Dem who led Trump impeachment publishing memoir on Capitol riot and tragic death of his son a week earlier

The senator’s book will hit bookshelves in January

In the wake of the Capitol riot, Democratic Congressman Jamie Raskin plans to release a memoir detailing his experiences during the insurrection and the death of his 25-year-old son a week earlier.

The book will be called "Unthinkable: Trauma, Truth and the Trials of American Democracy", and will be released on 4 January, 2022.

The Washington Post reported on the upcoming book.

“I wrote ‘Unthinkable’ as a way to make sense of two traumatic events in my life,” Mr Raskin said in a statement on Wednesday. “This book is a labor of love written to capture the dazzling life of a brilliant young man in crisis, who we lost forever, and the struggle to defend a beautiful nation in crisis, a democracy that we still have the chance to save.”

Mr Raskin was an active part of the effort to impeach Donald Trump in the aftermath of the Capitol riot, and has been a vocal critic of Republican attempts to downplay the insurrection.

In interviews after the riot, he recounted scenes of terrified lawmakers who thought they were going to die.

“All around me people were calling their wives and their husbands, their loved ones, to say goodbye,” he said during Mr Trump's second impeachment trial.

He recalled his son-in-law and daughter hiding under a desk and said they thought "they were going to die”.

During his address, he recalled rioters beating a police officer with a pole bearing an American flag, saying they used it "spear and pummel" him, "ruthlessly, mercilessly, tortured by a pole with a flag on it that he was defending with his very life."

“People died that day,” Mr Raskin said. “Officers ended up with head damage and brain damage. People’s eyes were gouged. An officer had a heart attack. An officer lost three fingers that day. Two officers have taken their own lives.”

The senator recalled congressional members removing their pins so they could not be identified as lawmakers by the Trump supporters rioting outside their chambers.

He told the gathered senators that what happened during the Capitol riot "cannot be our future”.

The week before the riot, Mr Raskin's 25-year-old son, Tommy, died from suicide after struggling with depression.

"Tommy was remarkable from the beginning," Mr Raskin told NPR. "He had a photographic memory and, like some other kids in our family, knew all the presidents and vice presidents in order. But it wasn't his mind that marked him as so extraordinary. It was his heart. The stories of his love and compassion are absolutely astounding."