Jan. 6 panel member Raskin says Trump operates ‘like best of crime bosses’

Rep. Jamie Raskin is likening former President Trump to one of New York’s notorious mafiosos, saying he “operates like the best of the crime bosses.”

The Maryland Democrat — a member of the House committee investigating last year’s Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol — told Stephen Colbert during a Monday appearance on CBS’s “The Late Show” that the 45th president is “good at what he does.”

“He’s been a con man and an operator for a long time,” Raskin said of Trump.

“He always insulates himself with several layers of lawyers, and money, and flunkies between himself and that which he orders to be done,” Raskin, who led Trump’s second impeachment trial in the House last year, told Colbert.

“You can look at so many things: Trump University, and you can look at all the allegations of sexual assault and sexual harassment. It’s amazing,” Raskin continued. “He’s like Houdini, the way he gets out of it.”

But Raskin said Trump has “met his match” in the chair of the Jan. 6 committee, Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), its vice chair, Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), and the panel itself.

Asked about frustration among some Democrats and GOP critics of Trump about the pace of indictments coming from the Justice Department related to the Jan. 6 riot, Raskin urged patience.

“I should start by saying [Attorney General] Merrick Garland is one of my constituents and I don’t browbeat my constituents,” Raskin said.

Noting the Justice Department has “brought more than 850 cases already,” Raskin said, “I know everybody is impatient because they want to see it go all the way to the top.”

“This is how organized crime investigations work,” Raskin said. “You start at the bottom with the little fish, and you keep flipping people until you get up to the top.”