OPINION:
House Judiciary Committee’s Rep. Jamie Raskin, ranking member from Maryland, has filed a 10-page bill to establish a 17-member commission to determine if President Trump is mentally and physically fit to hold the high office, and if not, to remove him from power, a la the 25th Amendment.
This, from the guy who violated the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge, or STOCK, Act not once, not twice, but three times. This, from one of the Democrats’ most corrupt members.
“Rep. Raskin slapped with ethics complaint over failure to properly disclose stock shares that his wife, Sarah Bloom Raskin, [President Joe] Biden’s nominee to be the Fed’s top banking regulator, reportedly received from Reserve Trust,” Fox Business reported in 2022.
Then this, from the Center for Renewing America in February of 2024: “CRA Files Ethics Complaint Against Rep. Jamie Raskin for Violating Federal Financial Disclosure Law.”
And then this, from the substack of investigative journalist Dave Levinthal, just this week: “Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin violates STOCK Act for a third time.” The post goes on to reference Raskin’s previous violations, before diving into his mention of a third — a required disclosure that “is about three-and-a-half months late — in violation of the STOCK Act for a third time in three years.”
You’d think Raskin would have enough to keep himself busy without launching a new impeachment crusade against this president.
The commission would be made up of two appointees each of the Senate majority and minority leaders, the House speaker and the House minority leader. That’s eight. Another eight would come by way of appointments of former “high-ranking executive branch officials” — vice presidents, the secretaries of the State Department or Defense Department or Treasury Department, as well as attorneys general and surgeons general. Democrats would make four of those appointments; Republicans, the other four. That’s another eight.
Finally, the 16 commissioners would then vote to appoint a 17th to serve as the chair.
And here’s the gist of it: “The panel’s findings would have the power to temporarily remove the president from office only if the vice president signed off on them.”
In other words: This is the Democrats’ latest play to impeach Trump — but without having to go by the established rules and constitutional provisions for impeachment.
The Constitution already lays out exactly what’s necessary to impeach a president, and it’s not a commission. It’s a House vote, followed by a Senate vote to convict. Similarly, the 25th Amendment already establishes a system of removing a president who is no longer “unable to discharge the powers and duties” of the office — and that is to set the vice president in the role of president, with Congress deciding the ultimate fate.
So basically, Democrats want to remove Trump from office. But they know they don’t have the votes in Congress to impeach — or the crime — so they’re trying for the 25th Amendment, making a case that his recent remarks on Iran prove him unfit for the presidency.
As NBC News reported it: “Dozens of congressional Democrats called for President Donald Trump to be removed from office … after he used extreme rhetoric against Iran that included threatening to wipe out ‘a whole civilization.’”
Except — Trump didn’t actually call for the wiping out of a whole civilization.
Rather, Trump expressed regret that the Iranian regime was so stubbornly refusing to abide by the terms of peace and regional and global cohabitation that the sad consequence would be a continuation of war that would result in the destruction of a whole civilization.
Trump’s exact words, on Truth Social: “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will.”
See the difference?
Democrats want it played in the press that Trump, a la dictatorial loon, has gone on a madcap ethnic cleansing of Iranian innocents. That justifies their call for impeachment. That justifies their clamor for a 25th Amendment removal.
But Trump, commander-in-chief of an American military that’s engaged in war with Iran started 47 years ago — was actually expressing regret about the tragedies of what the Iranian regime was bringing on itself, on its people, on its country.
“God Bless the Great People of Iran!” — Trump wrote, in the sign-off to his Truth Social.
That hardly sounds like the rantings of a lunatic.
Raskin is a product of a political beast called the Democrat Party, made up of corrupt, elitist, arrogant fraudsters and shysters and despicable anti-MAGA, anti-Trump, anti-American voices. The party exists in its current disgraceful form because of its friends in the media who are likewise anti-Trump and anti-MAGA.
Dig just a tiny bit beneath these Democrats’ facade and it’s easy to see how dirty they are, how corrupt they’ve become and how — to coin a word from one of their own — deplorable their ways.
Raskin thinks he’s untouchable, so he’s leading this latest charge against Trump,
In January of 2025, Rep. James Comer posted this, in response to Biden’s preemptive pardon of Raskin for his work on the January 6th Committee: “How appropriate that Joe Biden’s final act is to preemptively pardon Jamie Raskin — the man who one of the chief advocates for two unjust impeachments of [Trump] and a member of the sham January 6th Committee. Jamie Raskin will be remembered for his abuse of power, hypocrisy, consistent dishonesty …”
Yep. Democrats remember him for that, too. And that’s why they tapped him to sponsor a very dishonest, very underhanded, very sleazy measure to strip Trump of his office using the 25th Amendment.
It’s just too bad taxpayers have to pick up the tab for all of this circus show.
• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley. Listen to her podcast “Bold and Blunt” by clicking HERE. And never miss her column; subscribe to her newsletter and podcast by clicking HERE. Her latest book, “God-Given Or Bust: Defeating Marxism and Saving America With Biblical Truths,” is available by clicking HERE.
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