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Dive into the background of the nine impeachment managers Speaker Nancy Pelosi chose to present the case to the Senate in the second impeachment trial of former President Donald J. Trump, and a common thread will emerge: deep experience in the law.
All equipped with law degrees, the nine managers include Democrats who served as notable characters in Mr. Trump’s first impeachment trial and some who have spoken out forcefully against Mr. Trump in the aftermath of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
Previous impeachment trials have shown that the role of impeachment manager can bring valuable recognition to representatives and elevate their political profile. Lindsey Graham, now the senior senator from South Carolina, served as an impeachment manager in the Senate trial of President Bill Clinton. Representative Adam Schiff of California served as the lead manager in Mr. Trump’s first impeachment trial.
The six men and three women whom Ms. Pelosi chose reflect the geographic and demographic diversity within the Democratic caucus.
Here are the nine House Democrats who will prosecute the former president:
Maryland
Jamie Raskin
Representative Jamie Raskin, who began drafting the article of impeachment against President Trump mere hours after insurrectionists descended on the Capitol on Jan. 6, will serve as lead impeachment manager. His role will make him the lead prosecutor in the Senate trial.
Mr. Raskin, as a graduate of Harvard Law School and a former constitutional law professor at American University, has become known among House Democrats as a go-to expert on constitutional law. Heavily influenced by the liberal politics of his father, Marcus Raskin, who was a noted antiwar activist, Mr. Raskin has displayed a passion for the Constitution and American history.
Mr. Raskin serves on prominent House committees: the House Rules Committee, which sets the terms of debate in the House; the House Judiciary Committee; and the House Committee on Oversight and Reform.
Aside from contributing to the article of impeachment, Mr. Raskin also wrote the resolution that called on former Vice President Mike Pence to invoke the 25th Amendment to relieve Mr. Trump of presidential powers.
Mr. Raskin’s involvement as lead impeachment manager comes as he is coping with the recent loss of his son, Tommy, who died of suicide on New Year’s Eve. Just a day after his son’s funeral, Mr. Raskin arrived at the Capitol to certify Electoral College results. By the end of the day, he had openly denounced the attack on the Capitol and recalled the words of Thomas Paine, for whom his son was named: “In the monarchies, the king is the law. But in the democracies, the law will be king.”
Colorado
Diana DeGette
Representative Diana DeGette, first elected to the House in 1996, is no stranger to impeachment proceedings. In 2019, she presided over the House debate to impeach Mr. Trump, and now as one of the impeachment managers appointed to prosecute the former president, she will have the chance to further flex her deep experience in the House.
“No one is above the law in this country, not even former presidents,” Ms. DeGette wrote on Twitter on Monday.
Ms. DeGette received her law degree from New York University in 1982. Before her time in Congress, she was a lawyer focused on civil rights, and she later served two terms as a state representative in Colorado.
While in Congress, she has made health policy and reproductive rights her legislative priorities. She was a co-author of the 21st Century Cures Act, signed into law in 2016, which was intended to accelerate biomedical research and product development and to promote efficiency in bringing innovations to the treatment of patients.
Representative David Cicilline, one of the co-authors of the article of impeachment brought against Mr. Trump this month, is as a member of the House Judiciary Committee and worked to investigate Mr. Trump during the impeachment in 2019. He has also helped oversee other investigations of Mr. Trump and his advisers, such as an inquiry into the possibility of campaign finance violations.
Mr. Cicilline leads the Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial and Administrative Law and has been a staunch watchdog of big tech companies like Amazon, Google and Facebook. Before his election to Congress, Mr. Cicilline worked as a public defender in the District of Columbia and served two terms as mayor of Providence, R.I., and four terms in the Rhode Island House of Representatives.
In an op-ed for The New York Times, Mr. Cicilline held Mr. Trump responsible for inciting violence at the Capitol on Jan. 6 and said the impeachment charge was intended to “defend the integrity of the republic.”
“The president must be held accountable,” Mr. Cicilline wrote. “That can happen only by impeaching him for a second time and convicting him in the Senate.”
Texas
Joaquin Castro
As a member of the House Intelligence and Foreign Affairs committees, Representative Joaquin Castro has made known his commitment to seeing the former president tried and convicted.
Mr. Castro, who voted to impeach Mr. Trump in 2019, sat in on hearings as a member of the Intelligence committee during the former president’s first impeachment inquiry and during public questioning ahead of the drafting of impeachment articles.
A Harvard-educated lawyer, Mr. Castro worked in private practice before his days in Congress and previously served five terms in the Texas Legislature. He led the Hispanic Caucus during the 116th Congress and has been an outspoken opponent of the Trump administration’s immigration policies.
California
Eric Swalwell
Since being elected to Congress in 2012, Representative Eric Swalwell has helped investigate evidence against Mr. Trump during the first impeachment and will now lean on his experience as a former prosecutor in his role as an impeachment manager.
As a member of the House Intelligence and Judiciary committees, he played an active role in the 2019 impeachment proceedings, helping draft a subpoena that led to former special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s testifying before Congress, which prompted Democrats to call for impeachment.
In his book, “Endgame: Inside the Impeachment of Donald J. Trump,” Mr. Swalwell chronicled his personal account of Mr. Trump’s impeachment. Outside of impeachment, Mr. Swalwell has frequently criticized Mr. Trump’s leadership, such as his approach to climate change as wildfires ravaged parts of California last year.
Mr. Swalwell attended law school at the University of Maryland and returned to California to work as a prosecutor in the Alameda County district attorney’s office. He briefly ran for president in 2019 before dropping out of the race to seek a fifth term in Congress.
On Monday, Mr. Swalwell conveyed a sobering tone as he posted a photo on Twitter of Democrats delivering the article of impeachment to the Senate.
“My prayer for our country is that no one ever walks this path again,” he wrote.
California
Ted Lieu
On Jan. 6, hours after the Capitol attack that resulted in five deaths, Representative Ted Lieu had three suggestions for how politicians should move forward after certifying the Electoral College results: Impeach Mr. Trump, invoke the 25th Amendment or have Mr. Trump resign.
“Congress cannot just go home like nothing happened,” he wrote on Twitter.
Mr. Lieu, who drafted the article along with Mr. Cicilline and Mr. Raskin, has been unrelenting in his criticism of Mr. Trump, often calling out the president on Twitter, making Mr. Lieu’s account a popular attraction for Democrats.
His appointment as an impeachment manager comes after his election to the House in 2014. He serves on the House Judiciary Committee and the Committee on Foreign Affairs.
Before his election to Congress, he studied computer science and political science at Stanford University and graduated with a law degree from Georgetown University. He later joined the Air Force and served in the Judge Advocate General’s Corps. He currently serves as a colonel in the reserves.
Mr. Lieu is a former member of the California State Assembly and the State Senate.
Virgin Islands
Stacey Plaskett
Although Delegate Stacey Plaskett could not vote to impeach Mr. Trump, she will now be able to make the case against him in his Senate trial in her role as an impeachment manager. (Because she represents a U.S. territory, Ms. Plaskett is not permitted to cast votes on the House floor.)
Before being elected to Congress, she served as an assistant district attorney in the Bronx and a political appointee to the Justice Department.
Ms. Plaskett was born in Brooklyn to parents from the Virgin Islands and graduated from American University’s Washington College of Law. After living in New York and Washington, she moved to the Virgin Islands and worked in the private sector.
In response to being named an impeachment manager, Ms. Plaskett said she was “honored” and “humbled” to be given the responsibility.
“Donald J. Trump has been and continues to be a clear and present danger to our republic, to our Constitution, and to the people of this nation,” she said in a statement on Jan. 12. “I will do my duty and defend our blessed country.”
Colorado
Joe Neguse
Elected to the House in 2018, Representative Joe Neguse is the youngest and has the shortest tenure of the nine members chosen to prosecute Mr. Trump.
In 2019, shortly after his election to Congress, he supported Mr. Trump’s first impeachment. In a statement about his appointment as an impeachment manager, Mr. Neguse said that Mr. Trump’s perpetuation of “harmful misinformation about the integrity of election results” had contributed to the Capitol riot on Jan. 6.
Mr. Neguse serves as a member of the House Judiciary Committee and the House’s Progressive Caucus.
Mr. Neguse’s parents fled Eritrea almost four decades ago and came to the United States as refugees. They eventually settled in Colorado to raise Mr. Neguse and his sister. Mr. Neguse is a graduate of the University of Colorado Law School and served on the university’s Board of Regents. He later led the state’s consumer protection agency.
Pennsylvania
Madeleine Dean
A proponent of the first impeachment inquiry against Mr. Trump, Representative Madeleine Dean was quick to endorse a second impeachment after she and her colleagues had holed up in the House gallery on Jan. 6 as insurrectionists threatened to invade the House chamber.
Ms. Dean is serving her second term in the House and is a member of the Judiciary Committee.
Before her time in Congress, she served in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives and earned a law degree from Widener University. After opening a private practice, she went on to work as an assistant professor at La Salle University, where she taught writing and ethics.
On Monday, she wrote on Twitter that bringing forth the article of impeachment against Mr. Trump would help the nation heal after the Capitol riot.
“That’s what this is about — healing the wound of this insurrection and holding the former President accountable for his actions,” she wrote.
Reporting was contributed by Sheryl Gay Stolberg, Zach Montague, Emily Cochrane and Aishvarya Kavi.
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