Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.) wasn’t planning to run for Congress after his stint as the lead counsel on President Trump’s first impeachment.

If anything, spending months as a staffer had discouraged him from seeking office, even as he felt assured the public would weigh details unearthed during Trump’s impeachment trial as they decided whether to return him to the White House.

“I had hoped that Joe Biden would win and that Donald Trump would ride his golf cart into the sunset,” Goldman said.

Instead, Trump denied his 2020 election defeat and a mob of his supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol — events that inspired Goldman’s run for office in 2022.

“I'm somebody who lives by the Teddy Roosevelt quote that it is better to be the man in the arena than the person outside, criticizing the man in the arena,” he said.

With Trump back in the White House for a second term, Goldman is now going deeper into the arena.

In a little more than a month in office, Trump has fired 18 inspectors general, threatened to defy a court order, overseen the gutting of agencies like the U.S. Agency for International Development, fired scores of federal workers and vowed to take over various other countries.

The House Judiciary Committee is sure to be the epicenter of activity in hashing out partisan battles over the wisdom and legality of Trump’s actions. And it's one Democratic leadership has stocked with new faces.

Goldman is one of a trio of first-term lawmakers who followed Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) from the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee to the Judiciary panel as he took over as ranking member this year.

Reps. Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.) and Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) were also seen as effective voices for Democrats as they confronted the GOP investigation into the Biden family.

Moskowitz frequently used humor to needle Oversight Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) and GOP witnesses, while Crockett gained prominence for her unique blend of well-placed one-liners and well-timed clashes with some of Congress’s most notable conservatives.

Goldman’s niche in that group was........

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