i'm giving my entire january salary away since the government shutdown and everything. and so i'm giving it to all the groups that are on the front lines. that's you guys. jackie: yeah, well, we really appreciate being part of that, and we appreciate what you're trying to do when you're on the hill. jamie raskin: well, thank you. hello. hi. nice to see you, what a pleasure! woman: nice to see you, too. i voted for you! jamie raskin: thank you so much. you know, i'm here with manna and we're collecting food just to help give away to the people who are affected by the government shutdown. woman: ok, i make sure i give something when i come back. jamie raskin: thank you so much. jamie raskin: hey. man: mr. raskin. jamie raskin: hey. man: don't give him the fucking wall. jamie raskin: all right. man: thank you for your work. woman: i haven't emailed your office lately, but i'm sure i will. (both laughing) woman: whenever i get angry, i just fire something off. jamie raskin: we have a system of checks and balances here, and you don't hold the federal workforce and the people of the country hostage in order to get your way in a policy debate. he wasn't able to get the mexican government to pay for his wall. he wasn't able to get congress to do it, even when he controlled the house and the senate with republican control over the last two years. now, suddenly, the democrats take over the house. we won 40 seats and he decides to shut the government down. it's just an unacceptable way to do business in a democracy. ♪ ♪ (keyboard typing) ♪ ♪ i never thought that trump could turn out to be a good guy, but i thought maybe, all of this right wing authoritarian populist stuff, all this mussolini stuff, would just fade away quickly when he got in to office, that cooler heads would prevail, the conservative republican establishment would kind of take over and run things like a standard, run of the mill, right- wing presidency, as opposed to an existential threat to constitutional democracy. (audience clapping) reporter: donald trump today took to the rose garden to wave a white flag, agreeing to reopen the government without funding for his border wall. president trump: i am very proud to announce today that we have reached a deal to end the shutdown and reopen the federal government. (audience shouting) jamie raskin: i think he thought that he was going to practice extortion, political extortion and that we would give in. and we stood strong. (crowd shouting) (car engine revving) ♪ reporter: now, for the first time, donald trump will have an effective opposition party that will be able to thwart his agenda. reporter: they have the power to investigate, they have the power to subpoena, and most importantly, the end of one party rule in washington. reporter: congressional oversight of the president of the united states finally begins in earnest today. williams: trump's former personal lawyer, michael cohen, will give public testimony before the house oversight committee, and that'll be televised live. jamie raskin: in his opening statement, which we got last night, he said the president was a racist, a con-man and a cheat. and my reaction was, tell us something we don't know. (laughing) so, you know, i'm basically looking at him like a renegade refugee from a organized crime family and he's gonna tell us sort of the internal dynamics of the trump operation. (people chattering) jamie raskin: the big story in my mind is that we have a president who has turned the government of the united states of america into a money-making operation for himself, for his family, for his business, and for his friends. and so, we wanna try to get the best, most fine-grained portrait we can of what's taking place within the trump operation. and then we've got to start to ask the question about whether this is a president who is an actual threat to the character of our republic. oh my god, look at all those people! woman: they all want to get a seat. (people chattering) (cameras snapping) (gavel bangs) chairman cummings: mr. cohen, if you would, please rise, and i will begin to swear you in. raise your right hand. cohen: my loyalty to mr. trump has cost me everything, my family's happiness, friendships, my law license, my company, my livelihood, my honor, my reputation, and soon my freedom. and i will not sit back, say nothing and allow him to do the same to the country. indeed, given my experience working for mr. trump, i fear that if he loses the election in 2020 that there will never be a peaceful transition of power, and this is why i agreed to appear before you today. (people applauding) jamie raskin: michael cohen did issue a stark warning to the country that if donald trump lost, there would be no peaceful transition, there's no way he would accept it. that is a frightening and startling thing for the president's own lawyer to say about him. but it seemed far off at that point to a lot of people. and people have said from the beginning, there's no way he would do that. there's no way anybody would do that. ♪♪ is this where your grandparents cut a rug, with a jitterbug? or returned from war, dreaming of the possibilities ahead. ♪♪ where your dad waited for his dad to come home from the factory. is this where they gathered on their front steps, with fats domino on the breeze... ancestry can guide you to family discoveries in the 1950 census. see what you can uncover at ancestry. age is just a number. and mine's unlisted. try boost® high protein with 20 grams of protein for muscle health. versus 16 grams in ensure high protein. boost® high protein also has key nutrients for immune support. boost® high protein. so many people are overweight now, and asking themselves, boost® high protein also has key nutrients "why can't i lose weight?" for most, the reason is insulin resistance, and they don't even know they have it. conventional starvation diets don't address insulin resistance. that's why they don't work. now there's release from golo. it naturally helps reverse insulin resistance, stops sugar cravings, and releases stubborn fat all while controlling stress and emotional eating. at last, a diet pill that actually works. go to golo.com to get yours. ♪ reporter: we've got a big story coming out of washington this morning. today is the public release of the mueller report. reporter: after 23 months of secrecy, this morning, answers for the american public, when attorney general william barr releases a redacted version of the nearly 400 page mueller report. reporter: was there a conspiracy in the election between russians and americans trying to help donald trump? was there obstruction or other crimes arising out of that investigation? reporter: mueller never concluded either way whether the president obstructed justice, so william barr made a determination himself. jamie raskin: you know there's an attempt, i think, here to preempt congress's role. we are the lawmaking branch of government. we are the primary and dominant branch of government. and we are the ones who will decide whether there were high crimes and misdemeanors committed by this president. barr had done a masterful job of propagandizing the public about it, basically pulling the wool over everybody's eyes about what was really in the report. he took a complicated set of facts which showed lots of wrongdoing and condensed it to no collusion, no obstruction. barr: there was no evidence of the trump campaign collusion with the russian government's hacking. president trump: there was no collusion, there was no obstruction, there was no nothing. jamie raskin: neither of those things was in there, but that was the mantra. you could hear it 500 times a day. i mean it's just the classic propaganda tactics of authoritarian regimes. jamie raskin: i feel like i pulled an all-nighter. but i didn't pull all-nighter, but i think it's just that feeling like being back in college, just like, cramming for like, three hours straight. woman: going up. (footsteps pattering) abramson: do you think that impeachment is more on the table now? jamie raskin: i don't think it's any more or any less than it ever was. you know my attitude from the beginning has been that impeachment should not be a fetish for anybody, but it should not be a taboo for anybody either. it's not a panacea for everything that ails us in america, it's not gonna get health insurance to people and it's not gonna lower prescription drug prices. but it is the people's last line of self-defense against a president who insists upon acting like a king and trampling the law. the great thing about america, what we love about america is that it is a constitutional democracy, it's government of the people, by the people, and for the people, and if somebody decides to disrupt the basic fabric of our republic, and to violate the law, we've got to take that seriously even... this is a system of laws, and the president is not above the law, the president is bound by the law, just like everybody else. we're all taught in third grade that we have three co-equal branches, and we're not a co-equal branch of government, we're the pre-eminent branch of government. there's a reason we're in article one: all legislative power is vested in the congress of the united states. so the constitutional sovereign power of the people to create the country, to write the constitution, flowed into congress. and what's the core job of the president? to take care that the laws are faithfully executed. that's it. and if the president doesn't take care that the laws are faithfully executed, get rid of him. ♪ i overslept. ♪ (footsteps pattering) can i use your phone to call julie? carter: of course. jamie raskin: you're not going to want to film this. you've found me on the one in a thousand days when i'm really, really angry. because my phone doesn't work, i also don't know my schedule. so if there's anything on my schedule, i'm blowing people off. and i'm taking the dogs for a walk because i got up late, because my alarm didn't work, because my phone died, because we didn't get me a new phone. hey john. john: this is quiet. jamie raskin: how's it going? john: good morning. (dog growls) (dog barking) jamie raskin: oh, potter. john: there goes the quiet. (woman laughing) jamie raskin: here, will you take this? potter, you stop that attitude. good to see you. i am so upset right now. the president was engaged in all kinds of corruption, and he just gave the finger to the separation of powers and congress's oversight role. so, there was great frustration building up. (footsteps pattering) there was a very strong sense in the country and in our caucus that we needed to formalize it into an impeachment inquiry or investigation. but i think that the democratic leadership was nervous about the politics of it. (footsteps pattering) some of our members started to say, trump's not worth it. the president's not worth it. the question is whether the constitution is worth it and whether the country is worth it. ♪ ♪ the question is whether the constitu aleve x.orth it its revolutionary rollerball design delivers fast, powerful, long-lasting pain relief. aleve it, and see what's possible. (door closes) (footsteps pattering) jamie raskin: the problem with these tv interviews, i can't get anything done. i have no time to work. kabba, hello. oh, wow. coulibaly: i come bearing gifts. jamie raskin: now, let me explain this. so this is kabba. kabba is my friend. he's my constituent. and he's gonna change my life so people, so the newspapers don't describe as disheveled anymore. that's the plan. that's fantastic! shall i try one of them on? coulibaly: i would like you to. jamie raskin: all right, why don't i try one of them on. coulibaly: which one do you want? jamie raskin: i'll try this one. coulibaly: and we have jamie here, twinning with me in our custom pinstripe suits. jamie raskin: very nice. i like mine. (all laughing) that's beautiful. coulibaly: jamie, come on out so we can- jamie raskin: wait. i gotta put my own shoes on. but i'm embarrassed to put my old shoes on with my new suit. (woman shouting) you know, i didn't get into politics to impeach donald trump. i didn't think donald trump was gonna be in the white house when i ran for office. i ran as a constitutional law professor. i know one thing really well, which is about the constitution and the rule of law and american democracy. and it became clear to me that trump was actually attacking the constitutional underpinnings of american government. woman: thank you. jamie raskin: my pleasure. thank you kabba. ♪ for most of the history of humanity, of our species, people have lived under kings, and queens, and dictators, and despots, and bullies, and authoritarian systems. democracy is very much the exception. ♪ the whole point of the constitution is to keep people in office from just doing whatever they want. it was the idea of lawless discretion in government officials that motivated the american revolutionaries to write a constitution that would bind to people in power. so we've got to make democracy work, and it's something we do together ♪ we need everybody out organizing to get everybody registered to vote in 2020. and we've got to counter all of these fascistic style tactics that are coming from donald trump. as hard as we were fighting trump and trying to stop him from his rampage in america we were also working to turn out a landslide for the democrats in 2020. fudge: hey, jamie. jamie raskin: hi, good morning. how are you? fudge: how are you jamie raskin: good to see you. fudge: everybody likes the hairdo. it's a plus. jamie raskin: so, i understand. (woman laughs) yeah, yeah. you guys want to spend the rest of your lives looking at my forehead, that's all right. (jamie laughs) fudge: no, so much younger. jamie raskin: really? oh, i appreciate it. fudge: we like it. jamie raskin: thank you, much. ♪ i'm gonna lay down my sword and shield ♪ ♪ down by the riverside ♪ ♪ down by the riverside ♪ ♪ down by the riverside ♪ ♪ i ain't gonna study war no more ♪ (audience cheering) audience: aoc, aoc,