when one person when a few stand with the courage that is the courage exhibited by the leaders in this room every day to stand to have the courage to say I feel fear The courage to say what is happening is wrong The courage to say that there is a way that we must chart to get through this understanding our power in the democracy we still have if we hold on to it Courage is contagious What could have been everyone What could have been That of course was former Vice President Kla Harris speaking at a summit of women leaders earlier this evening It's one of the first times we've seen her speak out since her November election loss She hasn't been out there a ton We'll see if she comes out more She also spoke about the current state of fear in our country We are seeing organizations stay quiet We are seeing those who are capitulating to clearly unconstitutional threats And these are the things that we are witnessing each day in these last few months in our country And it understandably creates a great sense of fear cuz you know there were many things that we knew would happen Many I'm not here to say I told you so [Applause] [Music] I first of all she predicted a lot of these things that were going to happen and many people are are are definitely scared We see that out there We're also seeing that people are going out in full force to resist with mass mobilization across the country including a huge nationwide rally called Hands Off Plans on Saturday And joining me now is one of the people headlining the rally in DC Congressman Jamie Rascin who is of course a Democrat of Maryland also ranking member of the Judiciary Committee Congressman it's great to see you First it's been a pretty good week for Democrats I think um a week where people saw lots of candidates announce they were going to run You saw Senator Booker do an overnight inspiring um inspiring moment on the floor Lots of good things happening Wisconsin and you're going to be the headline speaker uh for the hands-off rally as I mentioned in DC with an expected attendance of 12,500 people We'll see Where do you see this mobilization effort um against the Trump administration policies at this moment Well you know I was telling everybody back when people were complaining about where's the Democratic leadership where's the energy where's the focus that it takes a while to fully absorb the shock of these events I mean we're talking about a full-blown attempt at an authoritarian takeover of our country and a purge of federal workers and we're being hit on all fronts But now everybody is in a fighting mood I am down here in Orlando Florida with my uh buddy Maxwell Frost He just kicked off his yearlong organizing program and you know he's the co-chair of Democracy Summer We're going to be announcing Democracy Summer were hoping to have more than a thousand young people across the country working full-time uh on Democratic campaigns and studying with great Democratic heroes uh of the past Um the energy is extraordinary It's astounding What is this a Thursday night There were I don't know 300 350 people just packed in the firefighters hall and lots of people couldn't get in Um everywhere all over America people understand the stakes now The entire country as we know it um is on the line with these people and they are in a full-blown effort to turn the government into a gangster state and Donald Trump is doing everything in his power to disable the crime and corruption fighting capacity of the FBI and the Department of Justice so he can just use it to go after his political adversaries meantime um you know the the real corruption is just running a muck and these people are not opponents of corruption waste fraud and abuse as they keep saying they are agents of corruption and instruments of waste and fraud throughout the government It's interesting I mean you and I have talked about and you've done town halls in in red districts nearby That's something that's happening We've seen tens of thousands of people show up at rallies Obviously this Saturday will be something the the Senator Booker's evening on Monday night really inspiring evening I think is one of the first moments that people felt like oh there's something really amazing happening in Washington DC or people a lot of people saw it which is a good thing And you're doing something I think is also really interesting Um you and your former House colleague Senator Adam Schiff now now in the Senate of course you're planning a a shadow hearing to speak with DOJ lawyers who are pressured to leave or fired by the Trump administration Um tell me more about who all of us more about who you're going to be speaking to What do you hope people will hear and and help people people may everybody may know what a shadow hearing is but help them understand that too just in case Well it's a shadow hearing only because the Republicans won't do it They won't have a hearing on the people who are standing up against this reign of error and reign of terror that we're experiencing So one of our witnesses is Ryan Coswell who was an attorney in the Office of Public Integrity at the Department of Justice And you remember how the very conservative US attorney for the Southern District uh Danielle Sassoon said "No way Nothing had changed in the facts of Mayor Adams' case Nothing had changed in the evidence or the law and she was not going to go along with uh instructions from uh you know the the central headquarters in DC to uh destroy the grand jury indictment." Um so she resigned Then her top deputy resigned remember he said you'd have to be a I think he said a coward or a fool to go along with this He was also active in the federalist society and had clerked for a conservative Supreme Court justice Um well this guy Ryan Coswell uh will be the first person uh to speak about having also resigned He was in that group of seven lawyers who left their jobs rather than participate in that fraud against justice because uh the grand jury found that there uh was probable cause to indict Mayor Adams for bribery and other corruption charges and it was being dropped just in an unprecedented and deeply corrupt way because he had agreed to join Donald Trump's political team So he's one Another is Liz Oyer who was uh the US pardon attorney Um she refused to go along with a completely corrupt and baseless uh attempt to uh pardon Mel Gibson and to restore his gun rights She thought that Well we'll hear from her about why she did that I'm very fascinated to hear what exactly she's gonna say I'm very excited to see another witness whose name is Rachel Cohen who was uh an associate at the uh prominent and once luminous but now totally tarnished law firm Scatteren Ararps and she wrote a letter basically saying that the law firms and lawyers have got to stand up for the rule of law as officers of the court as people pledge to the constitution and not cave under to Donald Trump's humiliating pressure and agree to do you know um millions of dollars worth of pro bono work for his pet right-wing causes thereby completely changing the nature of those law firms and I think hundreds of other legal associates at those big firms signed on to say "Look we had signed on because we wanted to learn to become great lawyers and to stand for the best values of the profession but not to cave under and to capitulate and appease people who are promoting a totally authoritarian program and steamrolling the First Amendment equal protection due process rights as we see with immigrants college kids you know people speaking out So anyway these are all people who are standing up at this moment and we wanted to highlight them Of course the Republicans wouldn't do it so we're doing an alternative shadow hearing with the Democratic members which I think is great It's easy for people to move on from these stories too All of them sound fascinating Thank you for doing that Thank you for appearing with me tonight making the time Really appreciate it