On Friday, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) held a press conference to discuss President Trump's speech at the Department of Justice.
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NewsTranscript
00:00All right, well, welcome and thank you all for coming.
00:11The tirade we just witnessed is one more grim landmark in the spreading authoritarianism
00:16of this administration, and it is a brand new embarrassment to the once revered Department
00:24of Justice.
00:26It's fascinating that the president used the word BS to describe the case against him,
00:33which resulted in dozens of criminal convictions, because that was the same word that his own
00:39attorney general, William Barr, used to describe his deranged claim that he had won the 2020
00:45presidential election when Joe Biden beat him by more than 7 million votes, 306 to 232
00:51in the Electoral College.
00:52That was the word that Attorney General Barr, even one of his greatest defenders, used to
00:58describe his delusional claims about how there was election fraud and election irregularities.
01:05No other president in American history has stood at the Department of Justice to proclaim
01:10an agenda of criminal prosecution and retaliation against his political foes.
01:18This thoroughly partisan and delusional diatribe was a staggering violation of the traditional
01:25boundary between independent criminal law enforcement and presidential political power.
01:32The speak we just witnessed is a desecration of the essential values of the storied department
01:38in every way.
01:40It's an insult to the thousands of professional lawyers who go to work at the Department of
01:45Justice every day to enforce the rule of law, not the personal vendettas and partisan
01:52games of a politician.
01:56President Grant and Congress created the Department of Justice in 1870, five years after the Civil
02:01War, in the throes of Reconstruction.
02:04It was an exercise of Congress's powers under Section 5 of the 14th Amendment, which had
02:09just been added to the Constitution two years before.
02:12The purpose of the department was to protect the newly freed African American population
02:17in the South against escalating violence by the Ku Klux Klan and unrepentant secessionists.
02:25Congress wanted to protect the voting rights of the emancipated population against racial
02:31disenfranchisement schemes.
02:32Now the Department of Justice, which first set out to defend the rule of law against
02:38white supremacy and vigilante violence, has become a department of injustice, cruelty,
02:45favoritism, and unfairness.
02:47One of Trump's first acts was to try to nullify the very first sentence of the 14th Amendment,
02:53which establishes that all persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject
02:58to the jurisdiction thereof is a citizen of the United States.
03:02And they tried to destroy that, leading to at least four federal courts invalidating
03:08this executive order, an Obama judge, a Biden judge, a Reagan judge, and even a Trump judge.
03:15And the Reagan judge said it was the easiest case he ever had to decide.
03:19You don't have to be a lawyer to know what's wrong with that executive order or any of
03:23the other ones.
03:24You just have to know how to read.
03:26And that judge was very clear about it.
03:28Now until now, the basic concept of the rule of law in our history has been the idea that
03:33no one is above the law.
03:35There was, to be sure, law under King George, but it was a law that the monarch and the
03:41lords imposed on the rabble, the peasants and the poor.
03:45But it never applied to them, never applied to themselves.
03:49In the 18th century, the American Revolution overthrew the kings, the lords, and the feudal
03:54barons to establish a nation where we would have a nation where all would be equal under
04:01the law.
04:02As Tom Paine put it, in the monarchies, the king is law, but in the democracies, the law
04:09is king.
04:10But amazingly, we now have a president in the 21st century who believes he's a king,
04:16and he believes that the king is the law once again.
04:19The first seven weeks of this radical experiment in neo-monarchism has been a disaster for
04:25the rule of law, and for the Constitution, and for the First Amendment.
04:30There have been 120 federal cases filed against Donald Trump all over the country, and he
04:38has lost already in more than 40 courtrooms across the land where temporary restraining
04:46orders and preliminary injunctions have been issued against his lawless attack on the Constitution.
04:55This Department of Justice started out by empowering law enforcement.
05:02The original Department of Justice started out by empowering law enforcement against
05:06insurrectionists and extremists.
05:10This DOJ started out by empowering insurrectionists and extremists against law enforcement.
05:22President pardon, I'm sure you think so, because President Trump pardoned more than 1,500 insurrectionists.
05:34All right, President Trump pardoned more than 1,500 insurrectionists, hundreds of whom
05:46were extremists who violently assaulted our police officers with stun guns, chemical spray,
05:55batons, broken furniture, fire extinguishers, and Trump flags.
06:05This Department of Injustice has gone even further, and maybe he's got a pardon, that's
06:11why he's so excited today, I don't know.
06:14But this Department of Injustice has worked aggressively to get courts to dismiss unrelated
06:22criminal charges against pardoned January 6th convicts.
06:28There are people who were pardoned on January 6th who have had cocaine charges, well, there
06:40are January 6th felons who've had cocaine charges, drug charges, gun charges, sawed-off
06:46shotgun charges, hand grenade charges against them, dismissed by this Department of Justice,
06:54and that was never covered by the original pardon.
06:57At Trump's Department of Justice, law and order means Trump will twist the law for you
07:03if you take orders from him, and that's, of course, what they did with Mayor Adams.
07:09And maybe I'll take a break here, and I'll have something to say at the end about the
07:13Adams prosecution and the other people who've been let go as they've barreled through a
07:18pro-corruption agenda at the Department of Justice.
07:23But let me say this, Donald Trump has sacked more than a dozen of D.C.'s best career criminal
07:31prosecutors because they worked to successfully convict January 6th insurrectionists.
07:40Many of them members of extremist groups and violent street gangs.
07:48This makes no sense.
07:50They're firing the best criminal prosecutors in Washington because they did their jobs
07:56against people like him.
07:58Congratulations, buddy.
08:00That's how the Nazis got started.
08:02You go have your own rally, all right?
08:08All right, now, I would now like to go to our originally scheduled program, if this
08:19gentleman would allow us to.
08:22I'm introducing Sean Brennan.
08:27I'm introducing Sean Brennan, who's a former assistant United States attorney, a prosecutor
08:35in the U.S. Attorney's Office in the Capitol Siege section, who was fired by that man's
08:40hero Donald Trump because he prosecuted January 6th insurrections.
08:46Please welcome Sean Brennan.
08:48We'll take questions after, and I'll call on people.
08:50You go interview that guy, all right?
09:02On January 31st, 2025, at about 5 p.m., I received a text message that hit me like a
09:11gut punch.
09:13I had just completed three weeks of training, intensive training alongside over a dozen
09:18of my colleagues, to begin working as a prosecutor, prosecuting local violent crime, and specifically
09:24in my case, domestic violence.
09:28That evening, the AUSA, whose caseload I was set to take over that very next Monday,
09:34texted me to introduce me to a victim of domestic violence here in the district.
09:39They said, this is Sean.
09:42He's going to be the one who will help you with your case.
09:46I was devastated because by that point, I knew I would not be able to help this victim
09:51of domestic violence secure justice.
09:55Because that night, I had already received this letter.
10:01This letter said that my hiring as an AUSA hindered interim U.S. Attorney Ed Martin's
10:08ability to implement President Trump's agenda, setting aside the fact that it is squarely
10:16not the role of the Department of Justice to implement any president's agenda.
10:22It's hard to imagine what agenda would be hindered by prosecuting violent offenders
10:29of domestic violence here in the district.
10:32Of course, I didn't have to think very hard to figure out why I was really fired, because
10:38it said so right here in this exact letter.
10:42Echoing language from the President's Executive Order pardoning the defendants from the January
10:476th cases, I was told that I was fired for perpetrating a grave national injustice by
10:54seeking accountability for those who, through political violence, sought to interrupt our
10:59peaceful transfer of power.
11:01Now, it goes without saying that anyone who has watched any video from January 6th, anyone
11:09who has listened to any of the testimony of the heroic officers who fought to protect
11:14the Capitol that day, knows that no grave national injustice was perpetrated by trying
11:20to hold those people accountable.
11:23Still, with the almost immediate focus on retribution and firings, it became clear that
11:30President Trump's language from that Executive Order seeking a process of national reconciliation
11:36was nothing but empty rhetoric.
11:38However, I still had faith, because as a prosecutor, it is a guiding principle for me that no one
11:46is defined, even criminal defendants, by their worst day.
11:51I had hoped that many of the defendants in my cases who I had seen articulate what appeared
11:57to be genuine expressions of remorse, I had hoped that they would take this new opportunity
12:02to start afresh.
12:05However, that's unfortunately not what we have seen.
12:08In the weeks since the pardons were enacted, I have heard of defendants in my cases who
12:13seemed genuinely willing to take accountability for their actions at sentencing, suddenly
12:19turn around and send harassing emails to FBI agents who investigated their cases, to seek
12:25out prosecutors on social media to taunt them.
12:29They have been emboldened.
12:31They have been told by their Commander-in-Chief that not only what they did was right, but
12:36they are the victims.
12:38Let that sink in.
12:39They are being told that they are the victims, not the officers who told me on many occasions
12:45they did not know if they would be able to return home to their families that night on
12:48January 6th.
12:50Now, I became a lawyer because I believe in the rule of law, but when we have people at
12:58the highest levels of government, both in the presidency and in the Department of Justice,
13:04telling violent rioters that political violence is okay as long as it's in support of the
13:10right person, that is incompatible with the rule of law and incompatible with the very
13:16virtues that the Justice Department is supposed to espouse.
13:21As Attorney General Bondi has said, the Department of Justice is the one department named after
13:27a virtue.
13:28The virtue of justice.
13:30As a prosecutor, my goal was never to win a case, my goal was to act in pursuit of justice
13:37and to stand in court representing the United States, not any individual president.
13:43It's a dark day for our country when it appears we have leaders in the Department of Justice
13:47who refer to themselves as the President's personal lawyers instead of what they really
13:52are.
13:53Lawyers who swear an oath to the Constitution to defend all Americans.
13:59Thank you very much.
14:04Thank you, Sean Brennan.
14:07I'd like to now introduce Brandon Yarrow, the former Assistant Chief Immigration Judge
14:13for the Executive Office for Immigration Review, United States Air Force veteran from Texas.
14:19Please welcome Mr. Yarrow.
14:26Thank you all very much.
14:27Mr. Raskin, thank you for having us here and giving us this platform to share our stories,
14:31our experiences that we've had over the last few weeks.
14:35I stand here just as a citizen and a staunch supporter of the Republic that this gentleman
14:40has been shouting about for the last few minutes.
14:43I have served as a public servant for over 20 years in various roles in various agencies,
14:51and I think it is very convenient and poetic that I'm giving this statement here about
14:59three blocks from where my dedication to public service started.
15:04I was on a fall semester of my third year in law school, and I was working at the Department
15:11of Justice in the environmental crime section, and that fall happened to be the fall of 2001.
15:18So my office was three blocks, again, right down the street during September 11th of 2001.
15:26We had to experience that as staff members with the Department of Justice.
15:33After the attacks on the towers in the Pentagon, we were evacuated from our office.
15:39The metro wasn't working, cabs weren't available, and me and my supervisor had to walk from
15:47our office to the 14th Street Bridge to try to get back to Alexandria where we both lived.
15:53They wouldn't let us cross the bridge.
15:57There's police officers there that wouldn't let us walk on foot across the bridge, and
16:01so people were literally driving up and picking up people to various towns in Alexandria and
16:07Annandale and things like that.
16:10And that experience then shaped, again, the next 20 years of my life, which has been dedicated
16:14to public service.
16:17After my second year in law school, I was accepted into the Air Force Judge Advocate
16:21Corps and knew that after that, that our nation would be preparing for war.
16:29I entered in 2003, in April of 2003, I entered the Air Force as a military JAG, Judge Advocate
16:36General, as an attorney, and my career in the public service ended exactly four weeks
16:42ago today, with not only me, but six of my colleagues who were doing the same job that
16:49I was doing.
16:51But I was in the Air Force for six and a half years.
16:54I held positions as a prosecutor, defense counsel, and senior trial counsel.
16:59After that, I joined the Department of Homeland Security and represented the government in
17:04removal hearings before the immigration courts.
17:07While I was with the Department of Homeland Security for those six years, I served two
17:13terms as a special assistant United States attorney in Las Vegas and in Dallas, Texas.
17:20In Dallas, Texas, I worked on a very involved H-1B visa fraud, and I did various other immigration-related
17:28prosecutions in both of those two positions.
17:31I then had the opportunity to join the U.S. Attorney's Office back in the District of
17:35Nevada.
17:36I spent about four years in that role.
17:40I prosecuted a variety of violent, federally-charged felonies, to include fentanyl death cases,
17:49as well as gun cases, organized crime, white-collar crime, immigration-related offenses.
17:55I then joined the Federal Public Defender's Office for the District of Nevada and spent
18:02two years defending people that were charged with federal offenses.
18:08Then, based on this experience, I believe I was hired by the Department of Justice and
18:15the Executive Office of Immigration Review to become an assistant chief immigration judge.
18:21This position is a supervisory judge position.
18:24I not only had a docket where I heard cases before at the immigration court, but I supervised
18:30a staff, I supervised the immigration judges, the attorney advisors that worked with us,
18:35and the rest of the staff at these courts.
18:39I initially was with the Buffalo Immigration Court, but within a month I was assigned to
18:45the Batavia Immigration Court, and then I assumed ACIJ supervisory responsibilities
18:52over the Detroit, Ulster, and Hartford immigration courts.
18:56Again, this was three and a half years ago when I started that position, and in a very
19:01short time I had supervisory authority over five immigration courts.
19:06Most recently, last year, I was asked to come down to the Houston, then Smith Street, now
19:12Houston Jefferson Street immigration court, and supervise the expansion and the move of
19:18half the court back into a new facility.
19:21We did that expertly with the staff that we had there and the folks that I worked with,
19:28and again had a docket there, and still supervised four other courts at that time.
19:35Again, that all ended four weeks ago when on Friday afternoon I received an email from
19:43the acting director of EOIR that indicated that I had been terminated.
19:48No cause was given, no notice, no justification for the termination other than my continued
19:54employment was not in the best interest of the agency.
19:58Again, not only me, but there were six of my colleagues who had very similar roles as
20:02ACIJs throughout the courts that were also terminated with no notice, no justification,
20:09and no validation on that day.
20:12We are all professionals that adhere to the rule of law.
20:16We follow the policies that were put in place by our superior officers and superior supervisors,
20:23and our positions were that we are there to support all of the staff and ensure that the
20:28immigration cases that came before our courts were heard expeditiously, fairly, and due
20:33process was protected for those people that came before the courts.
20:39The only reason that I'm here is to demonstrate that when people are removed unfairly, unlawfully,
20:48there is an impact.
20:49It's an impact on me, it's an impact on my wife, it's an impact on my family, and it's
20:53an impact on the community at large.
20:57This is even more shocking to me, again as a 20-year public servant, that I was a disabled
21:04veteran, and the protections for disabled veterans were also not followed in my case.
21:09I never imagined in a minute that I'd be up here talking about my termination or removal
21:14unexpectedly from federal service after dedicating 20 years and more of myself as a disabled
21:23veteran to them being terminated.
21:25So I just wanted to say on behalf of me and my six colleagues that we are supporting each
21:32other and the treatment that we received was, again, was unjustified and was unwarranted.
21:41And again, they do the same things that I was doing, they dedicated themselves to their
21:47jobs every day.
21:48None of us had any disciplinary issues or performance issues whatsoever.
21:53So again, I thank Mr. Ruskin for allowing me to share my story about my and my colleagues'
22:00wrongful termination.
22:02Thank you very much.
22:03That was excellent.
22:04Thank you for that excellent speech.
22:08You know, that's the worst tirade I've heard since Donald Trump's speech, okay?
22:19I'm liking, I'm calling up now Brendan Ballew, the former U.S., assistant U.S. attorney for
22:26the U.S. Attorney's Office for D.C., the Capitol Siege Section, and former special counsel
22:32for private equity in the Department of Justice's Antitrust Division, a real DOJ lawyer, Brendan
22:39Ballew.
22:47I'll try to, I speak kind of quietly, but I'll try to speak up for all of you.
22:52My name is Brendan Ballew.
22:54I, like Sean, was a former prosecutor in the Capitol Siege Section, prosecuting January
22:596th rioters.
23:02As all of you know, January 6th was an attack on our democracy, but it was also an attack
23:07on specific officers, the officers that were trying to defend the Capitol and the people
23:12in it that day.
23:14Now, 140 officers, 140 officers were assaulted that day.
23:25And in working to prosecute those cases, I talked to officers that had been assaulted,
23:32that had been attacked with flagpoles, wrenches, pipes, dragged into the crowd, and threatened
23:40to be killed.
23:41These rioters did all of these things, but they did warn that many of these rioters were
23:45violent before the attack on the Capitol.
23:49For instance, one rioter stabbed a 19-year-old to death in a public park.
23:56Another rioter, when he was in the military, shot an unarmed, handcuffed civilian in the
24:03head.
24:05These are two of the rioters that were pardoned by Donald Trump on January 20th.
24:11They are free now, and almost all of them can buy guns.
24:16Now, I think what's important to understand is that because of these mass pardons, America
24:22is facing a future of vigilante and militia violence in a way that it hasn't for generations.
24:31You know, this is something that happens in illiberal countries like Iran, Argentina,
24:40Colombia and so forth at various times in their history, but it's something that we
24:43haven't had to deal with since the Ku Klux Klan.
24:48But that time is coming to an end, and that violence, unfortunately, is in our future.
24:54Now, this administration has been perfectly happy to talk about the pardons that they've
25:02issued, but they've been less willing to talk about some of the things that are happening
25:06in this building right now.
25:08Things like the fact that they have disbanded the public integrity section that prosecutes
25:15corrupt politicians, that they've ended prosecutions under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which
25:21prohibits foreign bribery, that they are dismantling the criminal section of the antitrust division
25:28that goes after price-fixing conspiracies, like, you know, price fixings in the egg industry,
25:34for instance.
25:35This administration hasn't been willing to talk about those things, because if they were
25:40made public, they would be enormously unpopular.
25:44And so I want to say thank you all for coming out, given the weather, given the commotion,
25:50because I want to say what you're doing is really important.
25:54The more attention that is paid to the fact that the infrastructure for going after rich
26:00criminals is being dismantled, the more attention that we can pay to that basic fact, the less
26:06popular it will be and the less likely it will be that it happens.
26:10So thank you to the journalists that are covering these stories, thank you to the activists
26:14that are working on these, thank you to the citizens that are following this and that
26:17are paying attention.
26:19Thank you, Brendan.
26:20That was awesome.
26:21That was awesome.
26:22All right, let's see who really has respect for law enforcement, because I'm about to
26:28bring up a great police officer who defended the democracy, who defended the Congress,
26:34who defended the Capitol on January 6th.
26:37Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Officer Harry Dunn.
26:42Wow, um, that's crazy, right?
26:55However, this is exactly the type of person that was at the Capitol on January 6th.
27:00That individual doing all the screaming, Donald Trump would call him a useful idiot.
27:05That guy's a useful idiot.
27:06And that's why Donald Trump pardoned all the people on January 6th.
27:10That's why he pardoned them.
27:11To have them on standby.
27:12That guy, yeah, he's a, he's a useful idiot.
27:16He's saying God bless Donald Trump.
27:17When is the last time he's been to church?
27:19Is this how God acts?
27:20Is this how God acts?
27:23Is God okay with what happened on January 6th?
27:26He's doing all that talking.
27:27Listen, it's a slap in the face, an insult, and listen, it's been four years, and I wish
27:30that I didn't have to be out here talking about January 6th still.
27:34Why?
27:35Because Donald Trump has not let it go.
27:36Not only did he not let it go, he put on retainer, a mob, to do it again.
27:43What happened on January 6th, he pardoned everybody and let them know that it's okay.
27:47Now listen, I don't know what accountability looks like.
27:49I don't know what this fight is going to continue to look like, but we have to keep
27:53on showing up.
27:54We have to keep standing up.
27:55I'm so grateful to be standing with these fine gentlemen right here who refuse, even
28:00after they were fired, wrongfully in many cases.
28:03Some resigned.
28:04You can't quit.
28:06You can't quit.
28:07That's my message right now.
28:08I don't know if it's going to be okay, but what's going to happen?
28:11How do we, how do we, sorry, I'm getting all flustered with this guy because I just want
28:15to get all, I'm just want to go like, ah.
28:18What we have to do is make sure we keep showing up.
28:20We only win by fighting and keep, he wants us to stop right now and we go away right
28:25now.
28:26He wins.
28:27Absolutely not.
28:28He's a useful idiot and that's why Donald Trump loves people like him.
28:38Thank you officer John.
28:39I just want to underscore one thing that he said.
28:43The new US attorney that they appointed in Washington DC sacked more than a dozen prosecutors
28:51just because they prosecuted January 6th insurrectionists.
28:54Then they asked for a roundup of all the FBI agents, thousands of FBI agents who worked
29:00on the most massive criminal case in American history.
29:03All right.
29:04Do we have a couple of questions?
29:09Will you show some respect for the blue?
29:16Are there any questions?
29:18Or maybe we should just do it randomly and people can, you can approach people individually
29:24because it's impossible to hear up here.
29:27Thank you all for coming and I want to thank all of our great speakers.
29:30Please give them a round of applause for all of their great work.
29:42Yeah.
29:43Okay.
29:44Yes.
29:45You're a disgrace to your entire family.
29:46Okay.
29:47One by one, one, one by one questions.
29:59If anybody wants to.