Transcript: Jamie Raskin’s Harsh Takedown of Trump-Alito Call Nails It

Cheney: Yeah, the decision is imminent, and the sentencing is scheduled for Friday. It’s not much time for them to deal with it. Again, I’d be surprised if they really step in and try to stop this thing, but we’ve been surprised by a lot of what the court’s done over the last few months.

Sargent: Well, whatever happens there—and again, by the time people listen to this, they may know—what Representative Jamie Raskin said actually holds. I’m going to read from what Raskin said about this: “The mere act of having a personal telephone conversation with the president-elect while he has active interests and matters currently pending before the court is plainly sufficient to trigger a situation in which the justice’s impartiality might reasonably be questioned.” Crucially, Raskin added that Alito just brushed this off, even though it’s a clear breach of judicial ethics, and Raskin noted that it’s especially problematic when paired with Alito’s “troubling past partisan ideological activity in favor of Trump.” Raskin is really calling into question the whole arrangement between the court and Trump here, isn’t he, Kyle?

Cheney: He is. He made a reference to Alito and his wife having the flag that was associated with January 6 in their house. At the same time, he’s now known…. He’s weighing matters related to the attack on the Capitol. Alito is smart enough to know this creates an appearance problem, to take a call from President Trump. So whether there’s any sort of nefarious arrangement here or not, Alito knows exactly how this is going to look when he gets that call, It’s President-elect Trump calling you. Sure, it’s hard to turn down a call from the president, but when he’s asking for a favor, essentially, for a former clerk, you have to know that no matter how that turns out, whatever he rules is going to now be called into question because of that personal dynamic between the two of them.