0 me or met with me virtually every day. >> the president, throughout all these meetings and telephone conversations, was adamant that he had one and that we were not doing our job. >> the president said, just say the election is corrupt and leave the rest to me and republican congressman. >> we will wear that any members of congress had [inaudible] >> mr. gaetz and mr. brooks -- mr. gaetz was the first to ask for a pardon. [inaudible] i'm sorry. >> the only reason i know to ask for a pardon is because you think you have committed a crime. >> the president is getting very agitated and he said, people tell me i should just get rid of both of you and change the leadership, put jeff clarke in, maybe something will finally get done. >> i thought that it was [inaudible] >> how does the president even know mr. clark? >> i said, so suppose i do the, suppose i replace him, replace with [inaudible] jeff clark. what would you do? >> i said, mr. president, i would rather resign immediately. >> rachel maddow, nicole wallace ari melber, lawrence o'donnell stephanie ruhle, all here for our special primetime recap of the fifth day of the january 6th hearings. good evening from msnbc headquarters, i'm rachel. i am joined here by my beloved colleagues lawrence o'donnell, nicole wallace, joy reid, ari melber. and if that's not enough for you, do not worry, we will have more of our colleagues joining over the course of the special two hour primetime recap of today's astonishing public hearing from the january 6th investigation. the hearing started live today at 3:00 pm eastern. if you were able to watch any of the hearing live, as it happened or if you were at school or at work or if you just could not spare three plus hours in the middle of the day, you are in the right place with us tonight. as we have talked about before, the world's changing watergate hearings of 1973, those all happened during the workday too. but americans really wanted to see them and they were very important, those hearings were re-aired in their entirety by pbs every night. there were also i'll recap by the broadcast networks each night in prime time, that was a service to the country in 1973, four hearings that important and consequential. here we are again. following that precedent, we here at msnbc have committed that on each night of these daytime hearings we will all meet here together to bring you not just commentary and reaction by the definitive recap, a definitive summary of what happened today, so you will not have missed a thing. that said, slight diversion tonight compared to how we have done this in other nights. before we summarize what happened inside the hearing room today, we do also have to mention one very relevant thing that happened outside the hearing room just before today 's hearing started. a bombshell of a qualitatively different kind than we have had yet in this investigation. it was abc news that was first to break the story this afternoon, that a trump justice department official, the trump justice department official at the center of today's hearing, had just had his home searched by federal agents. abc news was first to report it, that reporting was soon matched by the new york times and then other news outlets. and then the news was confirmed by the man's current employer, which had the detail that while the fbi or federal agents were searching his house, he was outside in the streets in his pjs. that was the phrase they used, pjs. the man of the pjs out in the street is named jeffrey clark. we knew getting into today's hearing this that much of the witness testimony would focus on mr. clark. because he was at the center of this part of the plot. he was the man trump tried to put in charge of the justice department, in his final days in office, specifically because mr. clark allegedly promised he would use the justice department to overturn the election results and keep trump in power. so, we knew that the january 6th investigation had been focused, in part, on jeff clark. we knew to expect that today we would learn a lot about what the investigation found about mr. clark and what part he allegedly played in trump's parts efforts to overthrow the government. but we did not know before today, though, is that in addition to the january 6th investigation in congress, being interested in him, apparently federal criminal investigators have been focused on him too. and it shall indications are that, in fact the january six investigators in congress were just as surprised as the rest of us today, to learn about this predawn search of jeffrey clark's house yesterday. federal agents, among other things, apparently seized his electronic devices while executing that search warrant. so, we are going to be talking tonight about that bombshell development, later on this evening. we will be talking about, that what it means, how it relates to the committee's work. we will also be joined by a member of the january 6th investigation to talk about today's hearing and about this now a very dramatic backdrop for these hearings, what appears to be an active, federal criminal investigation of key players involved in this plot, a federal criminal investigation that is now moving from the step of covert investigation to overt publicly visible acts. let's jump in. in terms of what the january six investigation investigators showed us, what they reveal that today's hearing, let's start. i should mention at the outset, as you saw in our opening set piece, that there were major revelations today about multiple republican members of congress, allegedly seeking pardons from president trump, to protect him from possible criminal prosecution from their own roles in this plot. we are going to get to that in a moment. that was a bombshell of its own. but it was a sort of a different type of information then the rest of what was revealed today. the main revelations today, the main points of the hearing today, we're all about the u. s. justice department and how trump plans to use the justice department to overthrow the government and stay in power. in this part of the plot, the justice department would essentially tell the country that trump was right, there really was tons of fraud, swing states won by biden, probably really were not won by biden. the justice department would in fact tell those swing states that they really should consider sending in trump electors to the electoral college instead of biden electors. that was the plan the justice department play at that role. and how they carry out that plan? the vehicle for this part of the plan was, this official, jeffrey clark. the plan was to fire the attorney general, or place him with this guy, and then this guy would and after the trump plan, to have states that biden won decertify their votes, to instead proclaim trump had won those states and to have those states cast their electoral college votes for trump. clark promised to carry it out. we got new detailed revelations about every step of how they tried to do that today. and we will have more on that coming up in just a moment. i think that it's pretty inarguable, though, that will be remembered most here from today's hearing was the dramatic, almost cinematic testimony about how the top officials at the justice department tried to stop all of that from happening, down to the very last second. >> there was a bit of a scramble that afternoon to prepare for the oval office meeting. we had discussed on several occasions -- the attorney general and i -- whether we should expand the circle of people who knew what was going on. three of us knew, we also brought heather robinson in, so that the four of us knew, but none of us aside from jeffrey clark, of course, knew what was going on until late that sunday afternoon and we chose to keep a close hold because we did not want to create a concern or panic in the justice department leadership. but at this point, i asked the acting ag, what else can i do to help prepare for this meeting at the oval office? and he said, you and pat should get the ags on the phone and it is time to let them know what is going on. let's find out what they may do if there is a change in leadership, because that will inform the conversation at the oval office. heather robinson, subsequently set up a meeting, and we got most or all of the ags on the phone, and very quickly explained to them with the situation was, and i told them, i don't need an answer from you right now, i don't need an answer to this phone call, but if you have an answer i needed the next few minutes. so, call me, email me, text me, whatever it is and if you know what you would do, if jeff clark is put in charge of the department, and immediately, eric dreiband, who is the ag of the civil rights division said, i don't need to think about it, there is no way i am saying staying. and then the other ages began to chime in in turn, and essentially said that they would leave. they would resign en masse, if the president made that change in the department leadership. >> incredible. i would like to look at the assistant attorney general's on the screen, if we can pull that up, have their pictures. did every assistant attorney general that you spoke to, as you said, agreed to resign? makan delrahim was not on the call, only because we had some difficulty reaching him. but yes, the other people on the screen we're on the call and we're all without hesitation said that they would resign. >> did you eventually tell the president that mass resignations would occur if he installed mr. clark and what the consequences would be? >> yes. so, this was in line the president saying, well, i have to lose -- and along those lines, so, suppose i do this. suppose i replace him, jeff rosen, with him, jeff clark. what would you do? and i said, mr. president, i would resign immediately. i'm not working one minute for this guy, who i had just declared was completely incompetent. and so the president immediately turned to mr. them -- and said, steve, you wouldn't resign, would you? and he said, absolutely, i would, mister president, you leave me no choice. and i said, you are not the only ones. no one cares if we resigned, if need steve and i go. but i will tell you what will, happen you will lose your entire department. every single ag will walk out here. your entire department leadership walk out within hours. and i don't know what happens after that. i don't know the united states attorneys are going to do. we have u.s. attorneys in districts across the country. and my guess would be that many of them would have resigned. and that would then have led to resignations across the department in washington. and i said, mr. president, within 24, 48, 72 hours, you have hundreds and hundreds of resignations of the leadership of your entire justice department because of your actions. what is that going to say about you? >> mr. engel, can you describe what your reaction was to that? >> i think with the president -- i think with the president turned to me and said, steve, you wouldn't leave, would you, i said mr. president, i've been with you through for attorneys general, to acting attorneys general. but i couldn't be part of this. the other thing that i said was that, look, all anyone's going to think about when they think this -- no one is going to read this letter. all anyone's going to think is that you went through two attorneys general in two weeks until you found the environmental guy to sign this thing. and so the story is not going to be that the department of justice has found massive corruption that would have changed results of the election. it is going to be, the disaster of jeff clark. and i think at that point, pet supple only said, yet, is a murder suicide pact, this letter. >> i would note too, congressman, that it is this part of the conversation where steve pointed at that jeff clarke would be leaving a graveyard and that that's comment clearly had an impact on the president. the leadership would be gone and there would be left a graveyard. >> there is a thing that happens whenever you have multiple people here interviewing at once. and usually, the way that goes is, interviewer, interviewer, interviewer, interviewee. and things really get cooking, multiple interviewees, start interacting with each other and interacting into each other's testimony so that you know at what they are saying, they are both of one mind about and they are letting you know the importance of what the other one has just explained. those were former u.s. justice department officials, stephen engel and richard donoghue. telling the president that if he put his guy in charge at the u.s. justice department to enact this plot, to have the justice department, overthrow the government, to leave trump in charge, that official at the justice department would be left lead thing a graveyard. it's a justice department effectively offering to dissolve itself if trump tried to use the justice department for this purpose. and they thereby stopped him. the first week and january, that was january 3rd? they stopped him from going ahead with this plan, saying we will get rid of the u.s. justice department before we let you use it to overthrow the government. i put this to you guys now. not because this was the only point made today. there was a lot of actual news, a lot of revelations, a lot of stuff we didn't know before we saw this hearing today. but i think that this was -- this was the heart and soul of it. this was the main point. it is something that we knew the basic contours of before. but that's something qualitatively different then seeing it explained here and there in that room. >> -- and the testimony, as you described it, they are all kind of echoing each other's testimonies, because they're really living it in the room. that's to the credit of the committee and of congressman kinzinger. i think what is so important here and what has been revealed at all five hearings is, where everyone's lines were. so, he's willing to burn down the justice department, which we have learned over the last five hearings was all too willing to investigate unfounded allegations of fraud. i mean, bill barr churned the justice department into something that had never been before, election day, and did that. broke precedent. and we learn from mr. rosen and that every day, from bill barr's departure on, he continued in that pattern of investigating these baseless allegations. >> donoghue himself talks about how he took one of these crazy allegations against around pennsylvania fielded out to the western district attorney of pennsylvania. go chase this out. they were using justice department resources to. -- >> and that's crazy. they were lying. but trump was going to burn it down -- the day after [inaudible] called. the day after their testimony, the sunday after the saturday raffensperger called. the tape leak sunday but it happened the night before. so, trump's last play here is to get jeff clarke to send the letter -- that's with this is about. the letter to georgia, about declaring that states vote fraudulent. ? and so, it really reveals what the intent was. and it was to have the letter sent out declaring -- it pulls trump into the eastman plot. and it makes the doj coup attempt all part of that fake electors plot. >> pulling trump into it, that was the other ambient point today. that this was not something that was like, happening among trump's advisers and they were, you know, that crazy pillow guy and mike flynn and other people -- [inaudible] but this was being conducted by trump personally. >> yeah, the first versions of this oval office meeting came from journalists, including bob woodward and robert costa. but the dialogue today was much more dense. it was much more full. i was never fully satisfied, reading the woodward cost the account of what happened. when i couldn't decide was, why didn't trump do it? why didn't he do it? and i believe it's all on steve engel -- what's shows him is, this will be the bigger news story. >> new story, yeah. >> your letter to georgia will be a small story. this will be a bigger story. and that's what the guy understands. he thought, yeah, that's right. my thing won't be page one, which is the mission. so, it won't work. i don't think he cared about the graveyard. i don't think he cared how many people quit. i don't think that was going to stop him. because he knows, you know, nixon did it, some people quit, so what? right? but that thing -- >> it won't work. >> the other one will be the bigger story. >> yeah, it's not like he has a lot of respect for with a justice department represents. he doesn't want to silly that. >> he said something early when i had you on, in the 7:00 hour, which i thought was also a part of. it part two of what you were saying is that donald trump understands casting. and when you bring jeff clarke in and humiliate him in front of all these other men. and he has in donoghue his dirty jeans and not dressed and he doesn't want to come in, in an army t-shirt. and he says, no, you come, you sit here by me. and you say jeff clark is in this starch avery has to decide if he is cast for the role and he says, that guy is a loser. that guy is dumb, he is not competent. he said and says, oh, that can't be my guy. that guy is not the right guy. he does it look like him. remember the one thing you heard donald trump criticize about the people who invaded the capital is that they did not look right? they looked kind of grumpy. but in that moment, clark looked to grumpy, he was like, no he, he's humiliated. he walked into the fbi director's office, assuming he could find it. chris wray rent even give him the time of day. -- >> trump needed to see clint eastward sitting in the jeffrey clark chair. and he needed to see, this is the toughest, smartest, baddest guy in the room. instead, he's got a nerd in the chair who is just being kind of horribly slapped around by everybody there. and trump's imagining, i am going to put it all on this guy shoulders and tonight, tonight trump has to wonder, is jeffrey clark my gordon liddy? is he going to do five years for me? or is he jeff majority? it's going to be the first one to flip? and when he flips, what does he say? >> yeah, i think all that is true. the other thing that is bad for trump's, he didn't stop, as lawrence is explaining, because it was illegal. he stopped because it looked like it wouldn't work to steal the election. and he still had something that he still wanted to pull off on the sixth. so, this was not just some random -- i mean, we cover the night of the election, he was lying election i. that was before the thing was called. but he had a lot more time left than, in his mind. here, if that was on the front pages, if everybody was working from that, and the doj was hollowed out, that was going to interrupt the other thing you want to do on the sixth, which is to try to get these fraudulent electors and mike pence to at least slow down the certification. so, he really had a, potentially, illicit reason to not blow himself up on the third. >> and we do get sort of the unity of the plot. right? it's not that there are 1 million different ways he is trying to pursue holding on to power. it is all, sort of, when idea. if this eastman derived idea, that you can get the states that he didn't win to nevertheless say that he won