During a recent floor speech, he made reference to an “unmentionable American felon, one of 19 million in the country” and an “unrepentant and anonymous convicted felon from New York” without mentioning the former president by name. He referred to Mr. Trump’s hush-money case as “the trial whose very existence must be sent down the Orwellian memory hole to save someone’s hurt feelings.”

In the interview, he noted that no rule could erase the facts of Mr. Trump’s status as a felon.

“I’m afraid the Republicans have now invited a contest for how creative we can be in talking about Donald Trump’s criminal convictions without explicitly stating those words,” Mr. Raskin said.